Internet Marketing on a Budget

15/04/09

The Internet has evolved into one of the most cost effective marketing tools of recent times.  For some it may still seem like an alien world, but once you’ve got your head round the basics it’s fairly straight-forward.  Reaching both a local and a global audience it can help build your profile, generate sales and enhance customer relationships.

So what is internet marketing?  In simple terms it’s about engaging with customers through the internet and includes tactics such as website development, search engine marketing, online PR and email marketing.   In a tough economic climate, marketing activity is often the first to be scrutinised, and internet marketing allows companies to focus on reaching customers cost effectively and in a highly measurable way.

Leon Streete, IT Innovation Consultant at IT Futures provides some guidance on how small and medium sized businesses can make their internet marketing budgets go further.

At the most basic level it is important to maximise the opportunities within your own website.  It needs to be attractive to customers, easy to navigate and, at a minimum, contain crucial information such as an overview of the company, your products and stockists, and your contact details.  Having a content management system which allows simple updating is another consideration when developing a site.  Other simple resources on your site that may keep customers coming back on a regular basis are up to date news, promotions, articles and a blog.

Once you’re happy with your website’s look and feel, the next step is to encourage visitors. You can start by simply ensuring that your website address is listed on all your company literature, including business cards, email sign-off, brochures and merchandise. Then move onto search engine marketing (SEM), which promotes websites by increasing visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) thereby increasing the likelihood that your website will be visited.  One of the most common techniques is search engine optimization (SEO). This involves, first editing your content and HTML coding to increase its relevance to specific keywords and then building links to your website.   To gain an insight into keywords, we recommend using Google Adwords keyword tool.

Businesses should sign up for a free Google Account.  Google offers a whole host of beneficial tools including, Google Adwords, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.  These can help to decide on keywords, analyse traffic to and improve indexing of your website.

Your business may benefit from blogs (or weblog) – literally a journal or diary that is posted on the Internet. More and more businesses are discovering the benefits of blogging as an informal corporate tool for sharing a company’s expertise, building additional web traffic and connecting with potential customers. Blogs can be static text or use technologies such as podcasts – downloadable audible stories – or vodcasts (videos), which are both easy to create and are more engaging than plain text. The most important things to note are that once a blog has been started you must be committed to maintaining it and blogs should where possible re-use a company’s most important keywords.  

The trend of the moment is microblogging tool Twitter, which companies can use to raise their profile and to communicate with a wide audience for free. It basically provides an easy method to link back to a website and alert ‘followers’ to news items and company updates.

Closely related to blogs are online articles and press releases.  By using your keywords, and active links and placing the articles on good quality article sites or even better media outlets, such as trade magazines or national newspapers, then a company can gain valuable links back to its website and wider spread distribution of its name.

Using social networking sites such as LinkedIn can also help to extend a company’s contacts.  With participation in expert forums and answering other users’ questions, companies can drive more traffic to their websites.  

Internet advertising, such as Pay Per Click via Google Adwords, work in the same way as traditional print adverts with the added benefit that the results can be monitored in real-time and can be targeted to the viewer’s interests. For example, if a user searches for holidays, they’ll see adverts for car hire, travel insurance etc.  Advertising on the internet can be extremely cost effective as websites commonly charge a fixed price per click so that the user only pays when the advert is clicked. The ability to monitor results means you can measure how effective an ad placement is and whether it results in a conversion or sale.

Email marketing is the web version of direct mail.  There are numerous formats including:  sending newsletters to existing customers to encourage loyalty; targeting new customers via email; and adding advertisements to email communications sent by other complementary companies. For example, an email from a hardware manufacturer could include advertisements from software or service companies.

Finally, successful internet marketing campaigns can be achieved for very little cost and offer numerous benefits to companies of all sizes.  As a marketing tactic it should be embraced rather than feared.  Internet Marketing should be part of all SME company’s marketing strategies and whether it is managed in-house or via an external agency, it is one of the most effective means of reaching a wide audience and will assist in successfully growing your business online.

List of useful websites

Google Account: https://google.com/accounts

Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Adwords: https://adwords.google.co.uk/

Google Adwords Keyword Tool:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Google Website Guidelines: http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Free Blog Software: Word Press: http://wordpress.org/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/ (Social Marketing)

Ezine: http://ezinearticles.com/ (Article submissions)

Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/ (Article submissions)

Ranks: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html (keyword research)

About IT Futures

IT Futures is an IT consultancy which provides independent advice, training and consultancy to small and medium sized businesses to help them adopt, and get the most out of e-business technologies. Funded by Advantage West Midlands ICT Cluster, IT Futures has worked on a number of projects assisting businesses in the region. Currently partnering with Business Link West Midlands in delivering the IT Advisory Service pilot, IT Futures can help businesses with producing specifications before they go to tender.

Leon Streete is the IT Innovation Consultant at IT Futures, based at the University of Wolverhampton, specializing in helping businesses understand how ICT can improve business operations.

Leon has a vast amount of experience working with small and medium sized businesses having led a range of IT projects in both the public and private sector. His areas of expertise include: web development, content management systems (CMS), e-Commerce and customer relationship management (CRM) as well as online marketing (including SEO).

IT Futures run a number of training events and workshops across the West Midlands covering popular aspects of e-Business.