Using Offline Elements with Internet Marketing Strategies
Unless you transact business only online, for example if you are an eBay
reseller, you will probably want to include some traditional offline marketing
elements in your overall marketing strategy in addition to the elements in your
Internet strategy in your marketing mix. Even those who conduct business only
online might consider placing traditional ads in newspapers or magazines to
bring prospects to their website to transact business online. Perfect examples
of including offline elements as part of Internet marketing strategies are
Expedia, Travelocity and Monster.com. While they are online businesses, they
invest heavily in traditional advertising, including radio and TV advertising,
to draw traffic to their sites where the actual business is conducted.
Develop Internet Marketing Strategies You Like
If you have a personal distaste for "spam", which most of us do, you may not
want to include email marketing in your strategic Internet marketing plan.
However, email marketing doesn't have to mean just sending out unsolicited
messages to every email address you can gather. If you include a visitor
registration form on your website, for example, or if you exhibit at trade
shows, you have the vehicles needed to collect email addresses of interested
prospects. You might consider creating a newsletter and sending it to these
prospects on a regular basis as part of your strategic Internet marketing plan.
Or, you might just set up a schedule where you periodically send an email to
your interested prospects to see how they're doing, if you can be of assistance
to them, or if their needs have changed since you last talked. So even if you
don't incorporate email marketing into your Internet marketing strategy, per se,
you are still using email as a tool to promote your business.
Your Budget and Your Internet Marketing Strategy
Of course, your budget will also determine the components you use in any of the
Internet marketing strategies you might develop. A website will require you to
choose a domain name and register it and to purchase web hosting services for
your website. Both items are deeply discounted, in fact I recently saw an offer
for domain name registration for only $1.99 per year - provided you also
purchase other services, like hosting, which is now also available for less than
$10 per month.
Once that's done, you'll need a design and content for your website, which
you'll either need to provide yourself or pay to have a web content professional
and/or web designer handle it for you.
Once your content and design are in place, you'll want your site to be found, so
you'll want to learn about search engine optimization (SEO), which is an
important part of strategic Internet marketing, whether you do it yourself of
pay someone else to do it for you.
Ideally, if you pay to have web content written for you, that content should be
optimized for search engines when it's written. Likewise, you or your web
designer should know something about SEO because how your site is designed can
enhance or limit your site traffic, and in the vast majority of cases, SEO
should be a significant part of your Internet marketing strategy. In both cases,
you may pay a bit more, but you'll save time in the long run.
Once your website is up and running, you'll either need to maintain it yourself
or outsource the duties to an independent Webmaster to do it for you.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), like Google AdWords can be easy on your budget
because you can specify how much you're willing to pay when someone clicks your
ad and how much you're willing to pay per day. You can also specify whether you
want to include your ad only on search pages or on other websites related to
your keywords. You can set geographic and time of the day restrictions on when
and where your ads run. Plus, PPC ads are fairly easy to activate and suspend
whenever you need to do so, they're easy to update and they provide near real
time tracking benefits you won't get with most other elements in your Internet
marketing strategy. You can also use images and/or videos with PPC advertising,
which may be more cost effective than placing banner ads on other websites.
On the other side of the coin, you can use pay per click ads to make money with
your website, through programs like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher or Microsoft
AdCenter.
Tracking the Results of Internet Marketing Strategies
Let's face it: the average home business operator is not awash in cash. If
you're going to be spending money on strategic Internet marketing initiatives,
you'll need to track how effective they are. As you do so, you'll discover which
Internet marketing strategies work for your business and which do not. And, you
can learn from the mistakes you make in your Internet advertising campaign to
improve your skills and enhance your success. Knowing what's worth spending
money on and what isn't is very helpful in developing Internet marketing
strategies as your business matures.
Strategic Internet Marketing Needs to be Flexible
Keep in mind, in most cases, patience is a true virtue when it comes to tracking
the success of a strategic Internet marketing campaign. Search engines aren't
likely to find you overnight and your strategies may not generate revenues right
away.
Because you'll have literally millions of competitors who are also engaging in
strategic Internet marketing, it will behoove you to keep on your toes and be
ready to make necessary adjustments in your Internet marketing strategies when
appropriate. However, some knowledge, some capable assistance, and a
well-managed strategic Internet marketing plan can increase your chances for
success.