1.5 Bil­lion Cus­tomers Wait­ing For You

I can’t get no sleep be­cause… be­cause I keep think­ing about those num­bers that I’m about to re­veal to you. Go visit the world in­ter­net us­age sta­tis­tics and see for yourself:

As of to­day, Oc­to­ber 1, 2008, there are 1,463,632,361 peo­ple with in­ter­net ac­cess. That’s 21.9% of the global population.

Mean­ing: 1.5 bil­lion po­ten­tial cus­tomers for you and me.

[ UPDATE: On June 30, 2010 the num­ber is grown to 1,966,514,816.. That’s close to 2 Bil­lion. ]

Heck - we’d have to screw up badly not get enough cus­tomers for our busi­ness out of 1.5 bil­lion peo­ple, right?

But maybe you haven’t em­braced the idea yet that the in­ter­net can gen­er­ate new cus­tomers for al­most any busi­ness you can think of. And it might gen­er­ate a healthy in­flux of new cus­tomers for your busi­ness as well.

Glob­ally you’re look­ing at

• 578,538,257 now 825,094,396 cus­tomers on­line in Asia
• 384,633,765 now 475,069,448 cus­tomers on­line in Europe

• 248,241,969 now 266,224,500 cus­tomers on­line in North America

• 139,009,209 now 204,689,836 cus­tomers on­line in Latin America

• 51,065,630 now 110,931,700 cus­tomers on­line in Africa
• 20,204,331 now 21,263,990 cus­tomers on­line in Australia

If you’re a busi­ness per­son you’re prob­a­bly wor­ry­ing about how to get the cus­tomers you need to pay the bills and fi­nance your life style.

Now think about it: hav­ing ac­cess to 21.8% of the word pop­u­la­tion makes it easy to get all the cus­tomers you’ll ever need for your busi­ness. That’s not only true for any in­ter­net busi­ness, but also if you’re run­ning a lo­cal brick and mor­tar store.

So how can you use a web site to get more cus­tomers for YOUR spe­cific business?

How to use the in­ter­net for your lo­cal business.

Most brick and mor­tar busi­nesses, shops, restau­rants, of­fices, and prac­tices need lo­cal cus­tomers. Us­ing a com­pany web site you can ex­pand your client base and your prof­its in a 3 step process.

Step 1) Use a com­pany web site to at­tract lo­cal customers.

Your com­pany web site is your in­ter­net busi­ness card and if used cor­rectly it can bring in new busi­ness faster than you think. For years the in­ter­net has been fo­cused on gen­eral non-lo­­cal in­for­ma­tion. This is chang­ing right now. In fact in 5 to 8 years the in­ter­net will be the #1 source for lo­cal in­for­ma­tion.

I know that you prob­a­bly be­lieve the lo­cal news pa­per or yel­low pages still do the job - but that’s chang­ing quickly. 5 years from now - whether peo­ple want to know the lo­cal movie sched­ule, find a home de­liv­ery restau­rant or an ex­ter­mi­na­tor - they will get all the lo­cal in­for­ma­tion from the in­ter­net. In many places around the world this trend has al­ready manifested.

The up­shot is that you need to take ad­van­tage of lo­cal in­ter­net search and it will come quickly.

Be smart about this: most of your com­pe­ti­tion will still be miss­ing this new op­por­tu­nity. Just as 20 years ago EVERYBODY UNDERESTIMATED the ex­plo­sive growth of the in­ter­net and com­merce, to­day large num­bers of your com­peti­tors un­der­es­ti­mate the im­por­tance of LOCAL INTERNET SEARCHES. The first thing you need to do is to get a com­pany web site that fo­cuses on your lo­cal customers.

Once this is done …

Step 2) Ex­pand your busi­ness be­yond the lo­cal area

If you’re sell­ing products

Phys­i­cal prod­ucts can eas­ily be sold na­tion­ally or even in­ter­na­tion­ally with an on­line store on your web site. Con­sider ex­pand­ing your busi­ness that way if you sell any ship­pable prod­uct, as books, movies, cos­met­ics, ap­parel, com­put­ers, PC games, of­fice sup­plies, elec­tron­ics, fur­ni­ture, toys, jew­ellery, fit­ness equip­ment, pet sup­plies, etc. etc.

If you’re new to the in­ter­net you may feel an on­line store is too com­pli­cated. In that case con­sider ac­cept­ing or­ders via email or on­line con­tact form in­stead. Also – bear in mind that find­ing lo­cal con­sul­tants is not nearly as dif­fi­cult as it used to be. They can set you up with a shop­ping cart usu­ally for far less money than you might anticipate.

If you’re sell­ing services

1) Many ser­vices are not bound to your ge­o­graphic location. 

My own busi­ness for ex­am­ple is avail­able to cus­tomers world­wide. I sell in­ter­net mar­ket­ing ser­vices and con­sult­ing on web sites in Ger­man and Eng­lish lan­guage. Thus my ser­vices are ac­ces­si­ble for round­about one bil­lion peo­ple - that’s 1,000,000.000 in­stead of just the 100,000 in my home town.

2) Some ser­vices have to be per­formed locally.

