Revisiting Internet Marketing Basics
Internet marketing is altogether different ballgame than what most think. There is no doubt about it.
Here I would cover five basic marketing subjects:
- Market Research
- Search Engines (SEO/SEM)
- Paid Price comparison engines
- Email Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
Market Research: This is the most basic part of any marketing campaign one undertakes. This involves budgeting, how much you are going to invest in the campaigns and where you are going to invest. Investing the right money at right place is the key. If you don’t know your target market and how to reach them; if you don’t know the value of the message you’re attempting to convey; if you don’t know the answer to all the pertinent questions…your advertising and the whole project is bound to fail.
The most basic step in researching your market is to first have a “target.” There should be a clear picture in your mind about the target audience and you should treat them as your potential customers. This means you know who you’re aiming for (their likes, dislikes, general age group, income, business type, etc.) and have a general idea how to “hit” them. Sample target markets would include:
This includes the segregation based on
- Age group
- Qualification
- Per capita income
- Spending capacity
- Geographical location
- Business class
- Technocrats
Primary research is research conducted by the primary user of the information.
Secondary research is gathered elsewhere and used by you (purchased, leased, etc.).
Most small businesses conduct both of these types of market research – customer surveys for primary information and by researching free or paying fees for secondary information. This is called “Combined” research.
Qualitative research is usually exploratory and has a direction or goal. It generally aims at specific issues in the subject matter and gives you a better idea in which direction you should proceed. This type of research is “loose” and is geared more towards finding a market or narrowing your market than it is towards getting specific information on that market and where your product fits within it.
Quantitative is much more rigid than qualitative marketing. This research gets much more accurate statistical results and information and is best used when your target market is already narrowed and you wish to find ways to reach or explore that market as well as find specific information on your product as it relates to that market.
Generally businesses conduct qualitative research during the exploratory research and development phase of their product to see if it is viable on the market and what they need in order to reach their market more fully with the product (colors, shapes, uses, etc.). Once the item is ready to hit the streets, qualitative research is used to fine-tune the market niche and begin offering the product for sale.
Conducting your own market research is time-consuming, but is very well worth it if you have a need for information or if you are spending any considerable amount of money on your marketing for specific products or services.
Search Engine Marketing:
This has, for a long time now, been a “hot phrase” in online marketing circles. I’m not sure why, since while it is generally an important part of a presence online, it is not the end-all-be-all of marketing on the Internet.
Search Engines have become one of the most expensive forms of advertising on the Web, but have also become one of the most effective.
Great search engine marketing (read: placement, strategy, etc.) is done by professionals and takes a lot of time to do correctly. One need lot of patience and right skill to get very good returns, which it is capable of giving. This again is divided into two – Organic search engine optimization and Search engine Marketing – SEM (Pay per click etc).
Search directories (Yahoo! ) and engines (Google) require a lot of patience to market effectively. Even if you are paying for your listing, it can take weeks to appear on their site. Further, your positioning on their site can change regularly and sometimes drastically as their indexes change based on the crawls by the automated software robots designed by search engines or they change the rules of “ranking” on searches. On top of all of that you have paid advertisements and paid listings (see PPC below) that can usurp your position or push you further down in the results.
Pay Per Click (PPC) are much easier to use, but also more expensive and complex in implementation. A campaign on Google Adwords, for example, can total hundreds of dollars in a single day and wipe out your bank balance in a day, if not set properly. These engines, however, can usually get you a higher listing on a regular search engine (such as Google!) much faster and with steadier results. Google Adwords is one more example in this category. This approach should be taken when the site is a new site, there is no brand name associated with the website. This gives instant traffic to any website and which in turn increases popularity of the site among the affiliates who are in constant search for the god affiliate program websites. Here I would like to point out that the SEM and SEO are not complementary. In an effective strategy, they should supplement each other.
Whichever course you take (I would recommend both if you’re serious about search engine marketing), be prepared to spend a lot of time and a goodly amount of money in your endeavor. A listing at Yahoo! directory, for example, is $300/year and the average per-click cost on Google Adwords can vary from $0.05 to $20 or more, depending on the category and competition.
Paid Price comparison engines:
Paid price comparison engines have gained lot of prominence in recent years. They are used extensively for B2C website and they can be very good tool to sell your products.
Some good examples are amazon, nextag, dealtime, kelkoo, pricerunner , pricegrabber etc
Price comparison engines comes with their drawbacks too, they are like double edged swords. One side they give platform to compete with others, other side they give opportunity to real users to vent out their anger about the suppliers for the lapses in service, if any. These engines have rating mechanisms, reviewing mechanisms which are actively updated based on real user experience. One must consider these as a great tool, but only after tying all loose ends of the website they wish to promote.
These engines also take feeds from the affiliate networks too (linkshare, affiliate window, CJ, tradedoubler etc) in order to generate revenue on per click basis.
Email Marketing:
Marketing online using email is a touchy affair and can easily lead to many problems. Despite this, it is used by many / almost all advertisers as one of the form of advertising online.
There are three types of email marketing: SPAM/UCE, opt-in, and newsletter marketing.
SPAM/UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is something that everyone, whether savvy online or not, has heard of. The word SPAM has risen from “questionable meat in a can” to “plague of the Internet” in the past three or four years. Despite its bad name – and any personal feelings I may have about it – SPAM is a very effective form of email advertising. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t exist. Doing it correctly, however, is expensive and requires much thought – using it even just once can affect your business for better or worse for the duration of your time online.
Opt-In email advertising is extremely effective and carries very little of the weight of SPAM marketing. The idea is pretty basic: you create a list of email addresses and send marketing messages to them occasionally. The hard part is getting those names to start with. Usually other forms of advertising get your website going and this type propels it forward.
Newsletter marketing is similar to opt-in marketing, but includes useful information such as articles or insights. In fact, you’re probably reading this article through a newsletter that is being used to market a business of some type or another. Newsletters can be time-consuming, but are well worth the effort. Some newsletter publishers supplement their income by running advertisements in their publications (see “newsletter marketing” above).
Email marketing, if not used properly or not target oriented, it creates dent in brand value.
Affiliate Marketing:
This is a marketing practice where an participating affiliate is given a commission, a gift or a reward for generating an action for the Advertiser / Merchant. Here an affiliate is free to market the product or service of any advertiser (agreeing to terms and condition of advertiser) through any more. So the marketing efforts by an affiliate can overlap the marketing efforts deployed by the advertiser. An affiliate can use content, UGC, SEO, SEM, email marketing etc to generate sales for advertiser.
There are many professionally managed affiliate networks which give an excellent platform to advertisers to tie up with affiliates (publishers). Some example includes CommissionJunction.com, linkshare.com, tradedoubler.com, affiliatewindow.com
Subscribing to affiliate network is a costly affair as the initial setup cost is a lot. This ensures that the good players are in market and the returns are really excellent as its CPA (cost per action) model.
Conclusion
Advertising online is a very time-consuming affair, but essential to your success. If you don’t advertise, your business will fail. There are no exceptions to this rule. Some form of advertising takes place for every business type without exception. Marketing requires thought, time, and effort to succeed but as an essential part of your business, it’s directly related to your rewards at the end of the day!
