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Overview

To effectively communicate, a business needs to engage in a successful marketing strategy that will allow it to not only reach out to potential customers but also maintain a solid relationship with existing customers.

Studies show that the marketing cost of a returning customer is much lower than the expense of attracting a new one. It therefore makes sense for a business to focus on creating a marketing plan that will aim at instilling an atmosphere of trust with existing customers thereby fostering their loyalty.

Added value service, such as a dynamic site with news and online communities such as forums can allow a business to maintain a continuing relationship with site visitors.

The development of a strong online marketing plan should be one of the primary focus of any new business seeking a foothold on the web. The advice of a professional marketing consultant with a strong internet background can assist you in creating a successful marketing strategy.

Learn more...

Marketing Strategies

  • Search engine listings
  • Newsgroup postings
  • Offline marketing
  • Banner advertising
  • Affiliate programs
  • Mass emails, e-zines and newsletters

Search engine listings

This technique is at once one of the most successful yet most difficult to achieve properly. To be found, a website will generally need to be listed in the first 2-3 pages presented by a search engine when used by a potential visitor as users will rarely seek listings beyond these. Unfortunately this means the first 20-30 listings out of potentially thousands of similar sites. If you are in the business of selling a unique item, the competition may be slim, but if your provide a common products such as general books, or toys then the list can grow huge.

Top Search Engines: Alta Vista, Go/Infoseek, Lycos, Web Crawler, Excite, Yahoo, Fast Search, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, MSN, Goto, Yahoo, Looksmart, Open Directory, Google, Iwon, MSN Search, Inktomi, Netscape Search, Raging, RealNames, WebCrawler, WebTop, Direct Hit, DMOZ.

With literally thousands of search engines out there, submittal may seem like an overwhelming job. However, about 95% of all traffic comes form the top 10-20. These are the ones that you should focus on. Even within this limited category, certain ones, such as Yahoo and Google are absolutely essential due to their popularity.

Search engines can be loosely divided in a few categories:

Some, such as Yahoo and Dmoz, are simply listings organized alphabetically under appropriate categories. Having a name closer to A does help but is not necessary. Yahoo is free for non commercial site, and charges a fee for commercial listings. Check with Yahoo for current rates. Dmoz is free for all listings. These sites use a real person to review your site. If found to be appropriate, it will be listed. Before submitting to these, make sure to read up on the criterias used to determine eligibility. Yahoo is extremely stringent about their listings and will not list a site that has broken links, under construction or does not appear to provide the information claimed by the category chosen.
A Yahoo listing is extremely important for most businesses to obtain as the majority of traffic comes from it.

Most other engines ( also called spiders or crawlers) are simply programs that will index each pages of your site and rate it based on particular keywords and other criterias. This ranking is determine using propriatery algorithms that differ with each engines. Meta tag keywords, textual content, name of file, title, etc.. all come into play in this evaluation. As marketers are constantly ferreting out the best methods for each engine, each search engine, in turn, modifies their criterias so as to always remain on top and provide, hopefully useful listings. Establishing the best method to obtain a high ranking is truly an art. Submittal to these engines is generally free, however some may charge a nominal fee, especially for providing a quick review

Alternatively, some engines such as Google use a combination of page crawling and popularity. The popularity method of ranking a site is getting to be more popular (pardon the pun) with other search engines as well. How popularity is determined varies, but as a general rule it can be viewed as the number of sites that link to you (under the assumption that if a lot of people link to you, then you must be popular and therefore worthy of a high ranking). Sites and organization that provide link exchange services are available.

Becoming more common, are paid listings. Some search engines such as Go.com provide listings based on a pay per click method. Website desiring to be listed, essentially bid for a higher ranking on a search listings. The cost and effectiveness of this method will vary with engines and the categories that your business falls under. Check with each search engine for current rates. Some search engines, such as Google, also provide methods to "rent" special banner space for your listing, placing these near the top of the listings page when presented to a user.

Submittal to search engines can be done manually or automatically using appropriate software, although the efficacy of such software as been doubted. Once submitted, it may take weeks before a search engine comes to index the site.

Search engine links:

Newsgroup postings

Contribute to relevant newsgroups and forums. Create a signature to place at the bottom of newsgroup messages containing relevant information about your organization such as the URL. Keep your postings relevant and useful. Participate, don't spam and read their FAQ before posting. Check Google to find newsgroups applicable to your business.

Newsgroups links

Offline advertising

Take every opportunity to publicize your web address as possible. Print media, television, radio, stationery, company cars, t-shirts and freebies such as pens and calendars, etc... all provide excellent vehicles for advertisement.

Banner advertising

Banner advertising comes in two shapes:

Banner exchange where you trade advertising with another website. This method may or may not be a useful resource for your business.

The other method involves renting ad space from a popular website. Finding a participating site that is associated with your industry without being a competitor can help bring traffic to your site. The cost of this method will vary greatly on the popularity of the site that will host your banner. Check with relevant sites for current fees.

Affiliate programs

Affiliate programs is term used to describe a business relationship where an affiliate can earn a percentage of sales based on their recommendations. In its simplest form, it may involve having a link on their site that links to a product on yours. Some type of affiliate tracking system needs to be implemented that will keep a record of sales performed in this manner. Examples of affiliate programs can be seen at most of the large online booksellers such as amazon.com.

Affiliate programs may or may not be practical for your business. Some products suit themselves well to affiliate marketing while others may not.

Affiliate program links

Mass emails, e-zines and newsletters

One of the best ways to establish an ongoing relationship with your site visitors is through the use of a newsletter or ezine containing useful news and information. Providing offers for products or services, alongside this free service is an opportunity to create a targeted advertising campaign that benefits both merchant and site visitors. The email addresses of visitors can be obtained by presenting them with the opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter when they visit your site.

Your mailing list can also include emails from people who have voluntarily signed up to receive targeted advertising material. These lists may be available for your particular product or service category and are sold online for a nominal fee. Make sure these lists are maintained by reputable firms.

Do not build your mailing list from some of the advertised mailing list vendors unless you know that the emails belong to people who have opted to be included. Many mailing list vendors obtain their email by scouring the Net for addresses or buying them from unscrupulous firms who sell their own subscriber lists. Sending unsolicited email ("spam") is not only bad for the Internet community as a whole (not to mention illegal in some states) but is bad for you as a merchant because you become labeled as a spammer. It exposes a business who values greed over privacy, which is not the kind of reputation that a business needs to build.