Emarketing Article (May 2005)

Marketing your business online: how to achieve the
best results (part 1)

This is the first of a two part article looking at the process for getting your internet marketing up and running and how to use the tools at your disposal to achieve the best results.

With the arrival of the internet came a whole new set of marketing possibilities, offering highly targeted and cost effective marketing opportunities. Good news for any company but particularly important for small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) looking for high response levels from an often limited (and sometimes non-existent!) marketing budget.

Central to this internet marketing activity is the company website. For some organisations, the website acts merely as an extension of their marketing efforts or as an online brochure advertising their products and services - essentially, a different medium designed to achieve the same commercial goals. For others, it has caused a fundamental change in the way they do business and interact with their customers.

Internet Marketing Planning

Whatever the triggers are for creating or redesigning a website, the site itself must be planned and constructed carefully with its objectives firmly in mind. Ideally these objectives will come from an overall internet marketing strategy which reflects the company’s own strategic direction as well as taking into account influences both from within the company and from the market in which it works.

This interaction can be shown diagrammatically as below.

(Diagram 1: Website planning and promotion)

The planning activity should ideally be gathered together in the form of an internet marketing strategy or plan. The main elements which will feed into this are:

• Company Strategy: the overall goals that the company has for developing its business as outlined in the business plan
• Marketing Strategy: the general communications plan to promote the company to its chosen markets. The internet marketing should form part of an integrated marketing plan.
• Internal Requirements: this may be to enhance customer service or support, increase sales (either online or offline) or increase prospect registration, for example.
• External Factors: influences such as the actions of competitors which need to be matched, changes in market demands or requirements, or perhaps changes to legal requirements.

Once the website is in place which fulfils all the requirements the company had planned (including the plan for its maintenance and updating), then it is the role of the internet marketing activities that we will be looking at in more detail, in conjunction with traditional offline marketing methods, to attract customers to the website.

Internet Marketing Benefits

With a well designed website in place (together with a plan for its management and updating), attention can then be turned to the online promotion of the business with the aim of creating an increasing flow of visitors and potential customers to the website.

The methods at your disposal to achieve this share four critical factors. It is these factors which make internet marketing particularly attractive and so successful for the ever growing number of companies using it. They are:

• Highly Targeted: the digital nature of the internet allows you to offer specific and customised content to each individual. As a result, it allows you to attract highly targeted customers to your website who are most likely to be interested in your products and services;
• Easily Measurable: knowing how many people are visiting your website, how they found you and what they looked at are invaluable elements to gaining a better understanding of your customers and being able to supply what they require. Internet marketing allows you to obtain full tracking figures and will permits a detailed examination of the Return on Investment (ROI) of any campaign;
• Immediate: time is crucial in business and an internet marketing campaign has the advantage of being much quicker to set up and put into play than other marketing methods. Just as importantly, the response mechanisms are equally quick so you can start to see the results (quite literally) immediately;
• Tested and Refined: although the immediacy and speed of a campaign is important, the quality needs to be just as high. To ensure it remains so, you have the opportunity to test and refine any campaign as it is happening to ensure you get the best possible results. By adopting the content and format which is achieving the highest response rates, you can continually improve your results and number of visitors.

This powerful combination of benefits produces fast acting, flexible yet focused marketing campaigns which can be measured and refined on an ongoing basis.

Internet Marketing Tools

As for the internet marketing tools that are at our disposal to achieve these results, these range from the simply adding the company's website address to the bottom of every outgoing email, through to a coordinated campaign which integrates many or all of the options available.

The principal tools that we will be looking at are:

• Email Marketing (including email list development)
• Website (or Search Engine) Optimisation
• Search Advertising (Pay Per Click)
• Link Development
• Paid Inclusion
• WebLogs
• RSS feeds
• Specialist Push Technologies
• A good website!!

We will look at each of these methods and examine the role they play in creating awareness and directing visitors to your website in part 2 of this article in the next edition of WebMentor.

About the Author
Mark White is a senior consultant and director at Rosetta Alba Web Services and works with companies to help them achieve greater success through the best business use of the internet and its capabilities. He can be contacted at internet.sucess@rosetta-alba.com