E-marketing
Introduction
All businesses, whether they are bricks and mortar based or those that exist entirely online, require advertising in order to succeed. Particularly in difficult economic times, the importance of reaching out to new customers and tapping into new markets is essential for the survival of many.
Moreover, it does not matter whether the business in question is a small sole trader or a large corporate entity - advertising is the life blood of business. Thus, in respect to the modes of advertising or marketing online, broadly referred to e-marketing, there are a number of different methods to consider.
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Basics
First, the most important e-marketing tool for any business is that of good word of mouth advertising. In other words, if people are talking about how good your products or services are, or how great a particular special offer or promotion is, then it will increase your potential revenue. Indeed, word of mouth e-marketing has become an advertising model in its own right and often forms the basis of other techniques, such as viral marketing.
Word of mouth
As the word of mouth model encourages people to talk about a particular product - for instance, the Cadbury's chocolate television advertisements (which are also streamed online) are notable for their ability to encourage discussion among people, who invariably have their own opinions as to whether a gorilla with a drum kit is good for selling chocolate.
Viral marketing
viral marketing, which often involves the circulation of flash based games in which a product or service is advertised in the gameplay itself. Moreover, whilst video streaming sites such as YouTube are ideal for viral marketing, so too are social networking sites such as MySpace.
Social media
Many staff or specialist service providers are employed with the specific function of 'spreading the word' amongst groups of people using Social Media Optimisation (SMO) techniques. The real key with SMO is to ensure that your efforts are directed at social media environments with a user base that reflects your target demographic.
Many firms fail to recognise this and end up spending considerable sums in developing a presence and reputation in entirely the wrong place. Whilst some social media sites such as Twitter and MySpace may have fairly broad demographics, you should also find forums and blogs that are more specific to your sector or niche. SMO is about reputation building and management and requires a high degree of interactivity.
Adwords
Brand awareness and recognition, therefore, are key. If a particular product or service is seen constantly by millions of people, the chances are that the product will be significantly more successful. However, being noticed online is not always straightforward and the simple truth is that, more often than not, every business has thousands of other competitors struggling for the same exposure.
Thus, getting ahead in e-marketing will often come down to money - Google AdWords, for example, enables businesses to buy a position on the Google search engine for a particular search term. The system works by displaying a link and short advertisement from a number of businesses on the main page of a Google search string such as "children's toys", "chocolate gifts" or "holidays in Portugal".
Obviously, each business will select the keywords that it feels are most appropriate to the products or services it provides. Thus, a shoe producer might buy exposure for keywords such as "quality shoes", "kids shoes", adult trainers", etc. When a visitor clicks on a Google AdWords link, the nominated price (which varies according to the price set by competitors) of that click will be debited from the AdWords account. In other words, each click is charged a pre-agreed fee. The position of each advert, however, is not solely determined by the fee paid but by the click through rate (CTR). This holds true when advertising on both Google and Yahoo using such pay per click (PPC) methods.
E-mail marketing
Email marketing can prove to be highly cost effective but requires extremely careful management and targeting. Legislation to control unsolicited bulk email is already in place in most major markets, particularly when it comes to targeting individual consumers rather than other businesses.
There are a number of reputable mailing providers who can manage the process and electronic mail, in terms of unit cost and return on investment (ROI), remains a highly attractive channel if you can identify and buy the relevant opt-in mailing lists or indeed incentivise your user base to subscribe to regular high quality mailings. Other than that, you may need to get creative and initiate a clever viral campaign.
Search and SEO
Last but by no means least is the other major online channel: that of natural search. The objective here is to appear high in the search engine results for relevant search terms. This can drive a return on investment which dwarfs that of other e-marketing channels but the barrier to entry is high.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a bitterly competitive business, driven top-down by identifying the "right" search terms and building your site, its content and inbound links from other sites around those terms. Each area involves considerable depth and complexity but if you study Business & Marketing Courses, the techniques you learn can be readily translated into the appropriate set of on-line actions, in conjunction with professional advice and some research. Do, however, bear in mind that with the exception of viral marketing, many of the above techniques may not be appropriate to a given business depending on the level of existing competition for the target search terms.