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Some people listen to music, others watch films and some make websites for fun. I read marketing books. Sad but true, and although publishers are catching up with the boom in online marketing the market is still waiting for the definitive book to be written. Traditional marketing and marketing theory on the other hand is lucky enough to be saturated with great content and I often find myself going back to the class room taught theories for ideas or inspiration. I suppose the lesson is a great idea is great no matter how technology changes.

With this in mind (and after my recent post looking at perception marketing) this post will look at three different approaches websites can take to their services/ products and your visitors/ customers. The following are the broad stages in the evolution of marketing ideology over the decades.  Where do you fit in?

Production concept
The focus of the business is on reducing costs and maximising profits through mass production and not the needs of the customer. Naturally customer support in these cases is abysmal. Examples online (without naming names) would include a web host marketing a product heavily and putting as many customers as possible on to one server regardless of performance issues.

Websites using this concept will have high bounce rates, high customer churn, low customer life time averages and will develop a poor reputation within the industry.

Sales concept
This approach involves making the product and then trying to sell it to the market without consulting or researching whether they want it in the first place. Countless websites are built with high hopes and then disappear after only a few months because of this approach. This may be a product being created that no one really wanted in the first place or starting a website in an already saturated market such as another SEO blog.

Websites using this concept will find it hard to penetrate the market, have low traffic and/ or sales and will struggle to balance the books.

Market concept
In theory this is what all modern businesses and budding webmasters should be implementing. Market orientated websites put the customer at the heart of the business. To succeed the business must first understand what their customer’s needs are by asking them (i.e. conducting research). It is also viewed as ongoing process with information from customers collected and fed back in to the business to continuously improve and keep their target audience happy.

Websites applying this concept will develop their own successful niche, attract a lot of incoming links and have a loyal user base. To successfully apply the market concept to your website you must:

• Identify customer needs before developing the website
• Align your website to focus on those needs
• Satisfy those needs over the long-term

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for 5 years. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

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