A broad range of online
marketing methods is available to you for promoting your website.
Strategies vary in their effectiveness and hopefully this website
will give you some ideas as to which will be most appropriate for
your needs.
Clearly this site is about search
engine marketing, however we don't advocate you should limit the
online marketing of your site just to this. (But if you did no other
online promotion, then search engine marketing would probably be your
best bet, given 8 out of 10 Web users rely on search engines as their
primary way to find websites).
In fact the best approach is an integrated strategy that leverages
the benefits of the various Internet marketing options available to you.
The pros and cons of each are discussed on this and following pages.
Even though some strategies, such as search engine marketing,
are much more effective than others there is still no “silver bullet”
- contrary to some outrageous claims you may hear from email spammers
and others.
Therefore I’d urge you not to put all your eggs in one basket and
rely on just one strategy. Instead an integrated marketing strategy
using a variety of complimentary online and offline marketing is the
best long term approach.
Online
Promotion Strategies
In addition to search
engine marketing, online promotional options include banner
advertising, email
marketing, ezine advertising,
affiliate marketing,
viral marketing
and online PR. The
pros and cons of these will be discussed.
Broadly speaking strategies can be viewed as either customer acquisition
or customer retention strategies.
Key to both acquisition and retention is having good content that
will attract traffic in the first place and then keep it coming back
for more.
It’s a cliché, but content really is king. Developing and then maintaining
good content on your web site should be treated as a major priority.
A survey by Enterpluse illustrates the importance of this. The survey showed that people's online expectations have climbed
over the last few years and two-thirds will now not ever bother returning
to a web site that doesn't meet expectations.
According to the survey participants there are four keys to what makes
a great web site. 96% said the site has to be continually updated;
96% said it has to be easy to navigate; 93% said the Web site must
have in-depth information on its subject, and 89% said they demand
a quick load and response time.
According to the Giga Information Group most Web sites - other than
the high-volume, high-visibility sites like Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Yahoo
and Google - are not meeting expectations.
Now let’s look at some of the online promotional methods available
to proactively market your business online:
Next topic:
Search Engine Marketing
| search
engine marketing | banner
advertising | email
marketing | ezine advertising
| affiliate
marketing | viral
marketing | online
PR |
This page last updated
May 03, 2010
