Do I need to do online Advertising in the Start-up Stage of my Business?

19 July 2010

People have been working for years on perfecting the online business formula. The Internet can be quite fickle at times. Sometimes it's a mirror of the real world, and other times it's a world unto itself, where everything's completely out of whack. Although there are certain steps preferred by online gurus, there's no real set formula to follow closely when building a business.

A lot of people put emphasis on online advertising; and while they rightly should hone in on this method and work in multiple ways to drive traffic to their sites, sometimes folks get ahead of themselves and do more harm than good.

The opinion that online advertising can come later in the game is certainly up for debate. Some in the online business world would insist that you advertise first before all else. However, exploring advertising options and learning about marketing while taking care of other aspects of your business will enable you to hit the ground running.

It can be explained in very simple terms. First up, every business needs a solid plan if it's going to succeed. No matter what type of online business you're planning on operating, you're most likely going to need a website. This website is going to need to earn a good placement.

You can advertise until you're blue in the face, and it still wouldn't earn you half the rank that proper keyword usage would. So it stands to reason that, for the purposes of a start-up business, the proprietor should focus more on site design and layout. It's like the saying in the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, If you build it, they will come.

If you immediately start out trafficking through an online advertising campaign, then people are going to be showing up to your site before you've had a chance to fine-tune it. What harm can this do? Well, for starters, we're talking about your business brand here.

You not only want customers to visit your site, but you want them to become frequenters of your site and to tell their friends and family about your site. You want the word to spread and your brand to expand. If visitors stop in and see an incomplete site with a lackluster product for sale, you'll have to start all over.

Common sense suggests that it's simply easier to do things in sequence. Build your business plan, work on your product, find the perfect related keywords, build your site around the ideas, and then work to traffic in people to your site.

While you're busy with the former steps, you can learn a thing or two about online advertising so that you don't waste any time in marketing your site. To do it the other way around just seems more counterproductive than anything.