eMarketing – Building websites that work faster!

The term “eMarketing” includes all aspects of the promotion of your company, brand, website, products or services that occur via the Internet. eMarketing has become a favored form of advertising because of its relatively low cost and high return on investment.

Without eMarketing your website may be buried among millions of others. eMarketing brings attention to your brand, products and services, and delivers new visitors to your website.

Since each company’s needs are different, we create customized eMarketing plans for each individual client. Some considerations include length of time on the Internet, competition, brand character, target market, budget, and goals.

Here are brief descriptions of some of the more popular elements of eMarketing:

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is one of the most cost effective forms of advertising because it places your brand, products and services in front of consumers while they are in the buying cycle. There are two basic forms of Search Engine Marketing: Organic Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click advertising.

Organic Search Engine Optimization (OSEO)

Search Engines, such as Google, are computer programs that match the word or phrase that you type into the search box, to its vast index of catalogued websites.

The two most important factors in effective OSEO are understanding what search engines can “see” on a website, and how they determine ranking, ie: the order in which results are listed.

Key factors in how the search engines rank your website are its design and the text that appears on each page of your site. The old tricks that used to work don’t work anymore, so it’s best to use a professional firm to ensure that your best intentions don’t end up lowering your ranking instead of raising it.

Pay Per Click Advertising

(PPC) When Google, for example, returns a list of results for a search, it will often also display “Sponsored Links” above and to the right of the main results. These links are in fact advertisements. They are called “Pay Per Click” advertisements because the advertiser only pays a fee when someone clicks on the ad and is directed to the advertiser’s website.

The fee for such advertising is determined by an ongoing auction for keywords and phrases. If the keyword is very popular and there are many different companies bidding on it, the PPC rate can be quite high. If the keywords are specific enough though to clearly distinguish what you offer from other similar web sites, the PPC rate can be very low.

PPC is an especially successful form of advertising because it enables the bidder, through careful keyword selection, to identify the portion of your target audience with the greatest buying potential. The most expensive keywords are by no means the best producing keywords, for you. For example, to a business that specializes in the sale of Custom Contact Lenses, the keywords “contact lenses,” although technically applicable, are not nearly as preferable as “colored contact lenses” or “custom contact lenses”; as users searching for “colored contact lenses” are not simply looking for contact lenses, but are specifically looking for colored contact lenses, hoping to find an online retailer that is ready to sell them this product.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a technique that takes advantage of our natural inclination to share things that we love, hate, or find outrageous. It is the digital equivalent of “word of mouth,” using the Internet and wireless technology rather than face to face personal communication.

There are many forms and variations of viral marketing including text based jokes or stories, photographs, videos, and specially prepared interactive websites. Viral Marketing is NOT spam or junk mail. Rather than the seller sending out thousands of unwanted emails, Viral Marketing leaves the sending to the audience, who share the information with personal acquaintances that they believe would share their interest in the product or presentation.

Viral Marketing techniques have been used by major corporations as well as up and comers, and are particularly useful for launching new campaigns.

Other Forms of Marketing and Advertising

Depending on your target market, it may be beneficial to use some forms of more traditional marketing and advertising to supplement your eMarketing campaign.

Business cards and brochures, for example, remain as fairly standard marketing collateral. Print and radio advertising may be useful for branding or to launch a new product, service, or website.

In addition to their eMarketing expertise, iias offers the services of a professional marketing consultant to work with you to develop marketing plans and advertising campaigns that integrate web and non-web strategies for maximum results.

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