The 21st century welcomes various platforms of communication, segmenting your market to specifically targeted consumers, customers if, you please, wanting more information on your product or service – with 53% of people who recommend companies and products. These sophisticated customers “pull” your product/service, because they are information hungry. They know what they want and how to get what they want. The trick is to be present at those specific sites where they are most likely to visit.
Now, this is where the real treat comes in for businesses that choose to make use of internet marketing tactics.
(1) Measurability and flexibility: With online analytics tools you are able to track from which sites your visitors clicked through before landing on yours, the amount of page hits, views and the time they spend on your website. You are able to discover what keywords they are making use of and leverage these as “hot buttons” to increase your ranking on Google and discover how that traffic converts to bottom line profits. Knowing this allows you to design and adjust your marketing campaign and strategy to suit your audience and budget, and thus, business income.
(2) Segmentation and targeting: Keyword tools, analytics tools, chat rooms, social networking sites, and others allow you to easily research a product niche and segment your market. By exactly defining your target audience’s needs, preferences, demographics and psychographics, you are able to provide them with a product or service that satisfies their specific requirements and continue to further target these customers in the future.
(3) Time and space barriers are eliminated, instant conversion: Marketing your business online allows you to reach your market on a global scale, more so than it would have been possible with location-based traditional marketing, where you can now sell your products online 25 hours a day – equaling more eyeballs to your website. With online marketing the consumer has the ability to directly click for more details, and often will turn into a customer on the spot by making a purchase.
(4) Building and maintaining a relationship with your customer: Online marketing allows you increased customer contact. Now you are able to capture information about these customers, and create a database where you can send these customers special promotions or information. You can also make use of social media platforms – e.g. Facebook and Twitter, where you create a brand that is both engaging with your target audience; and interactive.
(5) Cost -effectiveness and Profitability: If you are thinking of starting up you own business – all you need is a PC, a connection, and a telephone or Skype and viola! Once you’re all geared, you need to get your brand out there. By using online marketing, you are able to perform market research without little hassle and costs, and target your market with special offerings. By making use of online marketing you don’t incur as much expenses as with offline marketing, because the ads that you place aren’t limited to a time period or space. Advertising in print, radio and TV is expensive, while you can easily offer content, audio and video clips on the Internet for a very low cost. You can easily convert a customer online without long hours and manpower.
(6) Online Integration with offline media: Online marketing can be fully integrated with your offline marketing campaigns. What better way is there to find out if an ad in a newspaper/magazine, for instance is really advertising what it claims to be, by searching for it on the Internet? And what’s even better is that while offline ads are leading to searches on the web, online advertising is able to track what is or isn’t leading to sales and allow you to tweak the campaign at any time in order to achieve the results.
Using multiple mediums has greater impact than an individual medium. This leads to ROI for your brand – due to the number of touch points with your customer and the consistency of your message; you reinforce your brand image and communicate with customers at different stages of their buying cycle. For example, offline customers can be sent email invitations to online events, such as Web casts. Contacts gathered online can be invited to a special event or reception at trade shows / conferences.
By placing your product your service online, you are able to better target and understand your audience, offer them products based on their preferences and location, build relationships with them and measure your marketing campaigns while still being able to tweak them at any given time. What more do you need than a cost-effective medium that brings its more-than-fair-share of return on investment?