Date Published: 16-Jan-2013
Internet marketing is gaining popularity in recent years as more and more businesses are investing money on online promotion. According to a Nielsen report, online ad spend grew by 24% in 2011 over 2010. As per Zenith Optimedia, global ad spend will overtake newspaper expenditure by 2013 and by 2015, it will exceed the combined expenditure of newspapers and magazines.
In such a scenario, allotting a separate budget to Internet marketing is sensible. However, investing huge amounts of money on online advertising itself will not yield good results. You should also know where to invest the money. Following are some best places where you can invest in order to get effective results.
Website creation and design
The first investment you should make is on designing the website as it creates an online presence for your business. With the help of an effective web design, you would present your business in a more appealing way to online users. The usability of the website is the major thing to consider while designing your website. You have to make it user-friendly in order to make users satisfied while using your site. Take help of web designers who have the knowledge about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make your website search engine friendly.
Quality content
The content presented in the website should be informational as well as helpful to your prospective customers. It could be a blog, article or simply a press release – it should be free from spelling/grammar flaws. It should be updated regularly, so that customers/visitors can always get the latest information. Quality content plays a major role in getting good rankings in search engine results, which is very essential to increase traffic for your website.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimizing a website in such a way that it naturally ranks well in the search engines’ results pages. Ranking top in search engine result pages increases the visibility of your website to the potential customers. It involves different techniques like keyword research, link building, article syndication and title optimization. It is very important to invest in SEO because the more visible your website is, the more visitors to your website.
Pay per click (PPC)
In this method, ads are displayed along-side the search results. The advertisers will bid for keywords generally used by potential customers while searching on search engines. Whenever they search using these keywords, the advertiser’s ad will be displayed alongside the search results. The advertiser has to pay money only when a customer clicks on his ad. A PPC campaign brings quick and instant results. However, it is not cost effective in the long run.
E-mail marketing
In e-mail marketing, bulk commercial messages are sent to a group of people, most probably the target audiences, through e-mails. It is cost efficient and studies show that e-mail marketing gives good return on investment (ROI) after search marketing.
These methods are helpful for promoting your business online. You should clearly analyze which type of online promotion suits your business and pick the one which brings you better results. It is better to take help of professionals in the field if you are not sure which strategy works well for your business.
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