Marketing is the success mantra for every business.
In management circles, new sales strategies and plans are consistently being researched and developed.
But growth means different things to different people.
For some businesses, winning the customer's trust is paramount.
While others simply focus on increasing revenue and customer base.
Once again, that sparks the eternal Quantity vs.
Quality debate.
When you are setting up a new business, it is important that you decide whether you want to serve a particular niche by providing specialized services or have a wider customer base.
Should you spend your money and time providing quality oriented services to extremely valuable clientele? Or should you focus on spreading a wider net and having loads of contacts? My personal experience says that as far as online marketing is concerned, the emphasis should be on providing quality rather than quantity.
You need to make your website visible to the people who are, in the real sense, your niche customers.
You will be wasting your effort, time and money, if your sole purpose is to increase irrelevant traffic.
Your services and products must be highly geared towards a particular group instead of a general audience.
This can only be achieved by concentrating on quality.
Quantity unlocks Doors To most web based businesses, numbers matter.
Success is often measured in numbers and most bloggers would rather love to have ten thousand visitors, instead of one thousand.
For e.
g.
if you want to publish a personal Paris Hilton interview on your blog and send an email to her PR agent regarding the dates, you'll probably be asked about your subscriber base.
Now, at this point of time if you mention that barely 20 people read your blog, your mail will be deleted instantly.
However, if you have 50,000 subscribers, you'll not only bag the interview but also get her phone number within a few days.
That's the power of quantity.
Quantity convinces your audience about your reach, social proof and credibility.
Quality Unlocks Vaults Having a larger platform filled with irrelevant audience doesn't make you influential.
If 50000 unique visitors land on your blog every day, and no one leaves comments, re-tweets you, emails you, replies to you, purchases your service/products, or subscribe to your feed, then there's no use of it.
Internet is getting more and more about one-to-one conversations.
So, in order to achieve desired results, you need to meet people individually.
Remember, people love to buy quality and reliability.
Having quality as your focus earns you brand influence.
Most web marketers today gauge brand influence by engagement.
Influence, in turn, can be determined by how many comments you receive on your blog, how many famous people are linked to your blog, how many retweets you receive, and your Facebook and Buzz following.
Much of the interaction these days has to be done outside your blog, making it more challenging.
More the number of relevant people listening to you, more sales you'll achieve.
These are the individuals who care.
Leads having no interest in your business won't do you any good.
You'll make more money if you focus on your niche by providing high quality services to fewer but high paying customers.
Quality has taken over the reins from quantity.
Eventually, the quality of services you render will decide how long you stay in business.
You'll need to identify your target audience and carve out a niche for yourself to establish your brand.
In the near future, businesses (especially home based), will have to concentrate on quality instead of quantity to survive.
P.
S.
- Concentrate on numbers if you want to interview Paris Hilton.