Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

So you have developed opt-in email lists for your business, are sending out a monthly newsletters and the occasional promotional email. What else can you be doing to utilize email marketing to increase revenue and build lasting customer relationships? Triggered emails, also known as Event Marketing, is an excellent way to nurture relationships already established with email contacts.

What is trigger emailing and how can it take your email marketing strategy to the next level? 

Trigger emails are emails that are automatically sent when a user preforms a certain action or event on your website that results in an action or auto-response. Example, a user decides they want to join your newsletter and fills out the form on your website to do so, this automatically triggers an email that thanks that customer and then offers them a video.

Broadcast emails (a uniform message everyone on your list receives) are a great start, but to truly engage your audience you need to speak to them as an individual. So how do you start doing triggered email marketing? You need to define what actions can currently be done on your website that can be used as a trigger. 

A few to start with:

Newsletter subscription - a follow-up email that explains what content will be in your newsletter or maybe a calendar of when they can expect each newsletter.

Online purchases - an email confirming their order or letting the customer know when the order has shipped.

Personal account information - coupons being sent on birthday's or when a new item is in stock that is like to something they have purchased.

Whitepaper Downloads - creating premium content and promoting it on a simple landing page. Giving this away in return for the prospects name and email is a great way to build your list and send out trigger responses. 

I suggest starting simple and working your way up as you get more comfortable with your email software's capabilities of trigger responses. Before you know it you will be able to use advanced action tracking tags on your website that trigger promotional emails based on what pages a user is viewing.

Display advertisements can be found on most web pages, especially free email providers. These ads pull double duty as pay-per-click ads, but they also raise consumer awareness of the brand being advertised. You get the benefit of the consumer seeing your brand message even if they don't click through.

In internet marketing a lot of emphasis is put on pay-per-click campaigns. These campaigns allow you to target keywords relating to your product or service and bid on those keywords and be found on the search results pages. The higher the bid the better your placement will be on the search engine results page and the more likely your ad will be clicked on by a potential consumer.
 
This type of campaign can be a great source of targeted traffic, but it doesn't do a lot for your long term brand recognition, nor does it tend to drive inexpensive traffic. PPC costs are rising each month and a good way to get more traffic is through the Content Networks. All those banner ads and text ads you see on major sites like ESPN, Facebook, HGTV, Blogs, and most of your major sites online now allow display advertising Brand marketing and brand awareness come from repeated exposure to your brand that doesn't necessarily result in a sale. You're continually reminding your audience what you have to offer so that when they are ready to buy they think of you.

The major difference between traditional pay per click advertising and display advertising is how you target your audience. PPC allows you to really narrow down who sees your ad and you can feel fairly confident that a visitor who clicks on your ad is looking to make a purchase. Display advertising is an ad that appears in a paid space on someone else’s site. Impression costs vary depending on the site, size of the ad, quality of the landing page, and a few other factors.

These ads have traditionally been less targeted than search engine ads but that has recently begun to change. Through the use of “cookies” in your browser display ads are now starting to appear with direct correlation to searches you've been conducting. Also, sites are using “Re-Marketing” cookies to display targeted ads to prospects after they have been to a specific site. Re-Marketing allows business to brand their company really effectively and keep in front of the target.

This new technology has totally changed the value of display ads as well as their success. You can now improve brand recognition and improve your reach to targeted leads all with display advertising.

Facebook boasts over 400 million users and 50% of those active users will log into Facebook on any day. While logged in they are updating their status daily and uploading over 3 billion photos every month. Users are sharing links, blog posts, articles and more, over 5 billion weekly. Each month 3.5 million events are created and 1.5 million local businesses have active Facebook pages.

Despite statistics like these many business owners are nervous about what an active Facebook page will do for the brand reputation of their company. People will be able to come to their Facebook page and share an experience of terrible service or a negative review. This negative feedback can be very unnerving for a business owner.

