Internet marketing or web marketing can be defined as the catalogue of strategies and techniques applied on the Internet to support the organization’s overall online marketing objectives. Goals may include driving targeted traffic to a website and features on the website to create a desired call to action.
This involves the use of websites and e-mail to inform customers about a product, solicit their questions, and accept their orders directly through the electronic medium.
This has grown into a large subset of web development that includes search engine optimization, paid advertising, affiliations, paid linking, and other promotional tactics. Although Internet marketing sounds expensive, it doesn’t have to be. The different techniques to drive traffic to your site can be classified into two main categories:
Pull techniques
Pull techniques are the set of strategies and techniques implemented to attract a visitor to a given web site.
Search Engine Optimization : A recent survey by Weborama (January 2005) shows that 33% of visitors to a site come from a search engine. Out of those, 29% access the site by clicking on a link and the rest are by direct access or because the site was previously added to the favorites.
Based on that, we can see that Search Engine Optimization is an important way to attract visitors.
So, having your site listed on the first result page of those search tools, particularly Google (the most famous of them, with an estimated 64% of the search engine market share), is crucial for those who want to sell goods or services over the Internet.
Search Engines use an algorithm to index web pages and retrieve them in a certain order for a given search. Yet, with the fast-growing number of websites available on the web, having a site listed among the top ten results has become increasingly difficult.
Web directories: The first of them was Yahoo. The main difference between a search engine and a web directory is that a person will decide to list your site in a web directory, whereas there is no human intervention when it comes to a search engine.
But the trend has changed: Yahoo! has developed its own search technology (Yahoo Search Technology) and Microsoft recently released its in-house technology for MSN. We can conclude that if general directories are abandoning their directory feature to the profit of search technologies, industry-specific or country-specific directories are still very efficient in driving visitors to your site.
Links: Links are important because they impact the way your site will be listed in the search engines: the algorithm includes a feature that measures the “popularity”of a site. The more links that point to your site, the better. And the more popular the page that links to your site is, the better. In other words, it is better to have two links from popular pages pointing to your site than four from unknown pages.
“Hard links” are also better than URLs. The text ‘online pancakes’ with a link to www.onlinepancakes.com is better than the link alone, if you want the site to be listed in the search engines for the keywords ‘online pancakes’.
Contextual links: You have probably noticed that on some large websites, you will find a “sponsored links” section. These links are placed there by programs developed by search engines. The advertiser purchases a keyword or an expression and web publishers who subscribe to the program allow it to deliver targeted ads according to the content pages.
For example, an advertiser purchases the word “Lebanon”. If www.cnn.com subscribes to the program, a link to the advertiser’s web site will be displayed on the page that deals with Lebanon on CNN.com.
Banners: Many parameters have to be taken into consideration prior to the decision to go for a banner campaign, including number of pages seen, number of visits, number of impressions, click ratio, pop-ups, etc.
In Europe, the click ratio averages 3/1000. This means that out of 1000 who see the page, only three people will click the banner. Therefore, the trend in Europe is to use the banner like a billboard: the message has to be conveyed by the banner itself, with no need for the user to click it to get the information.
Push Techniques
Push is the set of strategies to push the information towards the user. Links to your site in the information you send are an incentive for the recipient to visit your site.
Newsletters: An electronic mail message (free or requiring payment) which deals with certain topics from time to time. It is also an excellent tool you can use to keep customers constantly informed of your new products, special offers, and promotions.
E-mailing (e-mail broadcast): A recent survey released by the Gartner Group shows that direct marketing campaigns over the web have an average cost of $5 – $7 per thousand, compared to $500 – $700 per thousand for traditional mail. However, you have to use these e-mailing campaigns cautiously because they can negatively impact your company’s image.
To decide whether to undertake such a campaign, your e-mail database provider must provide you with the following statistics:
Opening ratio: number of opened e-mails divided by the number of e-mails sent.
Conversion ratio: number of clicked links in your message divided by the number of opened e-mails.
Discussion forums and blogs: Placing links to your site in discussion forums and blogs that deal with topics related to your activity can generate traffic to your site. A blog (from web log) is a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. It is similar to a personal diary, but one that is shared over the web.
Tell a friend: This is a simple function that will allow visitors on your site to send a link to their friends, relatives or contacts.
Off-line: It is obvious, but worth reminding that your web site URL must appear on all your printing material, corporate stationery, advertisements or company cars.
Links:
e-bizproduction:
www.ebizproduction.com
www.e-marketing.fr
www.emarketingassociation.com
http://marketingtoday.com/emarketing
