The Offline Advantage

The web is a wonderful tool for business. But it's just that - a tool. It's not a panacea or a bit of magic. Businesses that succeed online are solid companies that find a way to solve a problem using one of the web's many capabilities.

Building a foundation on a successful offline business can give you a leg up. Ironically, many brick and mortar businesses fear the web. They worry a web venture will fail and take their offline venture down with it. But that kind of thinking won't help your business grow. In fact it may founder under competition from web startups. Don't feel that your offline experience is outmoded in today's business climate. You can take your knowledge in offline business and use the web to solve problems for you. You can even take some of your customers. At least, that was Edgardo Mercadante's strategy in the beginning. His company, FamilyMeds, launched less than a year ago and already has five million members. He took a successful brick and mortar pharmacy business and grew it online. Here's how he did it.

Market to Your Own Customers First

You have customers who already come in to your offline store - use them! Send them to the web to do business with you and find ways to do that business better online. Mercadante started out by letting patients provide their e-mail addresses when they got prescriptions filled at FamilyMeds pharmacies. "On a very private and confidential basis we e-mail those patients who have requested contact and registered with us. We e-mail them information about getting their prescriptions refilled. But more important than that, we e-mail them health information about their disease or condition," Mercadante says.

Recreate the Offline Experience

When Mercadante got into the web pharmacy business, he knew he had a challenge. People like having a real live person to ask about medications or their health. So he tried to recreate that experience online. "Consumers typically walk into a retail pharmacy and they'll ask the pharmacist, 'What's good for this cough or cold? What's good for the heartburn that I have?' They use the pharmacist for free advice," Mercadante says.

He wanted customers to similarly be able to turn to the web to find out more on health. FamilyMeds created a library of health information, linked to pharmacists' recommendations on medications. Those meds are then sold through the site. "We create an environment where the consumer feels very comfortable in turning to this clinical pharmacist's recommendation of what might be a good choice of a non-prescription nature to take for a particular ailment or health condition," he says. "Many, many people are turning to alternative health care products to remedy a particular ailment. So our clinical pharmacists provide alternative health care and alternative products as recommendations." If customers like shopping at your offline stores, you have to make them like web shopping too. Otherwise they won't visit and return.

Use the Web to Get Feedback

When you have an offline business, it's easy to see if your customer's happy when they walk out the door with a smile on their face. Doing business online is more of a challenge. You have to seek customer opinions and listen to them, Mercadante says.

If you already have an offline success, you have a wonderful base to build on. Using what you know in that business to grow a web business can be the key to your future.