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Companies are just starting to understand the value of integrated
marketing. It doesn't matter whether you have a product or
service to sell, taking a multi-channel approach will
dramatically improve the outreach to your target audience. It
will bring you more new customers and help you keep the
customers you already have.
Website Marketing
How does your website fit into your overall marketing
plan? For some companies, Internet marketing is separate
from offline marketing. Advertising, public relations,
telemarketing, direct marketing and sales promotions are all
considered separate from the Internet. If that is the case
at your company, it's time to take another look at the goals
of your marketing plan and put together an integrated
marketing plan.
One of the most common problems for small business owners
is that they do not look at their website as part of their
marketing plan; they think it "is" the marketing plan.
Because they have a website, they assume business will come
to them. They also believe that all they need is the right
search engine optimization to get high rankings with Google
and the website will be a success. Unfortunately, that is
not the case.
Get Real
Internet traffic continues to grow daily and millions of
websites are all competing for top ranking with Google. In
April 2006, the U.S. had over 315 million active home
Internet users looking for websites. How is your site going
to get some of that traffic? How are people going to know
your site even exists?
The sad truth is that business owners can not rely on
search engine optimization to bring in the traffic they
need. The Internet has just gotten too big. That's why
integrated marketing is the key to bringing in more
business.
Use Offline Marketing for Online Customers
The secret to increased website traffic is creating an
offline marketing campaign that drives traffic to your
website. For example, create an integrated marketing plan
using a combination of e-mail, postcards, and telephone
follow-up. According to the Direct Marketing Association's
2005 Response Rate Report, telephone follow-up increased the
response rate to direct mail; but e-mail increased the
response to both direct mail and the telephone.
Create Multi-Channel Relationships
Look at what some of the bigger companies are doing with
integrated marketing and you'll have a better idea of what
to do. Best Buy successfully creates multi-channel
relationships with its customers. Offline mailers encourage
customers to register on its website for special offers and
savings. The website, in turn, guides them to nearby stores
for local pickup of online purchases. Then Best Buy follows
up with promotional e-mails to continue cross-selling.
Small business owners may not have the money or manpower
to create big marketing campaigns like Best Buy, but they
can follow the leaders and learn from their successes. Pick
out some of the techniques you think would work for your
business and start implementing them.
Start simple, like giving people a reason to visit your
site. Did you know that visitors often come four to five
times to a website before they make a purchase? Each time
they come to a site, they are looking for change; something
to hold their interest. If you site never changes, why would
people come back?
Use an integrated marketing approach to motivate people
to come to your site and encourage them to keep coming back.
Here are some ideas for offline and online marketing
integration:
- On the homepage, have a box set aside for
information that is constantly changing and would be of
interest to your target audience.
- Create a special discount for online shoppers.
- Create a short/fun online quiz on the homepage.
- Create a short, online opinion poll survey on a hot
topic in your industry.
- Send out a postcard with a website address that
takes them to a special landing page to enter into a
contest.
- Send out a postcard to encourage people to sign-up
online for your newsletter.
- Send out a series of e-mail follow-up autoresponders
every time you sell a product.
- Through a postcard or e-mail, offer a free PDF
download on your site, of a white paper or report that
would be valuable to your target audience.
- Follow-up an online purchase with a phone call.
Nothing I've mentioned is beyond the reach of the small
business owner. Take a look at your marketing efforts and see
what you can do now to change over to an integrated marketing
approach. Discover how easy it is to improve website performance
without search engine optimization.
© 2006 Michelle Howe
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