Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing can be a time and cost-saving supplement to your overall marketing strategy. Imagine reaching a much wider audience, quickly measuring the results of your marketing efforts, and having the ability to readily and cost-effectively adapt to changes in the marketplace, all with the click of a mouse! The internet now makes this possible.
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is the component of marketing that deals with the planning, pricing, promotion, and distribution of your products and services online. Good Internet marketing strategies clearly communicate a firm’s unique selling propositions, or the unique collection of benefits that creates value for its customers.
Common Internet marketing strategies include (but are not limited to) website design and content, search engine optimization, directory submissions, reciprocal linking strategies, online advertising, and email marketing.
Choosing the right product or service and designing an appropriate online and offline marketing mix are key to successful internet marketing.
Three Steps to Success
To succeed online, you must develop a comprehensive plan that includes the following:
- A solid business model and great products or services
- An effectively designed website with sales as an objective
- An online marketing strategy that suits your audience and fits your budget
Aspects of Internet Marketing
The tools you use to develop your online presence and drive traffic to your website will also depend on your particular business and target market demographics. Internet marketing is a fast-changing industry that readily adapts to improvements n technology. Therefore, there are always new marketing tools available to small businesses.
Designing and building a website is only one aspect of bringing your business online. With billions of websites on the internet, it’s just as important that you ensure people can find your website. Especially 98% of internet users claim they use search engines regularly – you may want to focus your initial web marketing efforts on search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the work that is done to a website to ensure it gets noticed and ranked highly by search engines. Keep in mind, SEO is not an exact science, and as such, SEO specialists often use slightly different methods. That said, generally, SEO includes:
- Building a website using “search engine friendly” coding techniques that minimize the use of Flash and frames
- Researching appropriate search terms – called “keywords” or “keyword phrases” – that fit the target market
- Incorporating keyword-rich content into a website’s domain name, meta tags, title tags, alt tags, headings and overall content, and ensuring that content is updated regularly
- Submitting the website address to search engines
- Developing a reciprocal linking strategy with other websites to grow quality inbound links to the site
The Importance of Offline Marketing to Drive Traffic Online
Never underestimate the value of using low-cost, offline marketing techniques to encourage people to visit your website. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your offline marketing strategies. Imaginative promotional techniques can be low-cost, yet attention getting ways to drive traffic to your website.
Getting Started: Developing a Plan:
When developing your plan, you will want to consider the following important aspects:
- Your buyers: Who are they? What activities do they do online? Identifying your audience and their needs enable you to determine how best you can reach them online, thereby getting the most for your marketing dollar.
- Your budget: How should you spend and, more importantly, how much do you have to spend? The amount you budget towards Internet marketing will depend on how integral the Internet is to your business success. Prioritize your needs based on your budget, projecting into the future and growing your plan as your revenues grow.
- Your ability to support and maintain your plan: Consider only implementing strategies you can handle. It is possible to do more damage than good to your business if you implement techniques for which you do not have the business processes or budget in place to support.
