Web Design and Marketing Strategies (SAMPLE) by Edward B. Toupin - HTML preview

Marketing

Marketing is not just advertising, but is a whole approach to providing a positive image for a product or service. For conventional marketing, many organizations hire entire companies to provide a professional presentation for goods and services in both print and electronic form. On the Internet, marketing takes on a different approach and it can be managed with fewer resources.

To approach marketing, you must understand some of the basic reasons for marketing. The most important reason is that you want to attract people to a particular location. Once they're at the location, you want to entice them to purchase a product or service.

Many Internet marketing campaigns involve attracting a Web surfer to a specific location in the global community. The primary element of the attraction is a sales pitch for a product or service. This method has proven to be successful in conventional marketing methods, however, you must take on a new view of marketing when presenting to our global community!

To make the change from conventional to electronic marketing, you must understand some of the basic elements of this new approach. The following subsections, covered throughout this e-book, contain the primary elements of a successful campaign.

If you find a successful method or devise a new approach to marketing, make it work for you! However, you must ensure that your approach is acceptable within the ever-changing expectations of the global community. If you use an approach that brings in 50% of your target market and makes the other 50% angry, then you must change your tactics! Reputations are made and broken overnight on the Internet and one improper posting can cost you your business, not to mention your Internet connection.

A majority of the Web users today surf for information and entertainment. If you provide a presence that is solely oriented toward the sale of a product, then you'll probably miss out on some of your potential clientele. You want to provide information, interactivity, and links to create a Web site that will attract a wide range people.

Many organizations that provide Web development and promotional services for Web-based businesses provide over-simplistic services for the client. Developing a site and promoting it to a few hundred engines will not create a successful presence. You must research, design, and create a tailor-made marketing plan for your business and your product or service.

It's impossible to say which techniques will provide the highest return. The best way to start a campaign is to devise a marketing plan for your target audience and adjust it based on your analysis. Monitoring hit logs, search engines, list sites, newsgroups, and e-mail will assist you in better tuning your marketing efforts.

Don't jump in, build a Web site, and promote it all over the world! Remember that you're not only trying to attract clientele, but you're also trying to create a positive image for yourself and your business.

Don't be afraid to take risks and develop unconventional methods for marketing and promotion. One of the fastest ways to attract clientele is to be unique! However, be careful that you don't perform any unethical activities (e.g., spamming). Be unique, but work within the boundaries of the global community.

One element of marketing, that many on-line businesses eliminate, is that of conventional marketing. Internet-based marketing is phenomenal, however, as long as printed material exists, it's essential that you take advantage of the medium! Remember that probably not everyone in your market has accepted the Internet and some people still rely on printed material for most of their information.

Information does travel quickly on the Internet! The major benefit is that your clients can now contact you immediately via e-mail. The problem, for most, is that your clients know that their e-mail is in your mailbox within a second or two.

As part of the marketing plan, you must establish some type of procedure for managing e-mail. This procedure should include a preformatted reply message that your clients receive almost immediately. The procedure should also take into account some sort of a follow-up mechanism to keep in touch with them while you service their request.

You are no longer working only with people in your local community. By stepping into the World Wide Web, you've stepped into the international community. Many users that visit your site won't have the same cultural, social, or linguistic background as those in your local community. You can't stress ethnic, cultural, or other discriminatory elements in your marketing or you'll drive off many of your clients!

There are thousands of sites on the Internet that simply present a lot of graphics, but no real content. To attract users to your site, ensure that your content represents your product or service appropriately. Additionally, ensure that your page loads fast enough to keep your visitor's attention.

The idea of providing maximum content differs from traditional marketing efforts. Traditionally, we wanted to capture someone's attention with some type of flash or gimmick. On the World Wide Web, you want to attract attention, but you also want visitors to stay on your site for a while, learn about your business, and return at a later date.
Keep in mind is that no one likes to read the same newspaper every single day. People like variety and they like to keep up to date with news and trends. It's essential that you devise some set of procedures that provide for changes in your Web pages on a regular basis to keep people coming back for more!

Just because your site is available on the Internet doesn't mean that anyone will visit! How are you going to bring people to your site? The answer is—promotion! Promotion is a very important process that is directly related to the success of your Web site. As with anything, if no one knows about your site, then no one will visit!

It's essential to stay on top of the promotion of your site. The more people see and hear of your business, the more visitors you'll attract. The other side of the process, monitoring, allows you to determine just how successful you are and how to adjust your plans to make your efforts even more successful! The following information provides a general overview of the important items involved in promoting and monitoring your site for a successful marketing plan:

• Conventional Marketing: In addition to registering the Web site on hundreds of directories and engines, also advertise in the newspapers as well as place your URL and e-mail address on business cards, advertisements, and brochures.

• Research: Any business using the Internet can gather a great deal of information about its position in the market as well as information about a competitor's market position and plans. An Internet marketer should constantly check the competitions' Web sites to find out their next move and review their current projects. Research can uncover some excellent opportunities that are available any place on the globe!

• The Plan in Review: The entire marketing process can uncover some outstanding opportunities in the global community! You must create and adjust your plans continually to account for changes in technology, business, and global expectations. By creating and following a detailed marketing plan you'll not only succeed in your business, but you'll also provide a professional image to the global community!

Regardless of your marketing plan or medium, it's essential that you monitor your progress. By monitoring your progress, and adjusting your plan accordingly, you can increase sales, decrease expenses, and better target your market. One point that I always raise with my clients is that you have to know how well your marketing is working. When you pay attention to the results of your marketing, you can better understand how the market is moving and how to best present yourself and your company.

If you haphazardly advertise on every promotional site and engine in the world, every month, without knowing the results, you're wasting your time! If you focus your attention down to only those sites that provide the greatest response, you can save time and money!

For the most part, it's difficult to know where someone heard about your site. There are numerous scripts and applets out there that you can embed into your Web pages to capture information on each visitor. Additionally, there are scripts that can tell you the URL of the referring page. The problem is that, unless you want to learn, you need to have some background in JavaScript, PERL, or Java to properly implement these tools. You can find out more in Web Site Development: A-to-Z for the Beginner.

One way to overcome this problem is to have your visitors fill out some type of form when placing an order or filling out a guestbook. At the bottom of that form, have them enter the name of the site where they heard about you and your business. This is a good way to collect qualified marketing information— especially if it comes from active clients!

Another method of determining your marketing image is to use an application called WebPosition (http://www.webposition.com/). WebPosition will allow you to determine your position in the numerous search engines on the Internet. With this application you can better adjust your marketing approach and modify your pages to raise your position toward the top!

At the end of the month, go through the information and determine which Internet resources produced most of the hits to your site. At this point, you can determine which sites to focus your marketing towards, which sites need adjusting, and on which sites to minimize marketing.

Additionally, as you promote your site, keep track of which advertisements or information went to which site. This type of record keeping will let you know which advertisements generate the most results and will allow you to better enhance your marketing. Focusing on the advertisement that pulls the most hits will increase your traffic considerably!
If your search engine position is not where you would like it to be, go back to your pages and modify them to better position your page toward the top of the engine lists!

Through proper marketing and tracking your progress, you have the opportunity to increase your site traffic considerably. Just remember to plan out your campaign and use the information provided. With a little bit of work—you'll do great!