You will reach larger number of customers at a lower cost than marketing offline. there will be a two way communication, therefore more information... your "internet store" wil be open 24/7 It helps you know offers of other competitors by a click...

> Its Fast > Easy to use > Inexpensive > Able to obtain profile of customers instantly and later mind the data or perform profiling and only send e-mails that will suit the consumer (so this will eliminate spaming) > It works 24 by 7 > It can be operated anywhere and anytime > Customers can choose to ask question, enquire and reply anywhere and anytime > Able to send attachments or visuals, e-cupons, vouchers and etc

Considering that just over 80% of all internet users use search engines to find what they're looking for it's highly suggested that you have a website that is optimized and has a steady flow of new visitors every week. As your business is probably brick and mortar and you're only open 9am to 5pm (I'm guessing). This limits your target market as you're only operating from 'one street corner'. The internet gives you the opportunity to go global obviously also depending on your product (this may limit your market). But never the less it still broadens your market. Just to show you how it can help you, I've had a website for only 3 weeks now and I'm already on the first page of Google for certain keywords. If I had to get the same response from older more traditional advertising e.g. newspaper, radio, TV it would've been so much more expensive and I probably would be flat broke. There is a process that needs to be followed: 1) Development of an optimized professional website 2) Submission to search engines 3) Link building with other related websites and web directories 4) Constant updating of your website so it doesn't appear old by the web crawlers (web crawlers can pick up activity within the site).