Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

Running a small business takes a lot of work. Every small business owner would like to see their business in the best position to grow. One of the surest ways to invest in your small business is to have a website. There are still a lot of businesses that do not have a website for their customers. In today’s online world people expect to be able to do an online search and find your business, products & services there. If you want to take steps to improve your small business, this is one essential place to start. Here are a some benefits for your small business having a website.

Brand Recognition

The vast majority of customers today use the internet when they are searching for the product or service they need. By owning your own website, you will be able to extend the overall presence of your business, being both offline and online. There are a lot of small businesses that do a lot of their marketing online. Not only does this save money, but consumer studies show that this is more effective as well, since your potential customer is already online using their mobile device to search for you. Your website can provide all the information about your business, products and services you provide, how they can contact you, maybe even shop online for your products 24/7, you can offer helpful information, tips and hints and you can provide photos of your business, team, products and testimonials from happy customers. Your website is your representing your brand online.

More Traffic

Customers need to know that your business has a product or service to sell. Many customers are searching for quality products and services at a great price. However, it will be very hard to find your business if you don’t have a website. Building a quality website will drive traffic over time automatically to your website. This increases the amount of people who see the products or services that your small business offers. Always take the time to build a quality website, with quality information, in order to build up your web traffic.

Higher Profits

There are few things as impactful in marketing in today’s world as having a website. If you want higher profits in your business, it is important to invest in a website that will drive customers to sign up for your newsletter, call you for a quote, buy your products direct from your online store or call you for more information about the services you offer. Over a period of time, this will lead to higher profits in your business. Every small business owner wants to increase profits in their business over the long-term. Dollars spent investing in a quality website that is customer friendly will yield many more dollars for the business in the future. All small business owners must think about the long-term trajectory and vision of their business and seriously consider investing in a website.

Final Thoughts

There are many small businesses today that do not have a website. They either do not understand the importance of owning their own website and the benefits to their business or they think they do not have the money to invest in one. A good question to consider is what money are they losing to their competitors (who are online)?

The good news is that this is now easier than ever before to get a website. There are hundreds of web designers ready and able to build a quality website, most likely several right there in the area where they live. Anyone worried about building or coding a site can simply hire someone to do so. The price of building a website has gone down drastically in recent years.

Investing in a website will do several things for your business. Not only will it increase your brand recognition in the marketplace, but over time it will also drive traffic leading to potential increased sales, ultimately yielding higher profits for the business.