Internet Marketing

Internet marketing refers to the skills necessary to gain favourable response from visitors to the Net.  It is about winning potential customers and sustaining existing ones. Johari suggests a number of strategies. These are as follows:

• ·   Presentation of products and services being offered
•     Traffic promotion to draw targeted visitors to see your offer

Presentation

This includes the content and appearance of your web pages. Considering the fleeting attention a new visitor would invest on your web pages, it is important that the content and appearance be of interest to him so that he will be willing to stay longer and explore. Your page should elicit repeat visit, and hopefully convert the visitors into customers. The page should give useful and relevant information about the products or services being offered.

Other factors to consider include the reputation of the marketer and the pre-selling component of marketing. The pre-selling part of marketing is where potential customers need to be convinced about the product or service, before his decision to buy. The landing page, where the visitors arrive first, could be appropriate for pre-selling before he moves to the sales page.

Traffic Promotion

The Internet serves as a tool for learning about a firm’s product and services, as well as for buying. As a result, the Netpreneurs should give significant consideration to the location of his website. This is just as important as in reality-based/brick and mortar businesses where a physical location of a business, if conductive to foot traffic and conveniently situated near other stores, would increase the chances of a customer seeking out the product or service. In the same vein, Cyberpreneurs should conceptualize the virtual space as where there are many locations in which one could establish a webpresence.

To convert interested visitors to willing buyers, it is imperative that the Internet entrepreneur understands the geography of the virtual realm, how customers are guided to your business and what qualities of your website keep customers more interested in the product or service.

LaChusa proposes a number of ways of getting regular and high volume traffic to your web pages. These are as follows:

·         Create a website

·         Optimise that website for your keywords

·         Publish an e-zine or e-newsletter

·         Write and post articles on articles directories

.         Use pay-per click advertising, like Google Ad words

·         Use auto responder

·         Publish an e-course or special report

·         Create and sell information products

·         Create a blog

·         Start podcasting

The Cyberpreneur don’t have to do all 10, says LaChusa.

Furthermore, Johari highlights a number of methods of getting targeted traffic. These are described hereunder:

Article Promotion

When you send your articles for publication to various e-zines and articles directories, you will have at the end of the article a resource box in which you can include the URL of your page. Upon publication by e-zines, other e-zines and webmasters pick up this article for republishing on their websites. This means each time your article is published your resource box (bearing your URL) goes with it. As this process continues, there is proliferation of your article, such that regular traffic to your web page is sustained.

Press Release

There exist agencies with wide distribution network that distribute press releases. These agencies have unique and stringent guidelines, which need to be adhered to in preparing your message. This is unlike the guidelines for submitting articles to e-zines. In press release you have the benefit of fast and wide distribution of your message.

Forums

These offer great marketing potential. It could reach most targeted people interested in your offer. Another advantage is that forums provide opportunity for learning a lot about members. Basically, forums (in Internet terminology) are websites meant for exchange of information. According to Johari:

“(In forums) one person initiates a topic by asking or giving some useful information or maybe by giving his personal views on a subject of common interest…this initiation of a topic is known as starting a thread. Anyone interested can respond to this message by posting his comments thereby adding to the thread. As other members add their views, the thread grows.”

But how does this relate to marketing? You might ask? Each member’s message posted carries a signature line which can be linked to the website where they want to send their visitors. In this manner, the linked signature line to the website does the marketing!

It is obvious that regular visiting and posting in the forums helps to promote you along with your website. This earns you the trust of other members and wins regular streams of interested visitors to your site.

Search Engine Traffic

The use of search engines to get some information on the net is well known. As you initiate your search, the search engine displays the web pages with the relevant information pertaining to your key word. In addition, there are sometimes pay-per-click advertisements accompanying your word.

In the search process, several web pages are listed as search results, and the web pages appearing on the first page of the search results are likely to get more traffic than those on web pages number 2, 3 or more. It is the preference of every Webmaster to see that his web pages rank higher. A number of factors determine the sequence in which web pages are listed, prominent among these factors are:

·         Optimization of the web page for particular keywords

·         Number of back links, and

·         Frequency with which content of the web page is changed

It should be noted that the traffic flow triggered by search engines does not cost you anything. It is not an easy task, though, to obtain and sustain high ranking for your web pages. Another method by which search engines promote you is when your postings in forums and your press releases, and articles published by e-zines appear as search engine searches.

Posted in: traffic,web internet marketing,what is internet marketing