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In today s digital era, e-marketing has no doubt become one
of the more prominent business approaches used by many enterprises
in their brand building and revenue driving efforts. With
the help of various electronic and conventional marketing
tools that function as "facilitators" of e-marketing efforts,
e-marketers are now able to play an "active" role in making
their websites be known and recognized, as well as keeping
the sites "interactive" to drive repeat traffic.
Be Active!
E-marketers should be active in promoting their websites online
and making it possible for potential customers to differentiate
and easily locate their websites amongst the millions available
on the Internet. In so doing, e-marketers should learn how
to best opitimize the potentials of search engines. Since
a vast majority of consumers uses search engines to locate
and retrieve information on products/services, you should
make sure your site continues to rank high on the search engine
list through pervasive use of keywords throughout your site
and meta tags, and by obtaining links to your site from other
credible sources.
In addition to search engines, you can develop offline tie-in
to attract and retain visitors. Every aspect of advertising
and promotion - including ads, brochures, flyers, newsletters
and e-mail - and offline activities - such as affiliate programs
or in-store promotions - should include online details or
relate to online activities. For example, a promotion that
offers free gift to those who post a comment on your website,
or discount coupons that can be printed out for use with actual
purchases in store.
Be Interactive!
Apart from external factors like search engines and offline
tie-in, there are also various e-marketing tools that can
help make the site more interactive, thus encouraging customer
loyalty and positive word of mouth. Such tools include
polls - to put e-marketers in direct contact with existing
and prospective customers, weblogs and message boards
- to create a friendly community among members, "Q&A"
or "Ask the Expert" facility - to reinforce market leadership
and expertise, contests - to draw traffic and encourage
word-of-mouth, e-newsletters - to contribute to customer
relationship management efforts, online customer service
- to ensure customer s satisfaction, and surveys -
to create dialogue with customers.
To succeed in web marketing, you have to keep your website
interesting and devise new ways by which to interact with
customers. Online initiatives could be done in synchronization
with offline methods to achieve maximum benefits, expand customer
base, draw traffic to the website, increase sales, and bring
about business success.
To stay ahead of competition, marketers must learn how
to best optimize the potentials of both novel online and traditional
offline marketing channels. These two distinct channels can
be integrated to form a powerful alternative for marketers
to implement one-way communication through the provision of
information regarding the company or products/services, but
also create a two-way communication whereby customers can
interact with the company (i.e. customer feedback), thus promoting
a stronger brand-customer relationship.
In order for companies to sustain their competitive advantage
now and into the future, they must act now or risk being left
behind.
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