Many online businesses find themselves in serious trouble when they acquire customers based on a lifetime value calculation that simply never materializes as their customers click away to latest deal of day.

In "Big Time Banner Advertising," it is recommended that a cost-per-order target be used instead of lifetime value. A cost-per-order or CPO target simply allows you to treat each order as a one-time event. By setting a CPO target, there is no guesswork as to what a customer may be worth to you in future - you know exactly what customers are worth on a per-order basis.

For example, based on your product margins and average order size, you may determine that $5 is most you can pay for each order while still meeting your business objectives. This number becomes CPO target for your marketing efforts. Marketing efforts that achieve this target CPO or better are "keepers" while those that don't get killed. A banner ad that costs $1000 and drives 250 orders is a keeper. A newsletter ad that costs $100 and drives 5 orders doesn't get renewed.

By using CPO targets, you are relying less on "what may be" and relying more on "what is" to make your marketing and advertising efforts more efficient, effective, and profitable.

These small opportunities for major impact present themselves all time. How about that single, seemingly unimportant e-mail, requesting additional information about your products? You could easily set it aside for a few hours, or even a few days, right? After all, a single inquiry is hardly very important in big picture - you have much bigger fish to fry.

But what if this e-mail was from purchasing agent at a major, multi-national corporation? What if this purchasing agent was trying to get more information so that your company might be included on their approved vendor list? This could be an opportunity to begin a business relationship worth millions of dollars in sales.

Oh, but wait...it's just a single e-mail...no big deal.

The point is, you never really know when something very small is just tip of iceberg. Something that takes a just few minutes may be worth millions. How do you make sure you don't miss out? Start with attention to detail, flawless execution of "little things," and a commitment to continuous improvement. It's a tall order, but well worth it.

Contrary to popular belief, opportunity knocks quite frequently - but it doesn't always knock very loud.