Web Lever - Your Internet Fit

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Are You "Internet Leveraged?"

According to Barlow Research over 70% of companies with revenues greater than $5M now have a website. Anecdotal experience indicates at least 50% of companies not yet at the $5M level also have an associated website. Clearly, the belief that a business needs an online presence is widely accepted. However, most small to medium size companies believe that with a website in place they have successfully addressed the Internet challenge, and have returned to focus on the traditional marketing and sales activities they are most familiar with.

Websites are an excellent cheer leader for your company and they show up right where you need to be - in the marketplace on the web. They provide a place for you to inform your Internet savvy customers about your products and how to purchase them. But a website alone is an insufficient strategy. Launching a website is a good start, but you must continue to fully integrate the Internet into your approach to the market – becoming an “Web leveraged” company.

Of the many functions in your business, there are six that face the market:

• Informing – you must responsively provide the pre-sales information that prospective buyers might seek in support of their decision process.
• Marketing – you must proactively and systematically educate the marketplace about the problems that need solved, the advantages of your solutions, and why they should choose your solution now.
• Selling – you must turn a prospect that understands their problem and your solution into a customer that has acted to purchase your solution for their problem.
• Payment – you must document the purchase agreement and collect payment from the customer or a third party financing company.
• Fulfillment – you must deliver your solution to the customer.
• Support – you must provide all of the post-sales information and follow-up that will maximize the success of your solution for the customer

These six functions must be considered as you move your business down the path to becoming Internet leveraged. There are state of the art methods and technologies for each one of them to implement automated online systems where manual systems were previously the sole approach.

An Web Leveraged business is optimally using automated Internet systems to address the growing Internet-based marketplace at continually decreasing costs.

If your business is not Web Leveraged then you are over-relying on manual offline systems to address only a declining subset of your market at continually increasing costs. A sobering situation that you should not let stand.

The following diagram helps visualize the spectrum of choices for where your company could optimally target. Most companies with a website are stalled in the left-most position in this diagram even though additional integration of Internet capabilities would significantly improve their market facing functions.

Some businesses are not fully Web leveraged until all six of their market facing functions have been supplemented with online systems. Others are optimal with just two of them. In any case, you should determine the point where your business becomes fully Internet leveraged and begin working towards it.

The next diagram shows some categories of businesses along the spectrum.

For example, Apple iTunes is a “Bit Vendor” and conducts 100% of its customer facing activities via the Internet. Amazon.com is the leading “E-Tailer” and accomplishes everything online until the final product is shipped (fulfillment). Of course, with the Kindle, Amazon.com is moving towards the “Bit Vendor” position. Wal-Mart, in its refusal to cede ground in the retail space to Amazon.com has launched Walmart.com and can support its customers from their physical stores; they are a “Click and Mortar” and offer “ship to store,” something Amazon.com cannot do.

As you consider your company’s optimal use of Web leverage pay special attention to your Marketing function. The emerging systems and technologies for online marketing are nothing short of revolutionary, and it is likely a key function in your Internet leveraging strategy.

The Internet-accessible marketplace is growing rapidly. And while everything about offline systems is becoming more costly, everything about online systems is on a declining cost curve. Growing markets and declining costs is a good thing!