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Internet Marketing Strategies – Get a Plan to Work for You!

Having a great web site built is one thing, but successfully promoting your site online is a completely different matter. The success of your web site will be, in no small part, a result of your marketing strategies.

When you talk about promoting your web site you’re ultimately talking about driving more traffic to it. After getting increased traffic the key element is having your web site focused on achieving an end result, whether it is a sale, an enquiry about your services or some other purpose.

OK, so we’ve established that you need more visitors and you need to make the most of them. So how do you do that? You can start by defining on your business, your customers and how you will bring the two together by asking yourself, then answering, some simple questions:

  1. What makes your business unique? - Include the benefits YOU, specifically, offer a potential client or customer.
  2. Who are you going to target? – Define, and research, who your target market is, what they want, where and how they find it online.
  3. How are you going to reach your market? – Define the methods you are going to use and plan your strategy.

Internet Marketing Techniques – Implementing an Internet Marketing Strategy

From answering the three questions above you should have an excellent footing to use for your Internet Marketing Strategy. This includes…

  1. Writing Marketing Material - From question one you should have a good idea on how to sell your product/service and you can get some marketing material together. If part of this material includes your web site ensure that you include content to specific areas of your business.
  2. Know Your Customer – From the second question above you will know who your customers are, some of their habits and more importantly get a good idea of where to find them.
  3. Plan Your Strategy – Planning your Internet Marketing Strategy at this point relies on point two being clearly defined, but you don’t need to be exhaustive, just make sure you have good grasp on things. Your plan needs to consider short-term and long-term strategies, which can include…

Short-Term Strategies

Your short-term marketing strategies will include marketing techniques that will provide a short burst of traffic to your web site but won’t provide long-term benefits. Some of theses techniques can include:

  1. Opt-in email advertising – purchasing advertising for your web site in an opt-in email.
  2. Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising – paying for inclusion on the many CPC providers, namely search engines.
  3. Banner advertising – placing a banner ad linking to your web site on another web site that your customers will visit.
  4. Viral marketing – visiting, and posting content, on forums that are focused in your area of business and offering up your expertise.

Long-Term Strategies

Your long-term marketing strategies will include techniques designed to bring you long lasting benefits, and continue to provide you with traffic long after your short-terms strategies have finished. Some of theses techniques can include:

  1. Newsletter – Providing an informative weekly, bi-weekly or monthly newsletter can provide you long lasting benefits that are built off your short-term strategies. Once you get someone to your web site provide yourself a means to stay in touch with your visitors by offering them information they want, even if it’s only about specials you regularly run.
  2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – SEO can be elusive and, sometimes, unattainable. However if you can gain good rankings on the search engines for free listings then you’ll benefit with a steady stream of free traffic. You can learn a lot more on this subject here.
  3. Promotions – Create contests and give-aways that will encourage visitors to participate in your site. This will also help you build your opt-in newsletter list.
  4. Content – Provide top quality and constantly updating content. This will not only help with your SEO efforts, but it will encourage visitors to consistently visit your web site.

You may have noticed that we mentioned you don’t have to be exhaustive in your efforts on answering the three questions to help define your strategy. The reason is that the whole process outlined in this article needs to be constantly reviewed for effectiveness. There are many ways you can do this that we outline in a separate article.