Internet Marketing Tactics

There are many different technologies to facilitate your Internet marketing strategy. Some of the most common and effective tools are:

Search Engines and Directories: Search engines are one of the most popular means of finding web sites, second only to following links on web pages.

Search engines help people find relevant information on the Internet. Major search engines maintain huge databases of web sites that users can search by typing in keywords or phrases.

Advertise your message. Web directories/search engines are information, gateways that have high traffic and are good for displaying advertisement banners. They are used to find Internet information and for this reason, appeal to broad target groups.

E-zines (Online magazines): These publications are focused on specific topics and may be a way to reach a target audience interested in that subject. Some companies have gathered the e-mail addresses of potential customers and used these lists to send out product information specific to client interests.

Seven good reasons to establish an E-Zine

1. Establishes Trust

2. Brings Visitors Back

3. Establishes You as an Expert

4. Keeps Current & Potential Customers Up to Date on New Products & Services

5. Builds Relationships

6. Allows You to Build an Opt-In Email Marketing List

7. Keeps Your Website Fresh in Visitors' Minds

E-mail: Ethical methods of gathering e-mail addresses are through on-line registration built into your corporate Web sites, or requests for information forms that request submission to your opt-in lists.

An alternative is to purchase lists of customer e-mail addresses indexed by special interests from a private company such as 'Postmaster Direct'.

Online customers are becoming increasingly selective about their relationships, the brands they trust, and what they consider relevant. While most marketers are aware of privacy issues and the risks of Spam, there is still need for improvement. Email marketing campaign management is still fairly unsophisticated even at the largest of organizations.

Marketers have to think about the drivers of customer response and purchase. Over time, as more is learned about your customer buying behavior, you can will isolate campaign and program characteristics that drive your customer or visitor response and action. Isolating the behavior of high value customers, business customers, or the minority of customers who prefer to buy online will be critical. For example, new online buyers get referrals when shopping online, while experienced frequent buyers prefer search engines.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing enables you to increase online sales by promoting your products and services through a network of Affiliate sites on a payment-by-results basis.

It also provides the opportunity to generate additional revenue by exploiting your site's own content to promote the products and services of other online Merchants.

A Merchant recruits content sites to partner with them as Affiliates in exchange for commissions. A common third party provider such as Commission Junction can be used.

The Merchant provides their advertising banners and links to their Affiliates and assigns a commission for each click-through to their site, subscription to their service, or purchase of their products that is generated from those links.

Affiliates place the tracking code for these ads and links on their Web sites. This allows clickthrough's to be tracked online and commissions to be calculated. If a product or service is purchased, the customer pays the Merchant directly and the Affiliate is paid a commission for that transaction.

Banner Advertising: Banner advertising can play an extremely important role within your website strategy. One can use banner advertising as a means of promoting it’s own products and services, raising awareness, or as a way of generating revenue by selling advertising space on your own website.

Purchasing Advertising: There are currently two widely recognized methods of purchasing banner advertising. The rates for these are usually quoted on a cost per thousand basis or (CPM). The rates you pay can vary tremendously as there is currently no standard price model - so be prepared to negotiate!

Ø  Pay-Per-Impression: This method of purchasing banner advertising is based on a charge for the number of times someone sees your banner. There are no guarantees as to how many visitors will come to your site as a result of seeing your banner; you are simply paying for the number of times your banner is displayed. Websites that offer such programs include paypopup.com and adclicksor.com

Ø  Pay-Per-Visitor: This method of purchasing banner advertising is based on a charge for the number of times someone visits your site as a result of clicking on your banner. This is a better method of purchasing banner advertising as you are only paying for results, although expect to pay a premium.

Ø  Pay-Per-Click : The revenue model of the Internet giant google.com has its very own service which offers certain share of the profit that it makes by the click-thru that a website generates from its adsense codes. The revenue model is known as google adsense and almost every successful website uses this model to make profits. The Google adsense ads can be seen on websites like Times of India, Moneycontrol.com, ManagementParadise.com and a lot many other reputed websites.

Ø  Branding. While CTR and cost per sale relate to direct marketing objectives, another way of looking at banner ads is as "branding" tools. They create brand awareness, and a brand image in the viewer's mind, whether or not the viewer clicks on the ad. Branding is very difficult to measure, but can be very powerful.

The average click through ratio on banners is just under 1%, although with a well planned and executed advertising campaign using effective banners you can increase this to as much as 15%, but be prepared to work at it.

It is a good idea to have a number of different banner ideas so that you can carry out small test marketing campaigns with each one until you find those that work best.

There are a number of key issues that must be considered when designing a successful banner:

Ø  It must have an attention-grabbing headline.

Ø  It must be simple and get your point across.

Ø  It must invoke action (i.e.: "Click here")

Ø  It must download quickly.

