Web Site Marketing
The basic query anyone needs to ask before
planning a web site marketing strategy is Who wants to buy
your product or service?
Before we go ahead & discuss web
marketing strategy in detail, let us explain what web
site or internet marketing is all about.
What Is Web Marketing?
Web marketing is the process of promoting
goods and services online and reaching out to both existing
and new customers through Internet-based tools. This can involve
selling, advertising, brand management, market research, and
customer service.
You can use Web site marketing to bolster
your current marketing activities. Internet-based marketing
tools—including e-mail and list management; online advertising;
electronic newsletters; loyalty, referral, and affiliate programs;
and a well-designed Web site allows you to communicate more
interactively than traditional promotional methods. These
tools help you collect information about customers and, based
on that intelligence, provide them with timely, personalized
information about your company and products.
Here are 7 steps to creating your web site
marketing plan:
1. Begin with the end in mind - create a
vision what you want your web site to accomplish. Based on
2. Set doable goals - depending on your
product or service, write down one or a set of goals you BELIEVE
you can accomplish i.e. “I will turn a profit of $500/month
at the end of 6 months”.
3. Choose a few marketing strategies - based
on your research, pick a few strategies to begin with that
you know you can accomplish. This could include optimizing
your web site for the search engines, placing an ad in an
ezine, or writing an article to submit to online publications.
4. Create a time line and set a deadline
- create a horizontal line on paper or on a white board (where
you can easily view it each day) and divide this line up into
days, weeks or months (or
whatever duration you decide) of your marketing campaign.
Then mark the beginning and ending dates of your campaign,
plus what type of marketing method you are using.
5. Track your results - if you are running
an ad either on the Internet or offline, track its effectiveness.
Use ad tracking software like adtrackz to track all the links
you place online.
To know how visitors arrived at your web site and what keywords
they searched on to get there, analyze your web site statistics
(read my article “How to analyze your web traffic".)
With offline ads, use a different code for
each ad. If one ad doesn't work well, rework your copy and
try it again. Once you find one that works, expand your advertising
to other publications.
6. Calculate your return on investment (ROI).
- don't just blindly throw money into an ad and hope for the
best. Keep track of how much money you initially invested
in the ad and what profit you made in return. i.e. if you
received $7 back in profit for every dollar you invested in
your pay per click strategy, then you are running a very successful
marketing campaign.
7. Constantly evaluate your results - after
each marketing campaign, evaluate which strategies worked
best and which ones did not. Repeat those marketing strategies
that are profitable
to get maximum results from them. Throw out or refine the
ones that did not work well and try some different ones.
The most popular Web marketing tools are:
Web site - A Web site acts
as a virtual window into your company. Typically a company
site evolves from a collection of “pages” about
your products and services to a retail distribution channel,
where customers buy products and services and you collect
data on customers’ interests and shopping patterns.
Key benefits of your Web site as a marketing tool are the
measurability of customer interactions with the site and the
ability to personalize communications based on visitors’
interests. Web site marketing deals with promoting your site
pages on the various internet search engines & directories
like Google, yahoo, alltheweb, dmoz etc. Submitting alone
to such top search engines does not suffice, but you need
to optimize the site using what is called “ Search engine
optimization” techniques. This helps you achieve an
organic growth of your website which stays long term &
once popular sends thousands of visitors daily.
Pay Per click Advertising (PPC):
Google & Overture has changed the way target audience
can be attracted to your site via what is known as Pay per
Click programs. Pay per click advertising is still a fast,
effective way of capturing well targeted traffic to your web
site. Pay per click advertising programs are offered by Google
AdWords, Overture Direct Traffic, Sprinks PPC and LookSmart
LookListings. These programs offer the best quality traffic
for most website marketing campaigns.
Online advertising—Interactive
banner ads are the most common form of online advertising.
Online ads can drive traffic to your site and build your online
brand. Professional organizations, including the Internet
Advertising Bureau, have created standards for ad sizes, including
a range of new configurations designed to make Web advertising
more prominent and animated. Pricing structures vary.
Affiliate & referral programs—These
programs offer incentives to loyal or frequent customers.
Some incentives include giving discounts or gift certificates
for referrals of new customers to your site or affiliations
with other sites likely to be of interest to your target customers—and
likely to drive Web traffic to you.
If you're going to sell, there has
to be a market that will buy, it's an irrefutable law of business
and it applies to online businesses as well. "Catering
to a niche" or "specializing" or "targeting
a market," whatever you call it, it's the key to a small
business succeeding on the Internet. Let Amazon or Ebay sell
everything to everyone. Small online businesses target a few
select markets and give those markets the special attention
that only small businesses can give.
