Last week we talked about how Search Engine Marketing tools like Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization can help us in driving traffic from the various search engine results page. We also looked at the online version of Advertising.
Lets check out the other tools you can use to market your business online.
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate Marketing works towards putting your e-adverts into affiliate member’s websites. The affiliates display your company’s/product’s/website’s advertisement, and if an user is trafficked through one of those adverts and ends up being your customer, you pay the affiliate member’s for channeling that user to you.
You have to choose which affiliate members compliment your business. Having your chocolate company’s website banner on an affiliate member’s page which sells hardware tools isn’t the best example of having complimentary affiliate members.
So we can see that Affiliate Marketing is a more targeted form of Online Advertising.
Viral Marketing:
Viral Marketing is important in the online marketing strategy as it is offline. Internet provides people a cheap platform to communicate with huge masses. If your product or advertisement interests a group of people, be sure that they will spread the word around to another new bunch through electronic communications or social networks. Good customer service, promotion offers, funny advertisements are some of the common material distributed through viral marketing everyday over the internet.
Online Reputation Management:
Viral Marketing brings us to the aspect of Online Reputation Management. If you expect good word about your service being spread through viral marketing, be assured so will negative feedback of your business. People search for information before committing to any business. They check other user’s reviews, feedbacks, examples before going forward with a purchase, and they trust common user’s words more than your paid publications and reviewers. Hence it is very important to manage your company’s online reputation. Make sure you listen, respond and react to what people say about your business online. A pro-active Online Reputation Management will ensure that you ‘care’. Even if a user has had a bad experience with your service, if you show them that you care for their feedback, you can often convert those bad experiences into positive reputation.
Online Public Relationship:
With the onset of internet marketing, it is very important for a business to have an Online Public Relations strategy. Online press releases, optimizing website directories, submitting relevant articles to content distribution sites are some of the activities managed by the Online Public Relations team. Your website isn’t just a brochure but should be an optimized marketing tool. Tell the world who you are, what you do, what you believe and what you offer through your website.
Email Marketing:
Email Marketing is a direct marketing tool in your arsenal. It’s up to you to focus your email marketing towards the correct target market customers. Sending deals of your Chinese restaurant in Melbourne via emails to people who live in Sydney is not effective email marketing. You also have to take into account of the Anti Spam Law which deals with the ethics involved in e-marketing.
Email Marketing is also a good tool to be in regular touch with your existing customers, where you can update them with various information. It is a good idea to have an option for users who visit our website to subscribe to email newsletters. Email newsletter subscription targets users who have shown an interest in your business, and your future email marketing campaigns can bring business from them.
However just implementing all these tools into your e-marketing strategy doesn’t guarantee you perfect results and sales. You can draw traffic, or rather probable customers to your website, but your website has to do the rest of the work of converting the probable customers into customers for your business. You can utilize various tools to analyze the traffic in your website, for example Alexa helps you in conducting a broad analysis of your website’s traffic. Your website should also be easy to navigate through, give the right information to your customers, and be transparent about your business (outline your service limits and conditions).
Just like any warrior, having the biggest sword doesn’t guarantee you a victory; he has to know how to use it. Without knowing how to make best use of his sword, the sword in turn might actually be a burden for him in the battlefield.
Information derived from:
Australian E-marketing Code of Practice
The No Bullshit Blog 