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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.

Twitter was originally developed in 2006 but really exploded onto the scene in 2008 and in fact the number of Twitter users grew 1382% between January and February 2009. Twitter is basically a status update or micro blogging site that gives the user 140 characters to answer the question “What are you doing?” and their response is called a tweet. Your Tweets can then be seen by everyone. And I mean everyone as all tweets are public information unless you change your settings to only allow your followers to see them. So as I said everyone can see them but only your followers will be alerted when you tweet. So how can this help a business?

The users of Twitter are predominantly professionals and businesses now so it is a great source of information on all topics. You can show yourself and your business to be the experts by giving away information and helping others on the site to get the answers they seek. If you are interesting and produce great content people will follow you and as you only have 140 characters they will go to your website for more information.

Getting started on twitter takes seconds but before you jump on and tweet away you should do a little work. Setting a background for your Twitter page is important and you should make the best possible use of the space available to you. For example there is a space on the left hand side of the screen which I have used to promote my other social networking sites as well as my services. Check it out at www.twitter.com/totalwsi and you will see what I mean.

Next thing to do is to search twitter for possible followers and there are a number of ways to do this. Spammers often follow as many people as possible in the hope that they will follow them back out of courtesy. This is one way to build up your followers but I would not recommend it as you will find that your timeline is filled with information you do not care about like “mmmm I love toast”. Also by using this method your followers will not be your target audience and this will show up in your poor results.

Instead use the search function on the right hand side or go to http://search.twitter.com and type in anything related to your industry even your brand name and see who is talking about your industry. These are the people you need to have conversations with as these people and their followers are interested in your market. Before you begin to follow and interact with these people study their timelines and try to understand what gets them to interact with their followers or people they follow as this will be how you get in front of all the people following them. There is a great book called Twitter Power by Joel Comm which goes into great detail on how to get followers and the sort of tweets you need to be putting out there. This is a must read for any business or person looking to be successful on Twitter.

At this point you want to begin to tweet so your time line is filling up with great information. REMEMBER do not just push your products, services or blogs all the time followers want to see you as a human being not a corporate machine. Begin following the leaders in your industry and when you can have a conversation with them on your topic. This way if they reply to you all the people following them will see you as an expert and begin to follow you too.

Of course the main aim of any business is to have people directed to their website for more information as there is only so much you can say in 140 characters so make sure your website is designed with conversion in mind to get the best return on investment. This is a topic I will be discussing next week.

Provide great content and you will build your audience, answer questions and you will be seen as the expert, ask leading questions and you will expose your timeline to more people but most of all get tweeting and have fun.

If your company is not already using Social Media networking to get ahead you should be. There are vast numbers of sites out there to use and each is slightly unique. I would not suggest you try to register with them all or even just the 10 listed here unless you outsource this to a suitable agency. If you try to cover them all yourself you will fail, so go for two or three to begin with. With the current success and growth of Twitter I would suggest this is one to try and I will go into more detail on Twitter next week.

Social media sites offer very different opportunities for businesses but you need to get out of the old marketing habit of thinking campaigns all the time and start thinking conversations. Users of social networking sites what to hear about things that will interest them and the occasional push to your site is ok but do it too much and they will either ignore your updates or stop following you altogether.

1) Twitter (The micro blogging service that asks “what are you doing?” is huge at the moment used by a large number of professionals and companies.)

2) Facebook (Social networking site no longer for kids. The fastest growing demographic is 35+. Businesses are quickly getting onboard and I think skittles have a particularly good page.)

3) Linkedin (Professional networking site made up of business people, graduates and corporations all looking to make connections in the corporate world for recruitment and collaboration.)

4) YouTube (The worlds 2nd largest search engine with over 1 Billion videos viewed daily. Make a video, optimise it and get it out there and you will increase your brand awareness as well as traffic to your site.)

5) Wikipedia (Create your own business page and make sure your business is one of the 13 Million articles available to the public. There is also a strong community of professionals interested in news, research and business in the Wiki community.)

6) Squidoo (Show yourself as the expert in your field by answering questions and revealing some industry secrets as well as creating your own profile page.)

7) Yahoo Answers (This question and answer site also allows you to show yourself as the expert in your field and linking the answer back to information on your site will bring a number of interested visitors.)

8) Reddit (Submit your company articles or blog posts here on a regular basis and you will increase your presence on the site and in turn increase the traffic to your own site)

9) Naymz (A unique networking platform for professionals to manage their brand, expand their network, collaborate on projects and more.)

10) Digg (Users of Digg search the internet for content they like and Digg it. I have left this until last as it is a little different to the others but still very powerful. You can not make your business show up on Digg it either happens or it doesn’t UNLESS you have a large database of Digg users who will like your content and you push it their way. The more Diggs your content gets the more Digg users will see it and Digg it also).

There are a huge number of Social Media and Social bookmarking sites on the internet now some very popular and some not so popular. You will need to begin with just a few and the top 3 or 4 will be a good place to start however there are also a number of niche sites that may benefit your business. Before you start you will want to do some in depth research into the type of networks that will best suit your business and check out if your brand it already being discussed on any of them.

What is Social Media?

Officially social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

 

Why is it important to a business?

Two thirds of the global internet population visit social networks on a regular basis. In fact visiting these social networks is now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal emails. Time spent on social networks is growing rapidly at 3X the overall internet rate.

Most companies try to use social media as just another marketing channel but it offers so much more. Social media is an essential tool for developing public relations, customer service, loyalty building, market research and customer acquisition to name a few.

 

Why act now?

92% of all digital consumers only buy a product if their peers, social influencers or blogs have written a positive review about it.

93% of social media users believe that a company should have a presence in social media and 85% believe a company should go further and interact with its customers.

Your competitors are already there, your customers have been there for a long time. What are you waiting for?

The Power of Social Media

YouTube has on average 1 billion videos viewed per day.

Twitter sees on average 3 million tweets per day and experienced 1382% monthly growth between January and February 2009.

Facebook has over 250 million active users.

If your message is interesting your followers/fans/friends will pass it along to theirs and the message will go viral and reach an audience of millions in a matter of hours. What other medium can deliver results like this?

Stop thinking campaigns and start thinking conversations!