What is Internet Marketing?
It's quite a broad term, but simply relates to advertising
on-line rather than in traditional media. The Internet can be a confusing place, and there is no doubt that many businesses shy away from it. Don't! It is by far the most significant shift in business marketing ever. No question. But it does help to know what you're doing, or you could find it a very expensive hobby. So if you're keen on pushing forward in this area have a look round the site - there's lots of information. Or take a look at our fixed price consultancy.
Email Newsletters
Properly run these can be incredibly powerful marketing tools. You can gather addresses for your Newsletters from existing customers, through special offers and through a sign-up form on your web site. But do make sure you stay on the right side of the law. Spam is a huge problem, and you need to make sure you are conforming with the regulations relating to it. You should have a 'Double Opt-In' for subscribers (that means they sign up, get an email to confirm they've signed up and then confirm the email), an 'Unsubscribe' button on every email so they can opt out, and a simple way for the subscribers to change their preferences. And do make sure the Newsletter is professionally presented and tracked.
Pay Per Click
This simply means you pay every time a surfer clicks on your advert on-line, sending them to your site. The biggest of these is Googles AdWords. They can be a very good way to get traffic for a new site and, properly managed, very profitable. But care is needed. With AdWords you decide what you'll pay per click and that effectively dictates how many visitors you get. You can also set a budget per day, which means you don't go mad! If you go this route it will probably be worth having a manged campaign, which will mean you don't make some of the fundamental, and costly, mistakes that beginners can.
SEO
This has already been covered extensively in other ares of the site. But it is far and away the best way forward. So many people don't look at the 'Sponsored Results' (they're the ones people pay for in Google), preferring to view the 'Organic' (the ones Google deems deserve to be shown) instead. So by optimisng your site properly you know what you're spending every month to keep your site high in the search engines, and as long as that's no more than your profit you're on to a winner. After all, if you are marketing properly those new online customers won't be one-offs, they'll be long-term customers.
Other Internet Marketing
There are of course many other ways to market your business online. Paid links, paid directory submissions, banner ads etc. Some work for some businesses. But the big players are Newsletters, SEO and Pay per Click. Stick with these to start with and look at the rest once you are running properly. And be careful. Google now considers paid links to be 'Spam' and will penalise your site.
Check out our Fixed-Price Consultancy
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