What is Online Marketing and Why Do You Need It?
Unless you deliberately chose to locate a business in the middle of nowhere, the chances are that someone will find you.
When you launch an internet site you are invisible. No-one will pass by your site, pop in or visit
it by chance. You need to tell people where you are and persuade them to visit you.
The web is full of sites which no-one has ever visited. 97% of all websites are lost in cyberspace, built at great cost
but unloved and unvisited. The equivalent of a brochure gathering dust on a shelf or a shop with no customers.
So what is Online Marketing and Why Do You Need it?
For your website to succeed you need to market it. All successful sites use a range of online and offline marketing to make sure people find and use them.
According to Brian Terry there are 17 sources of website traffic. We lump it simply into 7 categories
1. Search engines/ Search Engine Marketing
More than 85% of all visits to a website start from a search engine. You can either reach your audience through Natural (Free) Search or Paid Search.
In most cases Search Engine Marketing is the most effective way of getting quality traffic to your website, which is why we recommend it be your main marketing method in 9 out of 10 cases. <>Find Out More »>
2. Offline Advertising
Offline advertising, (things like newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, billboards and other outdoor advertising, Yellow Pages and so on) is a great way of putting your name in front of a lot of people in a prominent way. It also tends to be quite expensive per visitor and the costs per conversion are normally high. <>Read More » >
3. Word Of Mouth/Social Media/PR
This is the "free" way of marketing your business and extremely effective but often difficult to control. <>Find Out More »>
4. Banner/display advertising and sponsorship
This is a great way of promoting your brand but research has shown that web users increasingly ignore banners
and click through rates (the number of time someone clicks on a banner compared to the number of times that ad is shown)
are low and declining.
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5. Affiliate Marketing
This is where a third party (an affiliate) is paid every time a click from their site results in an action on the Advertisers (the Merchant's) website, e.g. a sale, a lead or a sign up. This reduces the risk for the advertiser and can be self-financing. <> For more details click here » >
6. Shopping Portals/Comparison Sites/Directories
People looking for recommendations or to compare prices often use shopping portals like Kelkoo or shopping.com or comparison sites like gocompare or moneysupermarket. <> For more details click here » >
7. Email
Email lets you maintain a relationship with your customers or users and is a great way of communicating important information or talking personally to your customers. <> For more details click here » >
Each form of marketing has its own advantages and no single way is the best. Ideally you should use a combination of all of these methods, in a planned, managed integrated online marketing campaign. Talk to <> Specialist Online Marketing > Now for a Free Assessment of how you should market your site.
