Don’t Forget To Monetize

Don’t Forget To Monetize

A number of Internet marketers seem to forget one basic element of a successful business – the ability to generate income. Many of these people are more concerned with building and promoting their brand than they are with monetizing it. Monetizing your brand is simply the process of generating revenue from your business. An Internet marketing business is just that – it’s a business. And in order for it to be a successful business, it needs to generate not only revenues, but profits as well.

An example of this typical oversight is in social media. Social media is the hot new thing in Internet marketing. Any complete and fully functional Internet marketing plan includes a comprehensive segment of social media integration. By leveraging social media, the Internet entrepreneur gains access to an entire population of like-minded people who are potentially interested in purchasing a product or service. But sometimes the end is defined by the means.

For example, in the case of Twitter, a common benchmark is the number of followers that individual has on the service. Over the past several months, as Twitter gained mainstream acceptance, everybody is talking about the site, and how to use it professionally. But the problem is that many of these people do not monetize their efforts. The fact is that 7000 followers who never buy anything are exactly the same as no followers. Sure, it might feel nice to be wanted and followed to the point where 7000 people have opted into your Twitter account. But from a purely rational business standpoint, the number of followers is irrelevant — it’s the number of buyers that were concerned about.

For this reason, every marketing tactic employed must be done from the perspective of how will it generate revenue. Marketing is the process of bringing customers to your point of sale. Another important distinction is that selling is the process of getting a prospect to buy something. So if you’re good at marketing but not good at selling, your business is destined to fail.

The solution here is to simply be rational when planning your marketing. As you commit dollars to your marketing tactics, do so from the standpoint of what your anticipated return will be. If you cannot determine a return-in other words if you cannot understand how the tactic will generate income-move on. Do not spend your time and effort on marketing that does not yield income. By monetizing your business, not only put dollars in your pocket, but you ensure long-term business success as well.

To your success! Donna Denil, Online Entrepreneur.