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Posts Tagged ‘businesses’

There is not really a set formula for selecting which communication channels are appropriate for your business, but there is a process that should be followed when determining which channels you should be working . Selecting how you are going to speak to your prospective clients is no different. With all of the different ways there are to communicate with your target market, it is amazing how many businesses are solely focused on using search engines to drive traffic to their site and for good reason. Search engines are  typically responsible for driving 60–80 percent of Web site traffic. With that being said, there are so many other channels available online that are often overlooked—particularly by small to medium-sized businesses. These channels,  can drive an equal amount of targeted traffic to your Web site. But how do you select the right channels for your business?

The first thing to understand is that several online marketing channels require a monetary investment, whereas there are others that offer businesses a more cost-effective way to promote their sites. The latter often require an investment of time rather than money  however, the results can be outstanding.

For example, devoting time to the development of your company’s link strategy can take a significant amount of time; however, the investment of time not only will increase your reach on the Internet to your prospective clients, but it will also increase your link popularity. The increase in link popularity will boost your rankings in the major search engines particularly Google. Linkstrategy development is a technique that should be implemented by all organizations regardless of their budget however, it often is overlooked.

It sounds like a silly concept, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s your business, so you know your own products or services inside out, right? It’s amazing how many
businesses get caught up in the design process of their Internet presence and
lose sight of what it is that they are actually promoting online. Quite often,businesses get so involved in wondering how their Web site looks that they actually forget about what it is they are promoting, whom they are targeting,and why they are even promoting it online in the first place.

Can you see how the key components of the foundation work together? So, what are you promoting? Is it simply your products/services? Yes, this is what you want your customers to purchase, but selling to someone online is a lot different from selling to someone face to face. There are so many factors
that play an influential role in encouraging an online user to take the next step and engage your business and its offerings.

Each of these factors typically tie into your most fundamental (and often overlooked) online objectives.To illustrate, let’s assume that you are promoting Product X, which is a highly specialized piece of equipment with a hefty price tag. You are not the only competitor in the market that offers Product X, but your version of the product is slightly different from the rest. So why should someone buy your product? This is where you have to wrap your head around what you are promoting, while differentiating it from the other options that users have within the marketplace.

To illustrate the importance of defining precise online objectives, consider the following. Throughout the years many businesses have made Web site traffic their primary objective and have invested heavily into various means of getting traffic to their Web sites. These businesses followed the philosophy that traffic would result in increased sales. Well, how can you judge the success of your online activities if your whole campaign is based on a vague objective? Simply generating traffic is not tied to a financial objective of any sort, so how can one judge the success of the campaign with such a loose goal
in mind? Instead, stating an objective like “achieving a cost per customer acquisition of $15 as a result of a targeted PPC advertising campaign” helps a business to put a targeted, measurable objective on a particular activity.

Without defining precise objectives for your online activities, it is nearly impossible to gauge success of any sort. Using the example above, you coulddrive waves of traffic to your Web site, but what if the medium you selected wasn’t right for your business and the traffic you received was not a targeted visitor at all? You received lots of traffic, yes, but you also wasted time and money and had a poor ROI as a result. This often forces businesses to make subjective decisions about the success of the campaign or the effectiveness of the medium in general, but the truth of the matter is that it’s not fair to state whether something is a failure or success unless you can really prove it. By defining objectives that are measurable, businesses can determine if a campaign works or doesn’t work. If it works, you can continue to implement such campaigns, and if it doesn’t work, you can tweak your approach and test it again. The key lesson here is to make all of your objectives measurable.