So you’ve built your website and now you’re ready to start promoting. Should you promote it to local prospects only or go broader, wider, more worldwide?
That’s the question every new website owner should answer. Hopefully, you’ve thought about it before you built your website. If you want to focus on local prospects, then it helps to optimize your website for local traffic. That includes adding your physical address and phone number to your web pages – especially your About and Contact pages, but possibly all of your pages. Globally targeted websites don’t need a physical address appearing on the site unless you do mail order.
Other considerations for local businesses include who your prospects are and how you intend to attract people to your business and website.
If your business products and services can only be distributed to local persons, then you obviously have to promote your website locally. For instance, a plumber can’t travel from New York to California to perform services; those services must be delivered to local home owners and businesses.
Promoting a website locally also includes some level of offline promotion. That might include earned media through local newspapers, TV, and radio as well as ad placements in those markets. It could also mean some phone prospecting or door-to-door, perhaps even some outdoor marketing. You’ll certainly want to include your web address on your business cards and stationery.
Local SEO involves listing your website in Google Places and Bing Local as well as other local directories like Yelp and MerchantCircle.
Global SEO has its strategies as well. The first step to website marketing is to decide what market your business will serve. Start there and the rest can almost take care of itself.
If you’re used to doing a lot of offline marketing, or traditional marketing, then you’ve likely noticed that it has become quite expensive in the last few years. Oil prices have driven up the cost of paper and everything else. The economy taking a downturn has caused many businesses to stop advertising altogether, or diminish their marketing budgets.
But there is hope. Online marketing is less expensive and, if done right, is much more effective. That’s why so many businesses have transferred their marketing and advertising budgets to online.
Here are 5 online marketing methods that are outpacing their offline counterparts:
- Pay Per Click – Pay per click advertising is the online equivalent to some forms of print advertising. The difference is you pay only when a desired result takes place. It can be less expensive and deliver a higher ROI.
- Social Networking – Offline, you go to business functions. You often have to buy dinner, pay for transportation costs, business cards, and other incidentals. Online, you just show up. And talk to people. Make friends and contacts. Sell them stuff. The time commitment is higher, but it’s a lot easier on the budget.
- Video Marketing – Liken it to TV advertising. Do you really want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on 30-second spots that disappear with the money? Instead, pay for one video and it stays live online forever.
- Website Design – Call them online billboards. Just like outdoor advertising, you have a limited space – your prospect’s browser window. Unlike outdoor billboards, that space can be expanded. And you can build many websites for less than the cost of a handful of billboards.
- Search Engine Optimization – Sorry, but there is no offline equivalent to search engine optimization. Yet it’s still the most effective online marketing money can buy.
Try just one or incorporate them all into your marketing plans, but online marketing is where it’s at.
SEO is not Internet marketing. In fact, SEO is just one link in what is an ever growing chain of Internet marketing options. There are some online businesses that are quite profitable, yet they have not done any ounce of search engine optimization, they have the other links to be profitable. So what are those other ‘links’ in the chain? Here are a handful of marketing options that should keep you occupied for a while.
Pay-per-click advertising. There are many businesses that prefer the targeted traffic that comes from PPC advertising. It can be easy to measure your ROI, and you have complete control of your spending.
Social Media Marketing. There are some niches that are more suited to social media marketing than others. Some businesses can survive by attracting customers through social media rather than search.
Email Marketing. Newsletters have long been a popular channel for marketers. Email marketing has proven to be highly successful for some online businesses, particularly those that are catalog-based.
Offline Marketing. Large corporations still use traditional offline marketing strategies. Online businesses are now finding that some of these channels are well suited for promoting their online businesses.
Blogs. Blogs are certainly not dead. In fact, blogs are becoming a favorite place for many that are researching products and brands before making decisions on where to spend their money. Blogs are also an excellent way for your online business to connect with the social side of the web.
Businesses, both online and offline, that can harness all of those links in the Internet marketing chain are going from strength to strength. That doesn’t mean you need to utilize all of them, but if you can determine which of those options are best suited to your niche, you can focus your attention on building your presence and building your business – to success.
Viral marketing is a strategy that many business owners look at then shy away from. It is a difficult strategy and as we have mentioned frequently here, there are more failed attempts than successful. While it is an online phenomenon that you are hoping to achieve, that doesn’t mean there aren’t real world opportunities that you could take advantage of.
Consider what it is that makes a marketing strategy go viral. In simple terms, it is a snowballing process where each recipient passes it on to two or more of their friends. This could be an image, a video, or a page of written text. The concept is the same no matter the material. What is important is that it is real people who are the recipients, and where do you find ‘real’ people? In the real world!
Offline marketing can be cost effective, especially when compared to click through rates of banner and search advertising. The cost of a thousand pamphlets can be similar to the cost of a thousand ad impressions, yet conversion rates can be far higher. The key to creating a viral marketing campaign using real world marketing remains the same – the material must be worthy. There has to be value to everyone along the chain.
By encouraging others to first go online to experience your campaign and, secondly, to have them send the details to others can be hard. It can also be as simple as offering a free sample or trial. Online marketing is not restricted to the online world. Viral marketing is certainly not restricted to the online world. Have a look around and see whether or not there are real world opportunities to market your business. You never know, you may actually be introducing people to a new experience, not just dealing with you online, but doing business online for the first time – make it memorable for them.
Viral marketing – is it just for online marketers or can it take place off line as well?
Viral marketing is just another name for word of mouth. It can manifest itself in any number of ways, online or off line. For instance, online viral marketing can occur when a video grows popular because many people have bookmarked it or shared it with their friends. Maybe they sent the link by e-mail or they bookmarked it on their favorite social bookmarking site. Perhaps they favorited it on YouTube or shared the link on Twitter or Facebook. The fact that a lot of people shared the video in a short period of time means the video has gone “viral”.
This phenomenon takes place off line in the same way. Suppose you open up an ice cream shop in your neighborhood. On your first day of business you get only 10 customers. But all 10 of those customers tell five friends, each of whom visit your store the next day.
That’s 50 customers on day 2. But what if those 5 customers told 10 of their friends about your ice cream shop? They e-mailed their friends, called them on the phone, talked to them at church or school. Wherever they bumped into their friends, you were mentioned.
Now you have 510 people who know about your ice cream shop. On day three suppose that half of your first day customers came back to visit you again. And suppose 20% of your second day customers returned. Furthermore, suppose that half of the people they told about your shop came in as well. On day 3 of your shop you’d have 265 customers. Now you’re really growing!
Now, suppose those customers each told 5 of their friends about you. And they all came into your ice cream shop some time over the seven days. Getting the picture yet?
Viral marketing can, and often does, take place off line as well as online. The key is to provide a remarkable service, something that people will talk about. If you can do that then you’ll go viral, whether you are online or off line.
