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Internet marketing/Online Marketing/e-marketing/i-marketing or whatever else you want to call it can be very daunting when you first look into it. There are so many companies out there who offer Search engine optimisation and pay per click that will come at you with all the technical jargon and tell you this is just what you need. How can you possibly know if that is what needs to be done unless you spend months, years even researching internet marketing so you can make an educated decision.

What you need to do is look at the bigger picture and understand your target audience. Start with your website and how well it is performing, sure you can always do with being a little higher on the major search engines but what is the point if your website can not convert this increase traffic into customers.

When I worked in sales many years ago the managers always used to say “It’s a numbers game, the more people you see the more sales you will make”. I can not tell you how many times a day I heard this and I agree there is some truth to that, but it is not very efficient.

Lets say for example as a field sales person for every 100 telephone calls you made you would get an average of 10 appointments and your closing ratio was 1:10 you would make one sale for all that work. Sure you could get on that phone longer and call 200 people and get two sales some days but you would be working longer hours. What if you could just change the conversion rate to lets say 5:10. Your income just increased 400% for doing the same amount of work. And what if your closing ratio on the phone changed as well so for every 100 calls you made you got 20 appointments your income just went up 900%. Ok so that is not so easy to do out in the field but it is possible and with A/B testing combined with analytical reporting it is possible on your website.

So now we have mentioned the importance of conversion on your website it is time to begin directing traffic to your site. This is basically the aim of any internet marketing campaign. So do you go with that Search engine optimisation company or the Pay per click experts or do you start up some email marketing campaigns? The answer depends on a number of factors such as your market, your goals and required return on investment.

Search engine Optimisation gets you higher in the organic or natural results in the major search engines but it takes time and a great deal of work. However once you get up there the return on investment is fantastic as it will bring in huge volumes of traffic to your newly conversion friendly website. But you will need to fight to stay at the top so this long term strategy should be undertaken over a 12 month period and if you want to stay at the top you should expect this to form part of your permanent internet marketing plan.

Pay per click or paid search advertising offers something altogether different. Putting you at the top of the search results instantly and if managed well it can give you a return on investment straight away. This is often used as a short term strategy if you have a particular promotion or until your search engine optimisation gets you up there naturally. However it can be used in the long term and offers a unique way to control your marketing budget allowing you to set your budget daily. There are a number of other features which can be used depending upon your target audience, such as geo-targeting and timed ad display all allowing the campaign to be optimised for the best possible conversion.

Email marketing is fairly self explanatory and yes it has been given a bad name by spammers in the past but when done professionally to qualified lists of prospects and existing clients it can give you a great return on investment. Just remember to measure the delivery and click-thru reports in order to continually improve the return on investment.

There are a number of other Internet marketing techniques and strategies you can use such as the latest and most powerful of all Social Media. However this is a whole topic on its own and while it can bring the benefits of search engine optimisation in a shorter time frame it offers so much more.

In conclusion I would always suggest that you have a detailed Internet marketing plan which involves at least two aspects of internet marketing and do not stop your current offline marketing or pull money out of thin air, simply allocate a percentage of your current marketing budget to the internet. Some people are still sceptical about internet marketing and have probably tried it before with limited success and I would say that all aspects of Internet marketing are a very involved process and unless you have the time and the budget to blow on trial and error then get the advice of a professional and set KPI’s.