Part1 of this series of “Internet Marketing For Small Business – Do You Have An Online Marketing Strategy Yet?” discussed the main reasons why internet marketing for small business are so critical and what is factors are required for an effective online marketing strategy to take your business to greater and further heights.
In particular, we also shared the importance of having cohesive and coherent messages used by both on and offline marketing activities and this is the key and basis for our discussion on structuring the online strategies into the overall marketing mix. Using a consistent voice across all marketing collaterals is key to your product and brand positioning.
There are two major arms to internet marketing for small business and they are namely, web internet marketing as well as targeted email marketing. The former is a lot more technical than the latter but both are interdependent upon each other in some ways.
Web Internet Marketing
Web internet marketing evolves around website creation, development and driving traffic to your site and generally uses either organic search engine optimization SEO methods or paid web traffic, that is, paid advertising. There two main types of websites platforms you can adopt, wordpress or static sites. WordPress is a common blog platform which has become well customized for marketing purposes in recent years.
Those looking to using organic SEO will prefer the blog platform by consistently loading the sites up with information. As driving traffic to your website is a key criteria to ensuring online growth, organic SEO is a longer-lasting traffic driving system than the paid alternative. That said, paid web traffic can be lucrative and allows you upward scalability as and when you wish.
Targeted Email Marketing Strategy
Targeted email marketing on the other hand, is the online version of traditional direct mailing campaigns which requires contact details like your clients’ email addresses as well as their names. You will need an auto-responder to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are well executed in orderly fashion.
First and foremost, if you intend to execute your targeted email marketing strategy, you need to ally the major concern of mass spamming. You can and should have a built-in filter process to solicit active opt-in into your email list of contacts. By opting in, your contact is deemed to have given you consent to email him or her information and hence you are legitimate opt-in email marketer and not a spammer.
This approach is considered targeted to your specific segments as you have directed your email collection approach at specific people in these segments either by giving a free ebook, CD, video training or some product discounts. And you can then proceed to send them emails to solicit for sales on your products or affiliated products and services.
This is part 2 of a four part series of “Internet Marketing For Small Business”. Check out part 1 and look out for part 3 of this series.
Also, check out Small Business Marketing Strategies for more information here.