It's true that not all businesses are a good fit for Facebook. You will want to determine that it's an effective way of reaching your target audience. If you do decide Facebook is a good fit for you then potential negativity is no reason to stay away. As a matter of fact there is nothing stopping a disgruntled consumer to start a page on Facebook simply to talk about how lousy your customer service is. Or to post negative comments on their own page. There really is no stopping a disgruntled customer from sharing their opinion. What Facebook will give you is a clear line of communication between yourself and your audience as well as a platform to defend yourself where appropriate. You can upload customer photos, share customer feedback and use your page to improve your customer service.

Don't think of how Facebook can hurt your company, think of how it can help your business grow. You'll soon see that the benefits far out weigh the negatives.

Before you can market your website with tools such as social media marketing and PPC ads you need to make sure your site is doing the best job it can do. Here are 6 tips to ensure that your website is ready to be promoted.

1. Research Keywords
People are searching for your services and you need to find out what words they use. They may not use the proper words to describe your product but their words are the words you need. Put these keywords on your site thus making it easier for the consumer to find you because you'll show up on the search engine results page (SERP).

2. Be an Expert in Your Field
In order to trust you and your services a customer needs to view you as a resource in your field. Include content on your website that can help educate your consumer thus building their trust in a partnership with you.

3. Communicate With Your Target Audience
If you have a blog on your website open it up for public comments. Let your community converse with you and each other about products, services, trends and more. Communication builds a relationship on a more personal level.

4. Make Your Website Available
A website does not keep office hours. It needs to be open 24 hours a day. If you are an online retailer you need to be able to process orders at any hour, any day of the week.

5. Network
If you are an expert in your industry your consumer should see you around. Join professional organizations and participate in your professional community. Get your name and brand on other sites and social media networks.

6. Update, Update, Update
Keep your website new and fresh. Add new content frequently and keep up with current market trends.

As companies continue to struggle in the current economy, many are seeing their marketing budgets cut with more cuts anticipated for the last quarter of 2009 into 2010. During this time of change and scrutiny over every advertising dollar spent, it is important to note that the online advertising sector continues to grow as business are taking their marketing strategies online. According to eMarketer, digital spending will account for 17% of total ad spending in the US by next year, up from 15.4% currently and 13.9% last year. An "Interaction 2009" report done by GroupM Interaction indicates that companies are also increasing spending on search and mobile marketing and decreasing traditional media spending. According to this report, the future of marketing is so-called "intention marketing" with a combination of paid and organic search along with mobile and social media marketing.

Savvy marketers are already following this trend, according to a 2009 accountability study done by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Marketing Management Analytics (MMA). The number one strategy is taking offline marketing online, and reallocating spending into lower-cost digital media like SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing.

WSI can take a look at your current marketing strategies online (and offline) and provide the online marketing how to that every business needs in this economy. For every industry, there is a correct marketing mix online that will get you the best ROI possible. And one of the significant benefits of WSI's online marketing strategies is that everything we do is 100% trackable so you know almost immediately how well your campaigns are working and where there is room for improvement.

To find out more about the online marketing strategies WSI can provide, as well as a complimentary analysis of the marketing mix online for your business, please contact us today. As we kick of the fourth quarter of 2009, there's still time to end the year and start off the new year with a bang!

Twitter is a social networking site that people and businesses use to stay hyper-connected to other people and businesses. By "following" a user on facebook, you receive up to the minute updates ("tweets") as often as they are posted. If you're like most of our clients, you've heard of Twitter - maybe you're even a member - but you're not 100% sure how it fits in with your overall Internet marketing plan.

Although Twitter has been around since 2006, it has only recently blown up to the 30,000,000 users it currently has. And even with those astounding numbers, according to a recent article by eMarketer, 25% of users have never "tweeted." Obviously there is a tremendous opportunity to reach businesses and consumers using this service, but industry experts have yet to pinpoint exactly how.

We're using Twitter to update our followers and drive traffic to our website, and a handful of our clients are doing the same. Twitter is a great complement to the rest of our Internet marketing solutions, but it doesn't appear that it will replace any of the tried and true methods of revenue generation like search engine optimization and pay per click.