For most businesses, the primary means of growth involves constant acquisition of new customers along with nurturing of existing customers. Through marketing on the internet, you can create customer acquisition programs while being able to track costs associated with each new customer and limit risk on advertising and marketing programs. This also amounts to new lead-generation and conversions for almost every company anywhere in the world.
Developing an internet marketing plan and designing a great website is not good enough. Measuring the results and making the changes to the internet marketing and website design based upon the positive and negative feedback of the visitor’s response is imperative.
So, what are the elements of online marketing that help generate quality leads, increase conversion rate and justify your marketing spend? A typical online marketing campaign consists of a combination of some or all of the following marketing techniques:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves optimizing website content to target your audience better, increase brand visibility and increase website hits. SEO strategy also involves reviewing your existing website, analyzing your competitors’ websites and extensive research of your industry to decide which keywords and phrases will be most beneficial to optimize content and increase search rankings. Targeting the wrong keywords can lead to failure of the SEO campaign.
The ultimate goal of any SEO campaign is lead generation and, eventually, sales. You may be doing everything right to target those big industry keywords and even getting the rankings, but if you do not have a conversion strategy and clearly defined goals, those keywords won’t bring in leads. It is important to ensure that your site is geared toward higher conversion rates on every level.
Banner Advertising
Banner ads are perhaps one of the most popular strategies which accompany an Internet marketing plan. Placing your banner ad on carefully selected websites which are likely to attract an audience similar to your target audience is smart marketing. Placing your banner ad on any website which will display the ad regardless of the target audience is, perhaps, spamming. Internet users who see your ads everywhere are not likely take your business seriously and are not likely to purchase your products or services.
Online advertising also helps in building brand recognition, creating demand for a product/service that prospects are unaware of and maybe even in increasing website visitors. It is also important to create a good landing page where the target audience can be directed to on clicking the ads.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC lets you put your advertisements in text on a search engine page, which appears on the natural search results list, and you only pay when people choose your entry. Using PPC allows you to target a specific geographical area. You simply select a given country as your target without having to set shop in that country. PPC gives you control over the cost of your campaign, and you can decide what you want to pay for each visitor that follows the link. This enables you to outbid those who might want to use similar search result terms and get more attention and more visitors than you.
The best part about PPC is that you get fast results. Visitors come to your site and you have little to worry about with regards to building an optimized site to get higher rankings. Once you set up your PPC campaign with a small initial investment, you are set to go. PPC campaigns utilizing geo-targeting, effective keyword research and demographic site selection allow you to target your viewing audience much more precisely, thereby pre-qualifying your customers to a far greater degree before they even visit your website.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an extremely cost-effective marketing tool. When used properly, it can catapult your sales to new levels. A good email marketing campaign can help you increase your sales conversion, generate repeat sales, up-sell and cross-sell products and services, and drive Web users to make offline purchases. If you have an email database of your target audience you can send them a periodic newsletter, free reports/information, specific offers and maybe even discount coupons. This allows you to stay in touch with your customers on a regular basis.
Amazon.com uses up-selling and cross-selling extensively on their site. If you buy a book about ‘home renovations’, they’ll follow up with a list of other books on the same topic. Dell Computers offers printers and other accessories as up-sells to people purchasing computer systems. Email marketing also provides your customers with a unique opportunity to give honest feedback.
To maximize email marketing, take your target market into consideration and also make sure that they use the Internet on a regular basis. You should also consider the cost of sending email messages versus the revenue that can be generated from this anticipated quantity of customers in order to make the campaign cost-effective.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media has become a significant part of marketers’ lead generation strategy, and companies who engage in social media increase their reach massively. But marketers need to understand that social media is not for pushing your messages randomly, but meant to be a two-way communication with customers. To be successful and to reach a positive ROI with social media, companies need to listen to their audience. Engaging in dialogue with customers via social media has become an important part of successful companies.
A recent study from Wildfire Interactive shows that social media helps grow brand awareness and increases sales and partnerships while reducing marketing costs. Smart marketers measure the value of social media channels as well. They want to know which one has the best results for their business. A great way is to add well-strategized lead capture pages to social networks and to track the traffic, leads, lead to customer rate and revenue per generated lead.
Content Marketing
“Good content” – newsletters, blogs, white papers, case studies etc – can help prospects find you on the internet and change your website into a lead generating machine. Customers today search the Web for information before they buy and actively seek out advice and information on making intelligent purchasing decisions. You can create content and then push it to the top of search engines, blogs, and social media where today’s buyers are looking for your products or services.
Conclusion
To attract and retain customers, you must deliver valuable, relevant and compelling content to your customers on a consistent basis. This is an important way to maintain or change buyer behavior. You must become the trusted, expert resource for something relevant to your customers. A company that builds its reputation through content marketing can grow faster and command a higher price than one that does not. For less money than conventional marketing, an investment in quality content can add to your bottom line today and tomorrow. Content marketing attracts new customers and retains existing ones, shows industry leadership and thought leadership, increases website traffic, builds a prospect database and generates leads.
