Other Online Marketing Tactics
Online Marketing offers great potential for any business. Even if you reach only a small local area, you can use online marketing to develop closer relationships with your customers and begin to dominate your market. As more and more people use the internet this becomes more powerful.
And things change all the time.
Just a few short years ago, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all the other Social Networking sites were just for kids. But now they've become powerful tools for reaching out to your exiting customers and connecting with new ones.
Relationship Building Tactics On Your Website
In today's economy everyone understands how important a customer is. Developing and enhancing the relationship with your customers just makes good business sense.
If you've ever calculated the Lifetime Value of your customers then you know that today, it's more important than ever to keep them close to you. Acquiring a customer is one thing, but making sure they come back is just as important.
Your website can play an important role in this process. Sure you want to brand yourself and share your strengths on your website, but a it's also an important opportunity to create greater credibility and trust for you. If you can provide helpful information, coupons and promotions they will begin to look to you as a resource. In these difficult times they can really appreciate that kind of relationship.
If you can become a "solution provider" in their eyes then they'll think of you first when they have a problem.
The following are all tactics we can help you implement on your website to build a relationship with your customers.
Lead/Email Capture
When someone visits your website one of your main Most Wanted Responses should be to get their email address. Once you have their email address you can begin to build your relationship with them through periodic "newsletters" where you share helpful information and let them know about specials and promotions.
This is one of the most underused tactics with online marketing.
And with today's email programs there's lots of ways to respond once they've provided that email address.
- You can send them an immediate link to a special "thank you" page on your site where you offer special promotions or coupons
- You can send them a series of timed emails automatically that they receive once-a-week or once-a-month with new offers or just helpful information
- You can provide "insider" information about the product or service you have in common. This type of "educational" marketing create credibility and trust for you
- You can send them a regular monthly newsletter where you share new promotions and coupons, as well as more helpful information.
Add A Blog
A Blog is different than a static website. A Bog can help you interact with your customers. They can ask questions and you can answer. Again this builds credibility and trust for you.
And a simple WordPress Blog is not something that requires any special technical skills. Once it's set up, using it is as easy as using any word processor or email program.
Create A Poll
Want to know what your customers think? Ask them in a poll.
Electronic website polls are easy to add and will give you valuable feedback on your products and services or just what your customers are thinking about.
These tactics to help a website make it to the first page of Google are called Search Engine Optimization. Anyone who has a website has become aware that SEO is an important part of building a website properly. Of course, if you have a site that is on page 2000 in Google's listings then you may be painfully aware.
Add Tracking To Your Website
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One of the major advantages of Online Marketing is everything can be tracked. You don't have to guess where a visitor came from. With proper tracking installed, you can not only find out exactly where that customer came from, but where they go on your site and exactly what happened when they got to your sales or contact page.
You can even set up testing so you know which page layout, headline, or sales copy works best. Yes, online marketing is a wonderful thing.
All this tracking information must be analyzed however. What does it mean that someone left a particular page, or responded positively to an offer or link. This is where knowing your market, and learning more all the time, becomes important. If you can understand your Sales Cycle, the path someone needs to travel before they buy, you can being to streamline and optimize your marketing tools to help them in this process.
Using Social Networking Sites
One of the latest and most powerful developments is the explosion of Social Networking sites. You can't go any place without hearing about, or seeing links to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
But joining these groups require a gentle hand. Most people go there because they feel that they will be among friends and not bombarded with sales info. If you plan to market there, be sure you offer plenty of helpful worthwhile info. Otherwise you be "de-friended" very quickly.
Create A Video
With most people having fast Internet connections these days, the opportunity to use video is for real. Video as a marketing tool is exploding on the web. Nothing creates credibility faster than getting to meet a business owner "in person" on your website.
Now were not talking about Hollywood quality here. All you need is a "reality TV" level video to get the job done. People just want to feel your sincerity and genuiness and then they will feel much better about doing business with you.
And you can also "leverage" that video by not only putting it on your own site but by putting it on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and the many other video sharing sites that are poping up.
Traffic Building Tactics
Yes, building a relationship is the most important thing you can do with a website. But you can't have a relationship until you have a customer first. So getting people to your website is the first step in getting them to become a customer.
Beyond Search Engine Optimization
Well actually, this is still part of advanced SEO but most people think of SEO as being what you do on your site to make your site "search engine friendly."
Actually, there's many, many things you can do "off-site" that are critical for building traffic. And these tactics not only bring you traffic directly but they also make your site look better in Google's eyes, so they will give you higher rankings on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Links into your site from other "authority" sites help convince Google that your site is worthy of being listed highly. So these tactics will bring some (not a lot) of direct traffic but they will also add to your "link popularity" which is a critical long range traffic building tactic. It may take many months to see the effects. But eventually the work will be worth it.
Social Media Sites
Participating in site like Facebook, YouTube, HubPages, LinkedIn, Squidoo, Scribed, eZineArticles, and many others allow you to add links to your site. These links are seen by Google, as well as potential customers, and eventually will effect your PageRank with Google.
Craig's List
Advertising on Craig's List is a good way to advertise for free but also to get more backlinks.
eBay Branded Store
Anyone can create their own store on eBay. This may not be appropriate for some businesses, but if you've got hard goods to sell, this can definitely help.
Feeder Sites
Small mini sites, optimized around your main keywords, can be a great source of new customers, back links and, if you put an email capture on the sites, you grow your email list too.
An AdzZoo Local Online Marketing Campaign
Of course if you want to jump-start your traffic and also find customers at the exact time they are ready to buy, then an AdzZoo Campaign is the fastest way to grow your business. For as little as $119.95 per month, or less than $5 per day, you can be on the first page of Google. To learn more about AdzZoo click here.
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