Internet marketing - marketing your website

Believe it or not the first thing is to have a website marketing plan including your site’s:

• Mission – what is its task and purpose?

• Objectives – your goals

• Strategies – the high level achievable actions to meet each objective

• Tactics – the detailed implementation plans for each strategy

• Measurement – you need to know how you will measure results

• You also need a detailed bottom up budget (i.e. one based on actual costed details) that fits in with your overall marketing and business plans and has monthly costs against each planned action that aim at a positive ROI.

So having a plan and a budget what sort of things can you do?

Well you can and should do two things:

• Offline marketing

• Online marketing

Offline website marketing

• All standard business materials should emphasize your website URL to get visitors to your site - business cards, letterheads, envelopes, brochures, press releases, fax cover sheets, vehicles, uniforms, everything.

  

• If you have a phone system that has an on hold facility mention the website there.

• Add the web site address to all your voice mail messages.

• If you are a retailer put your URL on you shop fascia.

• Make sure your site is mentioned prominently in all advertising: press, radio, TV, direct mail campaigns, newsletters, Yellow Pages and other directory ads, exhibition stands, again, everything.

• Always mention you website (“…….my site www.e-crm.co.uk allows you to …..”) in any press, radio or TV interviews.

• If you write a guest column or a feature article mention your website and e-mail.

• Include your website on any promotional items: T shirts, pens, key rings, mugs, mouse mats, etc.

Online website marketing

• Make sure the keywords and phrases that people actually use to find your type of web site via a search engine appear often in the text of your web site. Search engines read copy not images. (To know how visitors arrived at your web site and what keywords they searched on to get there, analyze your web site statistics).

• Add content and update your web site at least once a month.

• Get links from sites that are similar to yours and link back to them. Make it ‘deep linking’ not just the home page.

• Get links from the thousands of directory sites out there.

• Add social bookmark links to your site to make it easy for surfers to recommend you.

• List your website in every e-mail signature on every e-mail your company sends.

• Create a signature that you can simply paste in to forums, networking sites etc. like the one below.


• Test pay per click marketing like AdWords on Google

• Use affiliate marketing, RSS feeds and comparison services

• Blog – find the time

• Ask your staff to link to your web site via their own personal web sites and profiles on Online Social Networking sites like MySpace.

• Use online PR for publicity and links

• Write articles that bring links

• Have a place on the home page for announcements, upcoming events, links to blog updates, etc., so that a visitor to the home page can immediately see what's new.

• Use an e-mail newsletter to provide information or promote updates or products.

• Create a viral video to post on You Tube and that will be passed on amongst the target audience.

Accept that, like all marketing activity, website marketing is like "painting the Forth Bridge". The World changes, the Internet changes, the market changes and you just have to keep on trucking.

comments:

2010

Mar: Website lead generation

Feb: Internet marketing trends

2009

Dec: The Kitschmas Card

Nov: Where is Google going?

Oct: 2020 vision for the web

Sept: Social Media Marketing 3

Aug: Making incentives work

July: Social Media Marketing 2

June: Social Media Marketing 1

May: More about AdWords

Apr: Internet Marketing

Mar: Is your website boring?

Feb: Integrated marketing

Jan: Viral marketing

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