Change is inevitable. Businesses have to keep evolving and growing as times change. In marketing, it is critical to keep pace with the latest internet technology to properly advertise and market online to the right, targeted audience. Thanks to the explosion of the internet, businesses are embracing this change and becoming more advanced in their strategies. Internet marketing has become the substantial way to do business and a POWERFUL way to sustain your business.
OLD SCHOOL MARKETING
The old school method of — word-of-mouth and bombardment of expensive radio spots, print ads, television ads, direct mail, and bulletin boards are antiquated and have decreased in value and cost effectiveness. Here is a small example of the cost of a traditional advertising campaign: $100K tradeshow sponsorship event with no leads, $25K for radio ads, versus using $5K monthly for Paid Search ( PPC) or SEO. Businesses are figuring out that there is a diminished return associated with many of these traditional advertising vehicles.
One of the best things about the internet is there’s dozens of places you can advertise and your digital advertising banners, daily deals, directories, or Google Maps, for example tend to have a more permanent existence and flexibility of change than a print ad or radio spot that has already been produced and ran for a 2 week period. The repetition and cost will be higher to continue in traditional advertising such as print or radio than your online presence.
NEW SCHOOL MARKETING: INTERNET
Internet Marketing is also more data and measurement-driven. Online marketing and advertising is much easier to measure with digital reports; tangible data and numbers, conversion rates, visits, analytics, organic rankings, paid search, etc. With internet marketing, there are greater opportunities to support future marketing campaigns with performance reports that are quantifiable with costs and conversions. Print ads or radio spots, on the other hand, tend to have less tracking unless a promo code or dedicated phone number is issued to record results.
With this age of information upon us and a new era of marketing strategies, is it important to evaluate your business and its position on a regular basis? Ask yourself honestly where your business is at to determine where you need to go. Is your website a flat, bland site with no social icons or images or is it a multi-dimensional website with compelling content, metadata ( SEO) images, social media connections, reviews, etc? Is it optimized? Let’s face it, there is more to building a website than just putting pictures and text on pages. Your website is an advertisement and your brand. It presents your services and/or products to the consumer.
There are a lot of bells and whistle out there on the Web: social media, videos, user engagement and metadata. You do not need to be knowledgeable of what everything is in the internet world, but you should be very knowledgeable of what your hired expert is doing to help your business. , It is your hired expert’s duties to share with you and strategize what are the most effective tactics in revamping your website, brand and messaging to express the caliber of offerings you are wanting to present to the online world.
So, are you prepared for change? Your website is the foundation of your company. A great website can transform your business.
WHAT IS THE MARKETING PRODUCTION CYCLE?
Next, we should talk about how the marketing production cycle works. There are four phases to work in while evaluating your business and its marketing efforts. Phase 1 is defining your digital strategies: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click). Making your website search engine friendly is important. If you want top search engine rankings, adding meta tags, title tags, and meta descriptions to your website are crucial in gaining organic rankings in the big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. However, if you choose paid search( PPC), you can show in sponsored ads immediately on Google, Bing, or Yahoo since you are paying Google a cost per every time someone clicks on your ad.
Phase 2 includes online advertising and tactics. It is helpful to know your target market and where your audience is. Only a fraction of your target market is searching for what you are selling on Google, Bing and other search engine sites. You have to go where your customers are in order to reach them. Learn what websites they visit, what they read online, what social media sites they use etc. Google Analytics and other customized back-end softwares can assist in this traffic report.
Phase 3 is learning to advertise using media, press and social media sites. Make the most of using press releases and social media sites for free advertising and publicity. Using press releases is an easy way to get your message out to many customers at one time for little to no cost. Social media is also a cost-effective way to market your business online. Social media has become a major source of news and information. Social media can be great in building up a network of friends with common interests, establishing a relationship with them and then promoting your business. Promoting your business via social media sites allows customers to view Twitter messages or Facebook timelines in real time or to watch a video on YouTube which can serve as a mini brand commercial and increase online traffic.
TRACKING YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Whether you market your business with PPC ads, SEO efforts, or social media sites, tracking each online campaign is vital to your overall marketing success. Tracking lets you know if the campaign is ultimately succeeding or failing or what is working within a campaign and what needs to be axed. Monitoring all of the visitors that come to your websites through advertising campaigns is important. It is also important to know what they are doing once they enter your website. You can track pages visited, what action a user takes on each page, and future behaviors. Other statistics that are important to know are number of clicks on an ad, number of conversions or sales, number of actions, social mentions, organic rankings, ROI, and more.
If you have not modernized your business into internet marketing, it’s not too late and jump on it while you can. Internet marketing will only increase and elevate your business’s presence and sales.
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