Results are dwindling with conventional marketing avenues. As a result, careful analysis of future trends is a must. It’s not rocket science that businesses should be on the web. Yet that in itself isn’t sufficient. Purchasers won’t necessarily be able to find you.
Look at it this way – imagine a retail enterprise with new premises: They’ve spent a fortune on stock, fixtures, merchandising and systems. They open for business… And discover they’re in a tiny backstreet, 3 miles out of the city centre on the 4th floor, and the road outside is closed due to a diversion. And no-one has given any thought to advertising their location. Who’s going to find that store? The vast majority of business websites have just this problem.
The shape of modern marketing has radically altered. A decade or so ago, it was fashionable to jump on the website bandwagon. Complex graphical websites costing thousands (or tens of thousands) were regularly launched. (A happy situation for web design businesses…) But just the existence of the site didn’t bring in the customers. There was a belief that if you built it, they would come. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Modern internet marketing requires a fundamental shift in thinking from traditional marketing. Traditionalists might see your site in the same way they’d view a sales catalogue. Consequently they’ll recommend the time-honoured promotional methods of newspaper advertising and the media. Sticking to the familiar routine. They start with a flashy sales site, and then try lots of ‘off-line’ avenues to get people to look at it. However, this process illustrates an absolute misunderstanding of website marketing.
This process only utilises the web as viewing gallery, which is quite wrong. The internet is a hugely interactive environment that allows billions of users to research, discuss, offer comments etc. And because of Search Engines like Google & Bing/MSN, there are huge indexes of sites that can be easily found (from the customers perspective at least) to perform these tasks. Off-line Business Pages would be useless if they weren’t properly structured: You’d never find what you were looking for.
This set-back is solved by Search Engines. Which means businesses can no longer use traditional marketing. Now, if you wish to be visible online, you must be indexed by Google, Bing and/or Yahoo etc. But there’s a lot more to it than that… #S#
Of course, the Search Engines weren’t blind to this, so they developed an unusual paid advertising scheme so any site could get to the top. It’s called Pay Per Click, and advertisers are only charged when someone ‘clicks’ on their ad. How refreshing was that? Basically, the only time you now paid was when someone who was already interested asked to look at your site. Professionally monitored and targeted adverts can bring spectacular results.
Alas, the market is bombarded with this form of advertising these days. Costs per click have been heavily driven up, mostly by inexperienced marketers bidding too highly. So it’s often the case now that many are priced out of the market. This happens mostly where lots of clicks are essential to get one buyer. This has caused a rebirth and interest in Search Engine Optimisation – as those in the know try to drive their sites up to the revered page 1.
Have a go at this – Get onto one of the Search Engines now and look for some keywords that you think apply to you. Then check through as far as page three. Can you find your website? It’s unlikely. So you might as well not be there at all! If the answer was yes, are those terms actually being used by customers?
It’s possible you’ve already done some advertising in the paid listings – and maybe you’ve had some results. Can you be sure you’re working it as efficiently as possible? Is your investment really paying off? Are you accurately tracking and measuring your campaigns? Testing, measuring and split-testing are some of the most important factors with all PPC campaigns. Without accurate statistics, you can’t get the best ROI.
Both in Britain and around the world, statistics show that commercial advertising and selling is experiencing a seismic shift towards the internet. There is no other choice but to deal with it – and ensure you’re taking full advantage of all the opportunities.
(C) 2009 – S. Edwards. Visit Click HERE or Jason Kendall.
