Internet marketing enables you to build relations with consumers and prospects. As the technologies advances, the rules and strategies change in online marketing. If you do not stay updated with these changes, you may lag behind in the competition.
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If you want to boost your online presence or get a majority of sales and/or leads to your business, use the following internet marketing strategies:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Most of the internet users look for websites, products, and services by using search engines and online directories. Approximately 90% of the clicks on the search engine results pages (SERPs) are on the top 3 ranked websites. Thus it is imperative that your website has a good positioning on search results for your keywords and lately relevant Key-phrases.
Run your SEO campaign with the following points:
- Optimize your web pages with keywords in the page titles, meta tags, headlines, content, and URLs;
- Link your web pages to each other using keyword phrases;
- Have good quality inbound links from high authority sites.
- A salient point to keep in mind is to avoid any link farms or sites which are simply used to generate links and have no page authority of their own, have links from such a source may actually do more harm than good for your website.
2. Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing is one of the best platforms to directly reach out to people who are who are discussing topics related to your expertise, product or service. Recent trends indicate that it is becoming the most powerful way to get in front of your audience on the Internet. Social media networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are rapidly becoming the choice area for marketers.
3. Web Intelligence & Keyword Research Tools:
Web Intelligence Tools can also be used to automatically scan the internet daily and provide you with a list of Social Networking opportunities. For example, you can use “Google Alerts” to find online discussions and blog posts related to your product or service allowing you to provide input on these topics as well as posting links back to your website.
4. Referral or Affiliate Marketing:
Referral or affiliate customers are the least expensive and most profitable and loyal source of new business you can get. In fact, these referred customers also tend to buy quicker, negotiate less, buy larger quantities, and refer even more business to you. Use referral systems to spread the word about your company to bring in even more sales.
5. Web Analytics:
Use tracking tools like “Web Analytics” and the Google AdWords conversion tracker, to know what is working and what isn’t for your web business. This allows you to save money by eliminating wasted advertising and further optimize your website to produce more for your budget.
Improve website’s performance by optimizing the navigation and “conversion funnel” so visitors quickly and easily find the content or product they want and buy it with the least amount of confusion and clicks as possible. Optimize your Google AdWords PPC campaign by running a “Search Query Performance” report to identify and eliminate off-target keywords and save on your PPC Campaign budget.
6. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Advertising:
“Pay-Per-Click” (PPC) search engine advertising is the most targeted advertising money can buy. PPC allows you to place your advertisements directly in front of surfers at the exact time when they’re searching for your type of product or service. No other form of advertising can do this for you! (except for maybe yellow pages)
Within an hour of set-up time, your PPC campaign can be launched on Google AdWords and you can see results fast. PPC also gives you more control over which landing pages you send your visitors to allowing you to give them the most targeted message or the exact product they are searching for.
7. Content Marketing:
Search Engines look for fresh and high-quality content on your website/blogs and your site must have unique content with SEO friendly structure that engages visitors. The saying, “Content is king”, is reinforced by the recent Google Panda & Penguin SEO algorithms plus engaging visitors require adding value through unique content. The quality content which has been accepted by top article directories and PR sites will surely help to gain traffic to your website.
8. Email marketing:
Email marketing is very cost effective and one of the most powerful marketing tool available to small businesses. This is because it provides predictable results and costs little or nothing to use. Though few points are to be considered to get the best results of this effort, most important of which is build your own email database, rather than buy one from one of those list brokering companies. The best way to start building your subscriber list is to ask all your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address.
9. Competitor Research:
Where do you stand with your competitors is most important for your marketing strategy. You need to know what offers, guarantees, prices or fees you are selling against, in order to make your offer the most attractive to potential clients. This is also an opportunity to fine-tune your products and services to find your niche.
10. Customer Relationship Management Platform (CRM):
You must have a process in place to handle leads quickly and consistently. There is no point in spending a lot of money to get leads if you don’t have a process to actually close on them. A successful effort will not only bring direct monetary benefit but add a new bar to your business credibility. Any online business with satisfied customers gets a lot of word of mouth publicity, that is the most effective marketing for every marketer whether online or in regular marketplace know. Examples include Salesforce, Zoho and Hubspot.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.
