By Damian Burke on 2009/01/09
The success of your business doesn't have to depend on the size of your marketing budget. Online marketing is an economical alternative to traditional means and is fast becoming the essential alternative.
There are many ways to spread the word about your business online. And these methods are designed to provide instantaneous global impact as well as in depth and accurate market information such as traffic statistics.
Here are a few online marketing tactics to consider when taking your business online.
Web Development and Strategy
Planning a logical website strategy can make or break your website's success, and ultimately the success of your business. By creating a goal structured website, your online shop window can be used to showcase your products and services while increasing sales by presenting the user with an easy to use and convincing online sales room, built on structurally sound, yet malleable foundations.
Here are some online goals to aim for:
- Newsletter subscriptions
- Enquiry emails
- Downloads
- Sales
If you can persuade a user to convert a whimsical interest into a confirmed sale, or other goal, with as few clicks as possible, your strategy is on the right track!
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The world of Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, looks to increase traffic by enhancing your presence on search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
SEM encompasses Pay Per Click advertising (PPC), which entails paying a search engine to display your advertisement during relevant search results, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which uses methods of content creation and link building to maximise your site's rankings in the search results pages (SERPs) without paying the search engine.
Affiliate Marketing
Using Affiliate Marketing to promote sales means creating relationships with third party website or blog owners to drive relevant traffic to your online sales office. Affiliate Marketing is cheap as it pays a commission to the affiliate only when a sale is made, thus cutting out any unnecessary costs.
Viral Marketing
Over the past few decades, the Internet has evolved from thousands of static web pages to millions of real-time conversations. Viral Marketing uses the power of word-of-mouth to send your message far and wide. By creating content that users are naturally likely to reproduce and redistribute through the use of elements such as humour, valuable information or simply general interest, your self-sufficient viral campaign will spread into organic and dynamic buzz.
WebPR
Much like traditional press releases, WebPR is the process of tactically publicising information about your brand, products or services for off site syndication across the Internet. A powerful marketing tool, WebPR articles allow you to feed necessary information to the necessary audience through online reference points such as article directories and archives, most of which allow submissions free of charge.
Email Marketing
The line between Email Marketing and spamming is fine, but is safe to tread.
Compiling a mailing list of email addresses is the first step to creating a worthwhile newsletter or other email communication. But remember; you can't simply collect addresses - especially if you want to entice rather than exasperate.
You can promote users to opt-in to your mailing list by tempting them on your website or blog with insider info, news of sales or discounts and other privileged information.
Also ensure that you remind the user that they can opt out of future communications if they choose to. By creating valuable communications rather than unnecessary messages, you can create long term relationships, rich with up-selling and cross selling potential.
Online Reputation Management (ORM)
In the technological age of consumer generated media, Online Reputation Management tools scan through the blogs, forums, news articles, chat rooms and other social media sites across the Internet for mentions of your brand.
The automated process filters the results, uses advanced algorithms to allocate scores to the results and reports on the reputation of your business. Giving you the opportunity to listen in to the conversation about your brand, respond and engage with the public and gain priceless market research.
These are but a few of the eMarketing tactics you should learn more about in order to turn your website into a lean, mean converting machine.
eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing
Quirk eMarketing have many years experience in the online marketing game. Their textbook, eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing, is designed to be both an introduction for beginners and also a reference book for online marketing gurus the world over.
