Many marketers nowadays are using the internet to promote their products and services. And many people are making killer money doing it, too!  There are quite a few marketers making multiple 6-figures and 7-figures online right now.  So, there is no doubt that the internet is a successful marketing tool!  But… should YOU be using the internet right now to grow your business? The answer to that might suprise you.

Well, I’ll just go ahead and tell you right now. The answer to that is ‘NO’!  Why not?

Well, chances are that if you’re reading this article, then you are relatively new to this style of marketing that we constantly discuss here. The style of marketing that I’m talking about is that of knowledge and systemization, just like any successful business (MLM or otherwise).  We don’t do random things like randomly passing out businees cards, flyers, the 3-foot rule, etc. Those things have been proven to not be very productive and doing that could tire you out and spend you out of business.

So, if you are just starting out to learning the correct way to market, then that would mean that you haven’t figured out your target market yet. And that means that you haven’t figured out a specific message to fit your target market.  That is really what marketing is all about: understanding who is most likely to buy your products or services and then knowing what words to say to make them want to buy.    So, the name of the game then becomes: how to do this while spending as little money as possible.

Now that is key for every business:  trying to do market research and marketing campaigns with as little cost as possible. That is especially critical if you’re just getting started on your business.  You probably don’t have a lot of money to start off with, right?  And even if you were a millionaire already, you still don’t want to spend more money than you have to, right?  So then, that’s why trying to market your business online when you’re first getting started marketing your business is  a bad idea.  Let me explain…

To market your business online, you may use a technique called PPC, or pay-per-click advertising. That is a process in which you pay for every time someone clicks on your advertisement.  This can be a money-trap for new marketers, because if they don’t have an entire marketing funnel – or system-  in place that  is known to work, then you could spend hundreds of dollars a month and not make any money in the end. And on top of that, at the end of the day, you wouldn’t know WHY people didn’t buy.  The same is true for facebook advertising.  And even article marketing, even though it’s free, would be senseless to use in this case, because it wouldn’t give you any indication of what works and what doesn’t.  You would already have to understand your target market before you even begin to do that.

Now let’s turn the coin over to the other side, so-to-speak.  I suggest that you do your market research off-line to start off with.  There are many benefits of doing it this way.  In my opinion, you get a much quicker response, so you can see almost immediately the response of your prospective target market.  And much of the forms of market research is not only quick, but also FREE, and it allows you to gauge one thing that I think is many times overlooked: intensity.  In other words, you’re not just getting a yes or no, but you might get a “Oh yeah!” or an “Of course not!”, and even the reason WHY they reacted that way – all in a few minutes time!

What am I referring to when I speak of off-line strategies? I’m talking about things like live surveys and interviews. They work like gang-busters and to me, they are THE MOST EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE way to acquire and understand your target market.   Then once you’ve got this down, then you can easily and confidently apply this information to the internet. And because you now know exactly what you’re doing and saying, your profits will explode, and you’ll be one of those guys making the big bucks online.