Ø  It must be placed effectively on a web site, Location, Location, Location

Any campaign is limited by the amount of advertising you can do depending on the size of your budget. Therefore it is important that you target your market carefully so as to maximize advertising spend on effective banner campaigns.

Rich Media Advertising: Looking for ways to make online advertising more compelling, and hopefully thereby more acceptable, marketers have increasingly been turning to streaming advertising.

In effect another kind of rich media advertising, streaming advertising comes in two basic forms.

First, it can either be part of a streaming audio or video program on the web. With many people now listening to web radio or watching web broadcasts, this makes perfect sense. After all, everyone is accustomed to getting commercials on their TV or car radio.

The other channel for streaming advertising is essentially an infomercial. Consumers can download a streaming clip for a product or service from a marketer's website.

Two new studies recently released suggest that the streaming advertising market is going to boom now and in the years to come. The giant ad selling company mediaturf uses this method for providing content to advertisers

Conferences: By their nature conferences are organized for special interests. Advertising in conference literature, print and electronic, is an excellent way to contact target markets.

Collaborative Marketing: Team up with other business to:

Ø  Cross-promote - e.g. setting up links from one corporate Web site to another or offering special promotions in partnership with complementary goods or services.

Ø  Advertise - share advertising.

Ø  Participate in joint sponsorship of events, initiatives, informational Web

            sites, mailing lists, bulletin board systems, directories, etc.

Ø  Link exchange with trade/professionals associations to support credibility of firm, provide further market information to customers, build their awareness and prepare them for the action of purchasing.

Sales Promotion: Employing methods to stimulate sales through immediate or delayed incentives to the customer. If the incentive is attractive, the price: value ratio is adjusted favorably enough to affect a sale. This strategy should integrate with the overall marketing mix to balance extra sales with long-term profit motives. Examples of sales promotion strategies are:

Ø  Sampling - offering product samples, electronically.

Ø  Bonus offers - offering additional goods or services when making single purchases (e.g. buy-one-get-one-free).

Ø  Limited time offers - attracting visitors to return to a Web site.

Ø  Games with prizes: Useful to keep people coming back to Web sites.

Ø  Cross-product sampling: When a customer makes a purchase they have an opportunity to try out another company’s product/service. Also, the customer may have the opportunity to try out more than one company’s product/service while testing another. Useful for complementary products/services.

Ø  Feature pricing: providing special pricing to those that order electronically.

Ø  Cross-promotions with other companies’ products/services - Buy a company’s product/service and get a coupon for another company’s product/service.

Publicity: The goal of publicity is to have others talk about the small business or its products. It can be inexpensive or even free and it may have the potential to generate far more in sales than even a well executed advertising plan.

Promotional Publications: Facilitate customer education, with the intention of building corporate image and even brand awareness, the small business may sponsor and/or publish its own electronic magazine on the Web, e-mail, etc. These are useful in fields

where the customer needs information to develop sufficient knowledge for movement through the first three stages of the sales process of awareness, interest, and desire. Although time consuming, they replace or complement the print versions of newsletters/corporate magazines/flyers.

Subscriptions: Business marketers may use their Web sites to encourage visitors to subscribe to receive regular email messages from the company. These messages are called digests or newsletters, and are a clever way for marketers to push product news to willing customers.

Controlled-access Web pages: Clever business marketers may use their Web site to attract new customers.

They might publish a Web page that allows customers to download a free trial version of a software application that expires after a time if not paid for. Or, customers might receive an e-mail message inviting them to visit a private Web page on the company’s intranet, and giving them a password. The company, as a way of encouraging a sale, offers customers who visit the page a prize or enticement of some sort.

Public Forums: These are often community-based or interest-based sites that allow visitors to communicate with one another. An opportunity for small businesses to reach to their intended target group via these forums is by posting messages or by sponsoring such a forum. E-mail based forums appeal to a wider audience due to the greater use of this application over Web-based forums. Web based forums are advantageous for their superior display of advertising images/messages

Resellers: Some sites will remarket other companies’ products as intermediaries. The companies that host these sites may have invested significant resources in making them attractive to the target audience a small business is interested in attracted. By piggybacking on another company’s efforts, cost-efficiencies may be realized by engaging in a reselling arrangement.

E-mail Links: Visitors to a site should have the opportunity to correspond with the host of that site, especially if out of the telephone area or time zone. E-mail links may be strategically placed throughout the site to elicit response from visitors for at various points. These are also useful for feedback on site maintenance problems.

On-line Surveys: Information may be collected on the visitors to a Web site through registration forms, on-line surveys, or through tracking of areas of site they visit. These websites also offer referrals wherein if you refer someone to their site and the person becomes a member then you are paid commission on that.

Virtual Malls: Web based sites that allow companies to post their products or services for sale long with other companies. These may be product specific, may be arranged by complementary products, or may have products that are not related except by their companies’ desire to attract a similar target audience.