For guerrillas, the Internet continues to be a bonanza because it has exponentially expanded their media opportunities and their reach, and brings potential consumers to them. A website makes it possible for a guerrilla to address wider target audiences more effectively and efficiently. Instead of having to beat the bushes to generate interest in their goods and services, guerrillas can use the Internet to bring people to them. The Internet gives the public direct access to Web sites so anyone can get your information, not just the media. The content you provide isn’t filtered through the media, who usually decide what’s news, what gets printed, aired, and publicized. Before the Internet, publicists focused their time and energy courting the media. If they were lucky, the media told their story to the public, but the media usually added their own spin, which the publicists hoped was the spin they wanted. The Internet lets you tell your story directly to your target audience and in the manner you want to tell it. Many visitors to your site are looking for more information than they get from the media. They come to you. They visit your site because they’re interested in viewing your information or forming a relationship with your company. Before they do business with or invest in your company, they want to see all your press releases and financial information. They don’t want information that’s been interpreted by others; they want to see original documents so they can draw their own conclusions.
Global Reach
In the past, when guerrillas began to publicize their businesses, they were forced to conduct local or regional campaigns. Usually, the cost of national campaigns was prohibitive, so guerrillas concentrated on promotions close to home. High costs limited their entry into larger markets and slowed their growth. That’s the past. Today, the Internet recognizes no such boundaries; the Internet erases boundaries. The Web blankets the globe. When you visit a site, you don’t know whether it originated next door or in Timbuktu. Once your site is up, you can attract customers from all over the world. From the outset, the Internet gives you access to it all: local, regional, national, and international markets. Global reach increases the possibilities exponentially. Before the Internet, guerrillas with narrowly focused specialties slaved for years to expand their customer base. Today, simply by launching a Web site, those guerrillas can leapfrog regional borders and immediately offer their wares to a vastly larger clientele. Technical advances have also provided the ability to have the Web change a site’s default language so it can reach international markets.
Unequaled Value
As a promotional tool, a Web site is an unequaled value. A Web site can reach an international audience for less than the cost of advertising in most local media. It’s global reach and ability to tar get potential customers can lift a guerrilla from obscurity to riches faster and more economically than any other marketing method. Through the Web and the new media, obscure individuals can reach colossal target audiences and receive worlds of publicity. As these new approaches take hold today, they and refinements of them will become even more important in the future.
Specialization
websites also speed guerrillas’ ability to shape the direction of their careers. It lets them focus their marketing efforts on more sharply defined areas. In the past, it took years to establish your niche, but now guerrillas can, from the outset, use the Web to proclaim that they’re specialists. The Internet also enables people to specialize more narrowly. In the past, specializing in narrow segments of a market was frequently not commercially viable because the specialists could not reach enough potential clients or customers. However, since the Internet reaches so many people, specialists can now draw from a vastly larger group of prospects.
A website also places you in the twenty-first century. It testifies that you understand the new economy, that you’re using the latest tools and providing the most easily accessible information.
Your Web site is the first thing prudent potential customers or clients and peers examine. It speaks directly to the businesses you want to attract: innovative businesses that are blazing trails into the new millennium. It shows that you’re a kindred spirit, a player in the twenty-first-century economy. It also tells them who you are, what you’re doing, and where you’re headed. Remember, most people prefer doing business with those who are on the same wavelength . . . don’t you?
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