Online marketing seems to be creating buzz, lots of it. Marketing directors seem to be scratching their heads, they know how powerful a tool it is, but, do not know just how it can be implemented to their current projects. What I'm going to do today is layout the benefits and disadvantages of using particular on-line marketing methods. the two main SEM also known as search engine marketing solutions are SEO and PPC. I am also going to throw Email marketing into the mix as it has its place in any marketing plan.
SEO Marketing SEO or search engine optimization is my favorite form of on-line marketing, mainly because of its cost and conversion factor. A website at number one position, in a quality search engine can expect to attract approximately 50% of the clicks for a search term that they are ranking for. So if a term is searched for 1000 times a month, a good estimate is that, your page ranked number one will get approximately 500 clicks a month. With a good conversion rate of 3% (depending on how well your site converts) you could expect 15 new customers per month. Not bad eh !, what would 15 new customers per month, every month how could this improve your business.
SEO Benefits
- Once implemented correctly is cost effective
- Improves with time
- Highly targeted & qualified leads
SEO Disadvantages
- Takes time to get to its full potential
- Needs consistent input to be successful
- Can only target a few phrases per page
Pay Per Click Marketing Pay Per Click is the best way to gain traffic quickly, you can launch a website on Monday morning and have targeted traffic on your site by Monday afternoon. With a little research PPC can be very lucrative way of gaining visitors. The downside of PPC is that you have to pay a small (sometimes large) amount of money each and every time someone clicks on your advert. The rule of thumb is, you need to spend less on the clicks then the profit you can make.PPC Benefits
- Fast, very fast way of gaining traffic
- You can target a larger set of keywords or phrases
- Detailed click through statistics enabling you to fine tune your campaign
PPC disadvantages
- Cost
- PPC, click through rates are around 6 times less then organic search results
Email marketing Email marketing, in the past, got a lot of bad press. With its affiliation with spam and people receiving a lot of unsolicited emails. Email marketing can be an extremely powerful tool when implemented correctly. Email marketing has to be permission based (at least have a way of un-subscribing if you're working from a broken list). People do not like receiving email that prescribes that they are interested in your product.
The correct way to start an email marketing campaign Build an opt in list, you do this by getting people to subscribe to your newsletter via your website. As a hook you could offer them something for free. Do not just email your list with sales copy give them something of value, like information to help there business. If you are going to include marketing for your service make sure it is relevant to your target audience. If they do not want to continue receiving your newsletter give them a clear way of un-subscribing