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An Internet Marketing Strategy That Really Works
These days, an internet marketing strategy plays a vital role in marketing strategies for small businesses (or marketing strategies for businesses of any size). Website marketing is an important part of almost any business, small or large.
You can't put up a beautiful website (or any other) and expect people to just show up. You have to let them know, IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE, that your website is there. This MUST be part of any internet marketing strategy you develop. Actually, this is a basic marketing principle. Customers are not looking for you, you have to look for them.
Promoting your website online . However, using the web to promote your site assumes that your customers are surfers. But there is a large percentage of our population that does not know the Internet as much as we would like.
So what about the large percentages of the population that are not? They will only find out about you through traditional means of marketing and public relations. Fortunately, these are the easiest and cheapest leads for you to communicate offline.
Key Offline Internet Marketing Strategies
Here are some of the ways to get your website out there :
- Television, print and other advertising
- Business cards and stationery
- Catalogs, flyers, billboards, blimps, etc.
- Direct mail (prominently in all documents)
- Telemarketing (make it part of the script)
- Press releases to specific media.
The main principle, to which you can add all your imagination, is that the INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY INCLUDES ALL MEANS OF MAKING YOUR WEBSITE KNOWN AND VISITED BY TARGETED PERSPECTIVES.
Unless you are on a high budget, TV, radio, and the classifieds route is not recommended, but if you run ads, be sure to mention your website everywhere.
Another guiding principle is that your offline internet marketing activities should make it easy for your potential customer to access your website directly.
If your potential customer sees your website on a billboard while driving home, they probably won't be looking for it when they get to the office the next day.
Newspapers are bulky, the radio has to spell it out, and as before, most people drive at the time. On the other hand, if your potential customer is sitting at their computer and they get a postcard advertising your website, they can just turn around and type in your URL and you're on your website.
Now, if someone is in the office reading a trade magazine and finds an article about you in the magazine, it won't be difficult for them to copy your URL into their browser and visit your site.
I'm not saying that those other avenues won't drive traffic to your site, but it will take numerous impressions and replay for them to remember your address.
On the other hand, direct mail postcards are usually received in the home or office where there is a computer, and if they are received elsewhere, they are small enough to carry with you until you can access a computer. This way, your prospect can take the shot directly to their desktop, type in their address, and go straight to your site. Sparkly!
I have seen the greatest success in promoting offline websites with direct mail, and specifically direct mail postcards.