Effective Online Marketing Strategies Online marketing, also known as Internet marketing, web marketing, or e-marketing is a method that uses the internet as a medium of marketing. Since the emergence of the 'world wide web' in the 90s, the idea of online selling caught on, and today online marketing has pervaded the world of marketing. The internet serves as an effective medium for targeting a global market. However, the efficiency of this medium depends on the type of marketing strategy you choose. An effective strategy is the one that gives you a higher return on your investment by increasing your sales. There are many strategies to increase the visibility of your products and services, by increasing viewership or traffic to your website. However, traffic without any conversion or sale is of no use. Hence, one needs to use a combination of strategies that can ensure traffic, as well as the conversion of visitors to actual customers. Promotional Strategies on the Internet Organized Website The basis of e-marketing or online marketing is your website. So, your website should be wellorganized and informative. It is important to select a suitable domain name, as this establishes the identity of your website. The domain name should be short and easy to remember, and should define the product or service you are intending to sell. Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization involves optimization of a website for the purpose of increasing traffic by improving its ranking in search engine results. Traffic to a website can be increased by generating suitable content, using keywords having marketing potential in the content, and by adding links to related websites. Proper HTML coding is also important for this purpose. Pay on Page Placement Strategy Pay on page placement is a cost-effective marketing strategy, where you can approach an advertising company for marketing your product. It involves the creation of favorable pages for the purpose of optimization, and then subsequent attachment of these pages to your website. This method can help you get higher ranking in search engine results, and is also cost-effective, as you have to make payments only when your website secures the expected ranking in search engine results. E-mail Newsletter E-mails can play a significant role in the growth of your business. You can send e-mail newsletters to the previous visitors of your website to keep in touch with them. This would be of great help in converting them into actual customers. Advertisement on Social Networking Sites Social networking has emerged as a very popular avenue for marketing, as one can reach out to people of any age group through these sites. Initially restricted to college students, it is now being
used by people of all age groups as a platform for interaction, and for sharing views and opinions. You can provide information about your product through advertisements, blogs, and articles, and thus reach out to millions through these networking sites. Banner Advertising Banner advertising is an effective online marketing, where you can pay the search engine to display your banner whenever a particular keyword is typed. The banner is usually shown at the top of a page for a particular keyword. To catch the attention of the prospective clients, the banner can be made attractive with suitable images. Article Posting You can also come up with some informative articles to advertise your position as a well-established leader in a particular field. While generating the content of the articles, the type of people using your website should be considered, and rather than focusing only on profits, you should try to give some value addition to the readers through your articles. You can also add links to related websites to make your articles more effective. Viral Marketing Viral marketing involves the use of social networks to spread awareness about different products. It can take the form of catchy e-mails, video-clips, articles, newsletters, and images. You can add a line which says 'if you like it, pass it on to a friend', or something similar to spread awareness about your product. Through viral marketing, one can easily reach out to a large number of people in a short period of time. This can be done by identifying individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP), and then creating appealing messages, which have a greater likelihood of being passed around. Viral marketing works like a virus that gets transmitted between people close to each other! Use of Lead Tracker With the help of the Internet, you can reach out to a large number of people, but what is important is the conversion of visitors into customers. For this purpose, you can use a lead tracker, which can track information about every person who has visited your website. This vital information can be used to determine the marketing programs or search words that can produce the desired results. Use of Cookies A cookie is a short text that is placed in the hard disk of a visitor's computer by a website. Thereafter, whenever that particular visitor accesses the website, the cookie is sent back to the server. This is beneficial in tracking down some important information about the visitor's surfing habits, which may help facilitate the process of converting casual visitors into potential or actual customers. To summarize, internet marketing has added a completely new dimension to the concept of marketing in general. The effective use of different strategies can enhance your business prospects. However, the crucial point is the use of these strategies in the right way, to give that extra edge to your business and surpass your competitors.