I have come up with this acronym to remember four key benefits of working online;
 

Communication
Automation
Dissemination
Qualification

The humble website is essentially the foundation of your online marketing campaign, the technology available today, which can be incorporated into your website, will allow it to perform many functions for your organisation on autopilot.

You want your website to carry out as many roles as possible 24 hours a day without your intervention or even your attention. Only in this way can you scale up your business to a level where it can support you.

Communication

This aspect of the web site is what I consider to be your outgoing message, these are the points you want to make about your organization and the things that you want to press home so that people understand your point of view. 

Automation

It is now fairly straightforward to design systems which operate from your website to automate many of the relationships between your organization and the user.  Perhaps this is one of the greatest uses of a web site because it minimizes the requirement for human intervention between your organization and the users until a certain goal is achieved. 

For example users can self-register, choosing their own username and password, then to receive a confirmation e-mail with which to give their permission for further e-mail based marketing. It is also possible to (securely) offer the facility where people can create profiles and update images to the web site.  You can also offer the opportunity for users to submit new content for the web site and to enter it directly into the system, this content would not appear on the web site until it has been moderated by an administrator.

Once they are on your mailing list they can receive pre-programed emails over months or even years!

Dissemination

A web site is a great portal which can distribute documents and images which you only have to handle once.  The creation of special pages which list and make available documents (normally in portable document format – PDF) is a very good way of allowing users to interact with your organization and to pass back information.  In return for their email address you give them access to valuable information automatically.

Qualification

A lot of time can be lost approaching potential customers because only a few will be interested in your product or service, you can use a website to automatically sort out "prospects" from "buyers".

You can incorporate various methods to attract people to your website or social media, then give them opportunities to interact with your content and only contact you if they are interested - this will save you masses of time and allow you to spend your energies on the "Hot Prospects".