American Express

Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

The first generation of Internet marketing saw Web site owners work on getting linked from other sites because they saw the benefit of the traffic from those sites. Their link strategies primarily related to finding sites that related to different products or services but had the same target market as theirs and
requesting a link from the site’s owner.

Usually reciprocal links were negotiated, placement was negotiated, and graphics and text for the links were traded. The second generation saw link strategies get a little more sophisticated, certainly as link popularity and link relevancy became significantly prominent elements in the search engines’ ranking criteria.

Organizations took a very strategic approach to getting linked from as many sites as possible to improve their link popularity scores. They implemented very thorough, organized, and detailed link strategies.

A common question that arises is, “How do you plan your Internet strategy in a world where technology is changing constantly?” This is a somewhat valid question. Yes, technology changes, but this does not affect only your Internet strategy; it affects every facet of your business. The best way to answer the question is with the following question: “How do you plan to grow your business?” If you don’t have an answer to this question, you have a bigger issue and probably should be reading a book on developing a business
strategy. More importantly, if the Internet (or related technologies) is not a part of how you plan to grow your business, you should definitely keep reading this Blog.

So how do you typically plan to manage the growth of your business? For starters, you forecast to the best of your ability where your business will be six months, one year, two years from now, and so on, and you develop a strategy to facilitate this growth both from a sales and a delivery point of view. How does this relate to the Internet? Well, your Web site and Internet strategy should be flexible enough to grow with your business without having
to start from scratch every time your business reaches a new milestone.Figure 2.1 illustrates what we refer to as “the foundation” for all Web site activities. If you don’t take the foundation into account, then the structure of your entire online marketing strategy will fall to pieces. The key components of your foundation include:
• Understanding your primary online marketing objectives
• Identifying your primary and secondary target market segments
• Having a clear understanding of what you’re promoting on your site.

Understanding your target market also affects “how” you target your customers. It’s one thing to know whom you are targeting, but if you get them to the front door and they are unable to open the door to see what’s inside, what is the point? For example, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 22 percent of American citizens 65 years of age and older use the Internet—a 47 percent increase between 2000 and 2004. This is a significant increase and will only continue to grow as more and more seniors embrace the Internet.

Now if you have a business that is targeting customers who fall into this category, you need to make sure that all of your customer touch points appeal to this market segment. This could be as simple as using appropriate font sizes on advertisements that you place on the Internet so that users with
poor eyesight can easily read your offer and visit your site, but this is just the
beginning. Once the user gets to your site, you have to make sure that everything on the site is accommodating, as many seniors will encounter different usability issues due to disabilities or sheer lack of knowledge of how the Internet works.