Web marketing uses the power of the web to reach new markets and new customers.
It can be extremely cost effective. It expands your market and business opportunities beyond “brick and mortar” business locations to local and world-wide markets. And the web is “open for business” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
There are many web marketing techniques, tools, and technologies available to everyone … such as websites, business Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), video, blogs, email, maps, directories, just to name a few. These are all part of your effective Search Engine Optimization plan.
But before getting started with the technology, there are two very important steps:
- clearly describe your target market – who is your ideal or potential customer?
- research how and where the potential customers are looking for your products – what search words do the enter in the Search box?
With that information it is now possible to start setting the goals of your marketing strategy by select the best technologies to do the job. Marketing technologies are changing rapidly, and every day there are new possibilities and options. Some of the main areas:
Websites
The website is your platform for providing detailed information about all your products and services, your contact information and credentials, email request forms, links to your other sites and to additional information, etc.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Analysis and use of keywords and phrases to make a website more visible (“friendly”) to the search engines and building connections among all your web locations.
Social Media
Social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, are now important platforms for contacting and building relationships with potential customers.
Blogs
A blog is a website that has easily updated content which changes frequently (often daily). Blogs can be used to provide information and commentary. But most important – blogs make it easy to build a relationship with others in the web community. A blog is also a great place to get feedback and comments from your customers about your products and services.
Video
Video is a proven method in this fast pace world of providing information quickly and effectively on a world-wide basis.
eCommerce Online Shopping Carts
Online shopping is seeing explosive growth, both because it reaches all markets, local and global, and because of the 24/7 availability.
Email
Professionally managed email marketing to build customer lists and provide value and information to those customers.
Article Sites
Huge numbers of articles on a wide range of business and other topics are written and published online every day. This is a huge base of information available to all.
