Category: Business People

Does Web Marketing Work for You?

Know if…

Determining whether or not your Web marketing campaign is working for you is a very important part of the advertising process. The reason it’s considered so important is because while there is a great deal of Web marketing which can be done without the customary excessive costs that accompany traditional methods of advertising or other types of Web marketing that have similar high costs associated with them. Also, in both cases there is a time and energy cost factor that goes along with orchestrating your Web marketing campaigns.

For these reasons it is important for you and fellow business owners to continuously evaluate your marketing techniques and strategies for the purpose of determining what is working and what is not. Doing so will also help you focus your efforts on marketing strategies that are providing positive results as opposed to those which are either not providing results at all or providing only lackluster results.

This article will examine proven methods and other steps business owners can take to evaluate the effectiveness of their Web marketing campaigns.

Method 1

Affiliate marketing is certainly one of the most cost-effective Web marketing strategies available, because it is a marketing strategy that involves having other website owners (publishers) known as affiliates post one or more product-specific or merchant-specific advertisement(s) on their websites to direct Web traffic to particular merchants’ websites. This marketing strategy is cost-effective because in most cases the affiliate is only paid when he produces a desired result such as enticing a Web user to click through the advertisement or to purchase a product or service once they click through the ad.

However, pursuant to the merchant-affiliate agreement(s), while the business owner is only paying for advertisement when it produces a desired effect, it is still worthwhile to evaluate the effectiveness of these ads to determine whether or not they are working well, or working better than alternative advertising methods or strategies. Fortunately affiliate marketing ads have a natural feedback mechanism which makes it easy to evaluate how well the ad is working. This feedback is provided in the form of unique code embedded in the advertisement that specifies which affiliate generated the website visitors.

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Method 1 findings

Information recieved via embedded code is provided for the purposes of issuing payment to affiliates but it can also provide the business owner (merchant) with useful information on which affiliate ads are the most effective. This information is especially useful when the affiliates are posting various different ads. The business owner may conclude that ads posted by the more successful affiliates are more appealing to potential customers and may opt to use this style of ad for all of their affiliates.

Method 2

Business owners who use Web marketing strategies such as posting on message boards to promote their business might want to consider asking customers to complete a short survey when making a purchase. This survey can include useful demographic information which is always helpful for marketing as well as information regarding where the customer learned of specific products or services offered by such merchants.

Customers including a message board web address as one of the responses will provide you a useful indication of whether or not the message boards are helping to drive customers to the merchant’s website. You, as a business owner may also have some unofficial feedback in terms of the response to your postings on a given message board. If the general consensus is in support of your posts, you may infer that some interest in your business or website have been generated through the use of this strategy.

Evaluation

Finally, a Web marketing strategy can be evaluated by studying website traffic results as well as sales receipts; and anytime you implement a new Web marketing strategy or technique it is a worthwhile task to the time and study your website traffic reports and sales receipts carefully to determine whether or not there is a spike in traffic or sales immediately after the marketing effort.

For example, if you send out an e-newsletter to those who have requested additional information about your products or services, you may notice there is an increase in traffic or sales soon afterwards. This is a good indication that the e-newsletter was well received and is an effective strategy. However, if there is not a marked increase in traffic or sales subsequent to the e-newsletter it indicates the marketing effort was not effective.

Web Presence Vis-a-Vis Web Marketing

Business

Will you join me in a little exercise? Take a moment and consider how you would answer this question: Are you already marketing on the Web? If you really think about it, just about any business owner who utilizes the Web for any purpose will likely find that, whether or not s/he intentionally organized a Web marketing campaign, s/he may already be marketing products and services on the Web. This article will examine some subtle ways business owners may already be marketing their businesses on the Web even if they did not set out to.

Let’s begin with your website as it is most probable that if you own and operate a business in today’s world you probably have a website for your business; and if so you are, therefore, already marketing your products or services online just by virtue of the fact that you have a website online.

This is true because the mere fact of having a live website means there is the potential for curious Web surfers to access that site. And although you may not be actively engaged in promotional activities, you may still find that it creates interest in your products despite the lack of sustained marketing efforts on your part. Such activity without effort is known as passive marketing.

SEO

Another area of participation without promotional intent is commonly known as message boards, and if you participate in such an online venue and put a link in your signature that leads back to your website, you would be considered by most to be marketing that website online. Savvy business owners realize the importance of participation in industry-related message boards to create an interest in their products and services, thereby establishing themselves as knowledgeable about, or expert in, their industry by offering a link to their own website, even if it is in the signature line of information they provide in their posts.

In fact, even business owners who do not realize it, may already be inadvertently enjoying the benefits of Web marketing as a result of message board participation simply just by doing something they enjoy as a form of leisurely activity.

You’ve heard of, and probably are knowledgeable in, the use of keywords in the sense that when you include keywords in the content of your website that are relevant to your business you will likely answer yes to the question, do you use keywords? And in view of that answer you also are, therefore, already marketing on the Web by optimizing your website for such keywords. Search engine optimization (SEO) have an affect on websites whether or not website owners are even cognizant about the concept of keyword density and how it can help to optimize a site for the benefit of search engines.

Business owners will likely use certain words – often depending on the type of products and services they offer – simply because it is natural and logical to do so. This tendency, however, can result in search engines boosting their website rankings for the particular keywords used. The concept of SEO is much more involved and complex than employing the frequent use of keywords, though; but business owners can gain some benefit just by naturally applying relevant keywords to their website.

Feedback

Do you solicit feedback from your customers online? This is yet another example of how business owners may accidentally be marketing their business on the Web. Most business owners realize the importance of soliciting feedback from customers for business purposes, and business owners who offer products online might solicit feedback in the form of online surveys. Although the business owners may be doing this simply for business purposes, the fact that it is done online, puts it into the category of Web marketing.

We have discussed several ways in which business owners may already be marketing online but, what about business owners who do want to have an increased online presence? If you are a business owner who may already be marketing online accidentally and wish to launch full scale Web marketing campaigns, you can do so by hiring a consultant with experience in Web marketing to assist you in creating an effective and worthwhile campaign which is optimized for your target audience. Best of luck!