1. Expanding their customer base from one limited to a local region or county and increasing the opportunity to contact customers outside of this area. The increase in customers provides an opportunity to increase sales, to save money on advertising from one central Web site to a wide population.

2. Print costs are going to continue to rise, while online you can distribute materials to thousands of people without printing thousands of manuals. The materials are always available, don’t wear out like print, and if they need to be redone, they don’t need to be reprinted, significantly reducing costs for distributing information.

3. Customer service online helps to reduce overhead costs and legal issues by having no clerks, no insurance or regulations, and best of all, a storefront that is always available. Compare this to 800 numbers where you hit numbers and get put on hold with awful music; online you get into immediate contact with the information you need. If not, email is available to get into contact with the company, which doubles the value of the site for market research. Let your customers tell you what they need and develop products and services to fit those needs.

4. The value of market research makes a Web site an investment that adds value over time, because it develops a direct feedback from your clients’ wants and needs to your company. Let them bring the ideas for you to create the product or service around, saving money on development costs, lowering the costs of lead generating, and allowing you to keep growing with your market.

5. Do you realize people will interview and talk with you just because you have a Web site, regardless of your business? What other form of advertising or promotion can promise that? Public relations possibilities are virtually limitless for online business.
Today’s business climate favors companies that expand the resources from solely their efforts to a collaboration of partners. Online businesses can work with related, non-competitive businesses to generate cross-marketing value from business to business, from the department to department within a corporation, and with partners in other countries, doubling the value of current marketing efforts.

6. Lead generation is one of the primary strengths of a Web site. By providing constant access, you can create a steady stream of customers through directed, targeted marketing based on consumer interest. These consumers then spread the word through to others interested, leading to a word of month advertising campaign that could not be created without the Web.

7. Email mailing lists are an emerging source of revenue; people will share their email addresses, which can be easily merged into bulk mailing lists online for access. When someone moves, the Internet automatically tells you that they have moved, allowing you to keep up to date without spending tons of money sending out more letters. Mailing lists of physical addresses are also easy to collect, building a valuable resource that may eventually be worth more than your business. The power is in access to a targeted audience.

8. The online marketplace puts everything in the consumer’s hands right away. When they enter your online storefront, they can immediately decide to buy and make their transaction right there. Impulse plus transaction are in the same place.

9. Traditional advertising is based on losing value and building revenue on repeated attempts to advertise. But advertising is based on the old model of business, trying to convince people of the value of your product or service in a one-shot advertisement.

10. The gamble is in time. Each advertisement in these media loses their value almost immediately. They are built to be one time events that lose all of their value. The gamble is all or nothing; if it fails, there is only to go back to the drawing board and spend just as much money redoing it. The Web is different, gaining value over time because it is so easy to test, adapt, and change subject to the needs of your customers.