“But mine is just a small business,” you might answer when asked about establishing a web presence for your enterprise.

Though such a reply is expected, it is often justified with facts. The truth of the matter is, even if your business is not big enough to warrant a Fortune 100 citation, it will greatly benefit from all the advantages that the World Wide Web can offer. Turning down those advice to acquire your own domain name and to create a website under a professional web hosting service can cost you immeasurable losses you may not even realize.

Let us take a look at 10 compelling reasons why you should avail yourself of a well positioned web presence in this, the digital age.

*1* The world – the ENTIRE world – can become your market. Indeed, whatever audience you’re catering to right now would fall pale in comparison to the global market that the Internet can open up for you. Imagine taking potential orders from people, unbounded by geographic borders and restrictive economic systems. The Internet makes laissez faire look like child’s play!

*2* Your products can be exposed to 50 million people. Studies show that there are 50 million people online, at any given time. All of these people are your potential customers, and all of them can possibly get to know about your products.

*3* Increase your sales. Since you’ll be catering to more prospects, the chances of bagging a sale or a deal would be better. It’s a number’s game, and you’ll be turning things to your favor.

*4* Market your goods or services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your website can become your digital store that will operate on auto-pilot. You could log off the Internet, and your website can still promote your products, process payments, instantly deliver items, and even take care of some post sales concerns. No need to hire human assistants whom you have to pay some overtime and night shift differential salaries.

*5* Add to the professional reputation of your business. Establishing web presence, especially with a sleek, easily navigable, and professional-looking website, would greatly help build your brand and increase costumer confidence.

*6* Delivery is no longer a problem. The advent of the Internet has totally revolutionized the way courier services conduct their business. Nowadays, they could deliver items to the farthest corners of the Earth. You won’t have to worry about the location of your customers. Anything, and we do mean ANYTHING, can now be delivered right in front of their doorsteps.

*7* Convenient payment processing options. You don’t have to settle for checks or money orders that take some time to mature, though they will always remain as options. There are a lot of merchant accounts available that would allow you to process credit card payments instantly, and the funds you will receive can be transferred to your bank account.

*8* Security is no longer a major concern. With SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encoding, you could protect your transaction pages against unwanted intrusions.

*9* A lot of marketing tactics can be availed of for free in the World Wide Web. Strategies like viral marketing, article marketing, forum marketing, membership marketing and the likes often require no financial investment, or at the very least, a minimal amount to get you started. The results they promise, however, are quite amazing.

*10* Correspondence with your prospects as well as your existing customers would be made easy. Digital delivery of messages is instantaneous, you’ll receive them the moment that they are sent!

Though change can bring about a lot of uncertainties, especially in business, it should not be outright dismissed. Establishing a web presence, regardless of the size of your business, can only offer a world of benefits for your industry.

Top-10 list of corporate marketers for 2007

*1*AT&T

Despite being acquired by SBC, the new AT&T continues its strong and visible presence in the Asian-American community, and is an early pioneer in the U.S. Asian market — allocating one of the largest national budgets to address the diversity of its Asian-American consumer base. Its leaders continue to believe in multicultural marketing, and allocate its marketing resources wisely. AT&T is also one of the leading employers of Asian Americans in the country, with executives and employees who are visibly engaged in community-based organizations locally, regionally and nationally. Their commitment to the Asian-American community is truly second to none.

Stable Techniques.

It’s a double edged sword, this thing we call refund. By offering the same, we could actually strengthen relationships with our clients. They would trust us easier if they would be assured that they could always return a product that would not meet their expectations. On the other hand, refunds have been abused by some quarters. Since we’re dealing with digital products, they could easily make a copy of the items they’ll buy, and then, request for a refund. In effect, these people would be able to get our products for free, which would mean a diminution of our profits.

So should you or shouldn’t you offer refunds?

Well, you should know this much. Offering refunds is the professional way of doing business. It’s your way of telling your customers that their patronage is valued and that their trust would never be compromised.

Nicola Thomson was appointed marketing director of Magic 105.4 in December 2005. She joined the Emap radio station from Jazz FM, where she was head of marketing. Previously, she was part of the team that launched Carlton Screen Advertising in the UK and Ireland.

Here I post the interview with Nicola Thomson about her ideas on making marketing more “workable” and easy using latest technologies and methods! Enjoy it, my friends!

How would you sum up Magic’s current marketing strategy?

It’s simple – we’ve stuck to what we know best, more music less talk with great competitions, and Magic continues to gain audience from our marketing of just that.

We’re confident of the product, with the best mix of music without the clutter, lifting your mood ‘whatever the weather’ and our current television ad does the job.

The last Rajar presented us with record reach, with almost two millions listeners per week, and we remain the number one commercial radio station in London and market leader from 9am through until midnight.

The marketing has contributed hugely to this success with a strategy that this year has used a multi-media mix to promote core brand strengths and highlighting our core music artists.

What are your ambitions for the brand?

To become one of the strongest multi-platform media brands for our core audience, who trust Magic and can access us through digital and analogue platforms.

How can commercial radio stations in general best compete with the BBC when it comes to marketing?

The BBC has an enormous marketing ‘pot’ to play with, so it can be hard to compete when it comes to budget. That just means we have to work smarter, marrying great programming with creative insight into what audiences want.

It’s a competitive market place, but with everyone needing to be at the top of their game, that can only be good news for the listener.

How important is technology such as digital radio and the internet to growing the Magic brand?

I believe that DAB and the internet are crucial in the development of the Magic brand. The internet in particular has already played a great part in how Magic has grown its audience.

Magic.co.uk was re-launched in July last year, and in that time we have begun to build a real community for those that love music and great competitions. Magic obviously has restrictions with its more music less talk policy, and magic.co.uk can interact with our audience in ways that radio cannot.

Cross promoting  magic.co.uk and Magic 105.4 has contributed to our unique users increasing by 78 per cent from this time last year.

What advertising campaign, for any brand on any medium, has most impressed you in recent months?

M&S comes to mind immediately. The Christmas Magic and Sparkle TV campaign with Dame Shirley Bassey was fantastic and says so much about the brand. In fact all of M&S advertising is stunningly executed, and brilliantly consistent.

It goes without saying that I’m pretty fond of the current Magic TV ad, and at one point I did actually wonder whether Magic had jinxed the summer weather!

The place a newsletter or email marketing campaign a link appears at can be crucial for click-through. Consequently, which link goes where can be crucial for the success (if measured in click-through rates) of any email marketing effort.

That’s why you’d try some new placements, pal!

Segment your list or, if you can’t segment, use consecutive issues to vary the placement of standard links. Monitor click-through rates closely to determine which link works best in a certain position, and in which position a link works best.

*** By my mind, the best place for link is after the whole text, so people could really get all the information in your newsletter and then fully check your link without disturbing by the upcoming text after that ( example below ). Try this!