Could you still use the in­ter­net to ex­pand your prof­its? Let’s see how…

• Sell Re­lated Prod­ucts. First of all you can start sell­ing re­lated prod­ucts through your web site. Imag­ine a hair styl­ist. Of course the main busi­ness can only be per­formed when the client is ‘at hand’. But the hair styl­ist -hav­ing a web site- could start sell­ing hair care prod­ucts on­line and thus cre­ate ad­di­tional revenue.
• Mon­e­tize Your Ex­per­tise. Sec­ond, any busi­ness per­son could and should mon­e­tize their Know-how and ex­pe­ri­ence, see step 3 be­low to learn more.

Here’s a ta­ble of ser­vice cat­e­gories and how to get new cus­tomers us­ing a web site.

This col­umn de­scribes ser­vices that are easy to to mon­e­tize and ex­pand online. Your goal: Of­fer these ser­vices through an on­line shop­ping cart or, in the be­gin­ning, ac­cept of­fers via email or a sim­ple or­der form. This in­cludes:	This col­umn de­scribes ser­vices that are not easy to per­form on­line. Your goals: ad­ver­tise your busi­ness on­line to find lo­cal customers, of­fer re­lated prod­ucts through an on­line store, and sell your ex­per­tise and know-how. This in­cludes:
Ser­vices that can be de­liv­ered via email: Web de­sign, graph­ics de­sign, writ­ing and trans­la­tions (ghost-writ­ing ar­ti­cles, press re­leases, and sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tions.), speech record­ing (e.g. au­dio books), mu­sic record­ings, any type of multi me­dia prod­uct, mar­ket­ing, tax ac­count­ing, soft­ware pro­gram­ming, and lots of others…	Any ser­vice where the client needs to be present:. mas­sage, per­sonal groom­ing, hair dress­ing, man­i­curists, body hair re­moval, den­tal hy­gien­ist, health care, su­per­vi­sion, baby sitting, …
Con­sult­ing ser­vices de­liv­ered via phone, e-mail, or writ­ten and spo­ken on­line chat: PC con­sult­ing, busi­­ness- and mar­ket­ing con­sult­ing, coach­ing for re­la­tion­ship is­sues, fi­nan­cial plan­ning, le­gal con­sult­ing, tax consulting, …	All work re­lated to home and garden. Jan­i­tors, gar­den­ers, car­pen­try, elec­tri­cians, plumbing, …
Ser­vices that re­sult in prod­ucts that can be shipped via ‘tra­di­tional’ mail: Per­son­al­ized books, pic­ture fram­ing, paint­ings, horoscopes, …	Re­pair and main­te­nance ser­vices for ma­chin­ery and de­vices you would­n’t send via mail but rather bring to a lo­cal store. Car, TV, Watches, Jew­ellery, Lawnmowers, …

Step 3: Mon­e­tize your know-how

The first thing to do is to po­si­tion your­self as rec­og­nized ex­pert in your in­dus­try. You do this by pub­lish­ing ar­ti­cles on your web site. It’s ex­actly what you can see in ac­tion on this very in­ter­net busi­ness blog - I’m pub­lish­ing ar­ti­cles to po­si­tion my­self in the area of in­ter­net mar­ket­ing. You can do the same in your industry.

Don’t worry whether you „de­serve” to be called an ‘ex­pert’. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, 99% of the pop­u­la­tion will know less about your busi­ness than you do. It is these peo­ple that you want to at­tract. Af­ter all, you’re look­ing for cus­tomers, not to im­press your competition.

Mon­e­tiz­ing your ex­per­tise can even go one step further:

Cre­ate in­for­ma­tion prod­ucts (for ex­am­ple, re­ports, book­lets, video in­struc­tion) about what you know and sell them through your web site. Many of those can be sold dig­i­tally. Peo­ple will down­load the in­for­ma­tion prod­uct and you don’t even have to take care of ship­ping goods.

To get you started, here’s a list of com­mon in­for­ma­tion products. 
You could create

• an e-book
• a tele­sem­i­nar
• an au­dio book
• an on­line course
• a web site with a pro­tected mem­ber only area
• a real sem­i­nar, maybe held in your lo­cal store

You set up an au­to­mated sys­tem once, and it’s work­ing for you ²⁴⁄₇.

Sell­ing in­for­ma­tion on­line is a multi bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness.

If you know more about your prod­uct or ser­vice than your av­er­age cus­tomer, then you’re per­fectly ready to sell your knowledge.

Sum­mary - 3 Steps To More Customers:

No mat­ter whether you’re a free­lancer or run a lo­cal brick and mor­tar busi­ness, there are 3 ways to grow your busi­ness with a web site:

1. Cre­ate a busi­ness web site to at­tract lo­cal customers.

2. Sell re­lated prod­ucts and ser­vices through your web site.

3. Mon­e­tize your ex­per­tise: Pub­lish ar­ti­cles to po­si­tion your­self as au­thor­ity and sell in­for­ma­tion prod­ucts to make money.

Fi­nal words. Thanks for read­ing my ar­ti­cle, I hope it has given you a few ideas about how you can gen­er­ate more money for your busi­ness us­ing the in­ter­net. I en­cour­age you to post your thoughts and ques­tions be­low. I read each and every com­ment and will be happy to an­swer your questions.