by Christopher M. Knight ISP-Lists.com Managing Editor [March 16, 2001]

The catch is two-dimensional—your Internet service is faced with some of the most challenging business conditions imaginable, which means it's the perfect time to market your goods and services the most. At the same time, challenging business conditions may indicate this it's the least opportune time to fund your ISP marketing activities.

How do you come up with the money needed to increase your sales when you don’t have the sales to support your ISPs marketing expenditures in the first place? Allow me show you how to get your ISPs sale revenue rolling again by taking immediate steps to market you most profitable goods and services.

Sell something
Once you have turned your ISP business into a true sales and marketing organization, advertising is not something you do during good times or bad—marketing is something you do all the time.. If anything, your marketing investment should increase during bad times in order to ensure your ISPs survival.

Remember one fundamental business rule—nothing happens until someone sells something. The primary function of marketing your ISPs goods and services is to create demand and facilitate your ISPs sales. If you do nothing to market your ISP business, then you only have your sales team—your order takers—to fuel your ISP operation.

That’s a pretty scary proposition for your ISP business. Sure, you might have a great sales team, but a great sales team without marketing support is an ineffective business plan that will only produce diminished returns. You need only to recall the good old days, when your ISPs sales were easy and your crack sales team was fat and happy—as supported by a healthy marketing regime. The challenge during tough times is to keep your marketing machine rolling and not waste the momentum you've instilled in your sales team.

Great marketing activities and behaviors are an investment, not an expense. It becomes an expense or liability only if you fail to acquire sales as a result of your marketing activities.

Manifest marketing
What’s the secret to success for marketing your ISP business during tough times? Test, test, test your marketing activities in order to determine your ISPs highest possible return on investment.

You must determine what your ISPs optimum cost is to acquire your future sales. You do this by testing your marketing activities, trying every medium to get your message out, and tracking the sales results from your marketing investments made. The marketing activities that do not produce sales should be slowly eliminated or phased out, and the activities that produce the highest sales return or margin increases with lowest cost, should receive your full attention.

When times are good, it’s common for businesses to spend oodles of money on marketing and not bother to test or track any sales results. Then business conditions change and these businesses leaders wonder why their marketing is not paying off?

Don’t become one of these businesses and don't be one of these business leaders. Find out exactly how your marketing investments are paying off numerically and make sure you justify every marketing investment made during good times, so you will know what marketing activities to rely on during bad times.

Cost of living
How much should you invest in marketing activities for your ISP business?

If you knew that spending $100 in marketing could generate $300 in annual recurring revenue for each new client gained, how much would you allocate to your marketing budget to grow your ISP business?

If it were this simple, you would probably spend $100 times the potential number of clients you could pick up in your given marketplace until you have achieved complete market saturation.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy and that is one of the primary reasons why most folks make the mistake of cutting their marketing budgets during tough times. They do not have proof or numerical substantiation that their marketing programs generate sales and produce revenues.

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