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Internet Marketing Ideas
Broadcast your email
address like a phone number.
Collect email addresses.
Correspond with
customers and prospects by email.
Join email lists
for information.
Broadcast your
web site like a phone number.
Entice customers
and prospects to visit your web site again.
Use your web
site for sales and customer service.
The most commonly used Internet marketing tools are email and the
World Wide Web. They open up entirely new "virtual locations"
for you to market, promote and sell your products and services.
Some ideas about how to integrate email and web marketing strategies
into your overall marketing strategy follow.
Email Marketing Ideas
Broadcast your email address like a
phone number. (And be sure to respond promptly to emails!)
- Include your email address on your business cards, brochures
and letterhead. Include it anytime you list your phone number.
- Add your email address to all of your press releases and press
materials.
- If, and only if, you have an actively maintained email address
for customer service or technical assistance, include it on your
product packaging.
- List your business name and email address on the web sites of
any relevant Chambers of Commerce.
- Include your email address in your Yellow Pages ad. In fact,
include your email address in all appropriate advertisements.
Collect email addresses.
- If you have a web site, ask customers for email address in your
"online guest book."
- Offer to use email to deliver information to customers and prospects
such as price lists, product facts, etc. when appropriate.
- Collect email addresses at conferences and trade shows. Give
yours out, too!
- Build an email database for future mailings. Include valuable
demographic information in your database that will allow you to
segment and target your email messages.
Correspond with customers and prospects
by email.
- Send follow-up emails to purchasers of your products or services.
Thank them for their business and let them know how to reach you
by email.
- Send holiday greetings to customers and prospects on email.
- Send email to promptly follow up with contacts made at conferences
and trade shows.
- Create a "group" of customers' email addresses so
you can send an email with news of your business to all of them
at once without having all of the individual addresses displayed
on the email header for all recipients to see. Most email software
applications will provide you with instructions for creating a
group in your address book.
Join discussion groups and newsgroups
both to learn and to represent your business.
- Join a group focused on the topic of marketing on the Internet
to stay abreast of current ideas and trends in this everchanging
industry. And, by joining groups that your customers participate
in, you will have the opportunity to soft-sell by representing
yourself as knowledgeable and accessible to your customer base.
Discussion groups, also known as mailing lists, are groups
of individuals with a common interest who have subscribed to
a mailing list. Each subscriber has the ability to ask, answer,
and voice opinions by sending an e-mail message to the entire
subscriber base.
Newsgroups differ from discussion groups in their format
of being public bulletin boards, instead of subscriber-based
mailing lists. Newsgroups are formed around a common interest,
are open to anyone, and can be searched. Newsgroups can be found
at
Web Site Marketing Ideas
Broadcast your web
site like a phone number.
- Include your web address on all printed material
(brochures, stationery, business cards, press materials, etc.).
- Include your web address in your email
signature file.
- Include your web address in your Yellow Pages
listing and in other advertisements.
Entice customers and
prospects to visit your web site again and again.
- Update your site regularly.
- Add new features to your web site periodically.
- Revise your site's "META tags" to make
it easier for search engines to find. (Your web site developer
can embed codes that the search engines use when indexing your
web page.)
- Offer Internet specials, such as discounts for
orders placed online.
- Post humor on your web site (as long as it's
in alignment with your company's image) and change it regularly.
- Host a message board on your web site with customer
comments and questions.
- Add small photos on opening pages that expand
to full-size pictures only when clicked. (This saves loading time.)
- Tailor your choice of web features to your target
market–just like you would with any other form of communication.
- Avoid placing links that take viewers out of
your web site too soon. (Don't lose them before they've had a
chance to learn about your business!)
- Regularly view your competitors' web sites. Learn
from what they do right and from their mistakes.
Use your site for sales and customer
service.
- Use "shopping cart" software that allows
customers to shop and order online. The software also provides
instant feedback of total costs, including tax amounts, to your
online customers.
- Have a secure web site for Internet sales.
- Provide a street map to your business location
on the Web. (Customers can print it out.) If you have multiple
locations, find a way to let customers know which location is
most convenient for them.
- Provide forms on your web page that can be completed
and submitted online for customers' convenience. (If inquiries
are allowed in the forms, respond to them promptly! Most web users
expect a response within 24 hours.)
- Create a link to your email on every page in
your web site. That way, if something on the page sparks a customer's
response, you've made it easy for them to "talk" to
you.
- Make sure your customers can find you by searching
with keywords. Check how easy it is to locate your site using
various search engines.
- Check your web site using various versions of
browsers and types of computers to be sure it loads quickly and
correctly. Get business associates and friends to access your
site and tell you how it looks.
- Provide a variety of ways for online customers
to contact you: by email, phone (800 number), fax and mail. Do
this because some customers may contact you using an employer's
or friend's online access initially, but that customer might not
have ongoing online access of her own.
- Offer an online newsletter. This could be an
electronic version of a printed newsletter you already publish,
something entirely different, or a combination of the two.
- Host a message board for potential customers.
- Feature some interesting history or suggestions
about your area of business.
- Offer to include photos sent by your customers
showing them using your business.
- Create a sense of family among your web page
readers.
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