New Ventures
When considering a new venture a traditional marketing approach combined with the ability to accurately measure and predict the outcome is important.
The US is quite different in its approach to new ventures and generating venture capital. Certain investors will take chances knowing the 1 in 20 that is a success will be well worth the other failures. They are still not going to throw money at an ill conceived idea and will look to a business plan.
William Sahlman of Harvard University identifies nine questions that every business plan should answer.
- Who is the new ventures customer
- How does the customer make decisions about buying this product or service
- To what degree is the product or service a compelling purchase for the customer
- How will the product or service be priced
- How will the venture reach all the identified customer segments
- How much does it cost (in time and resources) to acquire a customer.
- How much does it cost to produce and deliver the product or service
- How much does it cost to support a customer
- How easy is it to retain a customer
Other strategies are important are you planning to run the business or set it up for sale to an interested (bricks and mortar) company.
How can we measure the possible success without major investment?
We need to know what the existing competition is like and whether we have a reasonable chance of success.
We can help you here by accurately accessing competitors sites and predicting your chances of success.
How to look for niches
There is a history of advantage in being first to market on the web. It does not have to be a Youtube it can be something as simple as a better way to find a plumber. Or providing a system that gives your business a competitive edge by being more efficient.
How can you tell whether there is room in an online market for your proposed site? There are many tools and websites that will provide useful information about an existing site. We use these (including some developed in house) to quickly establish the likelihood of success.
Say for example you were a florist in Sydney and wanted to know if you could create a site that would help you sell flowers over the Internet. Great idea but what is the competition like? In my opinion it is a very competitive market and difficult too difficult to enter on a pure Internet basis. An established brand would be a chance by leveraging your existing identity.
Your standard marketing person may not know how to compare competition on the Internet. What makes one site get to the top of Google?
Case Study Roof Racks:
Neville the owner of roofracktrader.com.au has a unique situation. He has years of experience in distributing his manufactured roof racks How can he leverage that experience to improve his bottom line?
He has some competitive advantages over the larger companies like Rola Thule and Rhino. He gets his roof racks made specifically OS and purchases them
at very competitive prices.
Larger roof rack distributors will dominate the retail market but consumers will buy from the web. With good search engine optimisation his site
can efficiently get to the top of Google and allow him to compete with the giants.
What level of success of a site is attributed to its design?
Great question there is definitely a link between a website success and the design.
In some cases it seems the design is more critical than others.
By design we are not just referring to a flashy header or great images. We need to factor in what the user would be doing on the site and what navigation aids they may need. If the site is used to gather or compare information the speed and legibility of the site will be important.
Many factors need to be considered including the established norms for this type of site. For example if you were launching a new air line booking system it would have to have similar functionality to existing booking systems. If users have learnt a certain technique to find information avoid forcing them to learn something new (even if it is better).
Beware of the marketing guru and pyramid schemes that put together dodgy marketing sites with yellow highlighting behind the text and long pages using techniques similar to old mail order techniques. The latest generations see these for what they are.
Leverage your own expertise
Being a surfer and living by the beach on the Gold Coast I naturally end up creating sites for surfboard manufactures, surfshops and even SaveOurSpit.com so I can still go to the beach without it being taken over by a shipping terminal.
I dont necessarily seek this work but it often finds me. I know the market and it reduces the risk factor some what. A few years ago there was a product marketed in a surfing magazine that was a parachute attached to your board that replaced the legrope. It was a stupid idea and quickly disappeared. If the creator of that product had discussed a website with me I would have refused to create it or at least stated it had little chance of success.
When I created a site for an irrigation supplier and contractor the amount of useful information they had was huge. They could accurately tell you what components to buy and come up with a plan so you could Do It Yourself and save money in the process. All that was needed was a site that could effectively offer this to the public.
It had to be easily found in Google and have credibility. The owner David was forward thinking enough to give it a go. The staggering issue came out that an ad in the Yellow pages for one year cost more than a website that he owned and operated and would increase in value in years to come.
I said to him you could end up never having to dig a hole again!
Do you have expertise that could establish you on the web in a certain area?
Case Study Plus Size Fashion:
Nadine of www.glamorousandgorgeous16-28.com.au produces Plus Size Fashion This is ladies fashion for sizes 16 to 28. This is suitable for the web. Nadine has leveraged her own expertise and being Gold Coast based has a niche in Resort Leisure Wear.
The cost of a bricks and mortar fashion shop on the Gold Coast would be very high. The advantages of being on the web and producing a quality fashion product are immense. Success does hinge on getting the traffic and the right type of traffic to the site.
Nadine used a SEO expert to help push the site to targetted keywords.
Research into the keywords that would get maximum exposure without escalating Pay Per click campaigns was produced.
DIY website Design
There is some excellent software available for DIY website Design. Not every venture needs to spend a fortune on a website. If you have some PC skill a do it yourself package can save you on a custom website design. These packages range from do everything yourself to get it completely loaded and setup and then you can update it at no ongoing cost.
About the author
Philip J Hoile current lectures at Griffith University in e-business advanced e-business and e-commerce.
A web developer since 1996 specialising in programming Content Management Systems and combining Java, JavaScript HTML, XML, databases and Flash into sites for existing clients.
My interest in marketing stems from a desire to improve client outcomes. Email
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