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Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
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Article Title: The A-Z Of Increasing Your Online Marketing ROI
Part I
Author: Pete Young
Word Count: 1391
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=63400&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Author's Email Address: support[at]e-gain.co.uk (replace [at]
with @)
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=63400
================== ARTICLE START ==================
A - Affiliate Marketing
Merchant products are promoted on 3rd party (affiliate)
websites. When visitors click through from the affiliate site
to the merchant site and make a purchase then an agreed fee is
paid to the affiliate.
If you advertise your products online, affiliate marketing is
an efficient way to generate additional business. It is a cost
effective form of advertising for merchants, and a simple way
for affiliates to earn revenue from their website.
B - Banner Advertising
Banner advertising generally has a low response rate, often
yielding about 2 visitors per thousand banner impressions.
Despite the relatively poor value of banners for driving
traffic, banner advertising can be particular useful in certain
circumstances such as raising brand awareness.
C - Categorise
Structuring your site well can be worth its weight in gold, not
just to users of your site, but also to search engines. A well
structured site in terms of infrastructure (i.e. directory
structure, page naming convention) will not only tell your
visitor what the page is about quickly, but also provide the
search engines with an idea of what the page is about before it
is indexed.
D - Differentiation
A unique Marketing Campaign that allows a company and/or its
products and services to stand out from its competitors. Having
a niche product or service makes the job of marketing your
product or service much easier. If your service is not unique,
it is often possible to identify a �unique selling point� of
your product or service.
Focus on your unique selling points, those products or services
that differentiate you from your competitors, and ensure you
portray these to your potential customers.
There are many aspects that can make you similar to your
competitors, so ensure your unique selling point is clear to
your customers. This can make a significant difference between
success and failure.
E � E-Mail Marketing
Using e-mail as a means of communicating commercial messages to
an audience (Direct Marketing) can be a profitable addition to
your marketing strategy.
This could take many forms:
� Targeting your existing client base with additional services
or products.
� Targeting your existing client base with the purpose of
enhancing the relationship of a client with its current or old
customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat
business.
� Targeting your existing client base with the purpose of
selling 3rd party products for a fee.
� Purchasing a list of client email addresses for the purpose
of marketing your products to a new client audience.
� Adding your advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies
to their client base and marketing your products to a new
audience.
Direct marketing is popular with companies online as it is:
LOW COST : Compared to direct mailing or printed newsletters
the costs are negligible. The advertiser does not need to pay
for production, paper, printing or postage.
IMMEDIATE : It is instant, as opposed to a mailed
advertisement, an e-mail arrives in a few seconds or minutes.
TRACKABLE : It is easy to track. An advertiser can track hits,
conversions and rise in sales. Real-time.
FAR REACHING: Direct marketing can reach substantial numbers of
e-mail subscribers who have opted-in (consented) to receive
e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.
F � Focus
Keep it relevant!
There is no point spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on
advertising on your site, and then sending a potential customer
to a non-related "landing page". There are two scenarios as
regards online marketing where this is especially true, namely
� PPC advertising - Send your customers through to a targeted
page. Many companies send clients through to the homepage, or
worse, a non related page to what the term is. By sending
potential customers through to a relevant page, you reduce the
number of clicks required to find the product, at the same time
reducing the number of exit points, which have the effect of
making the money spent on sending the client to the site
redundant.
� Affiliate Marketing - These days may clients are using
companies such as Tradedoubler and Miva to drive traffic to
their site. However, the number of times I have seen companies
use the extra functionality such as product feeds that these
Affiliate Marketing companies provide, and then under utilise
them is staggering. By again targeting the users directly to
the product/service they are searching for you are reducing the
chances of the customer leaving the site before he/she has even
viewed your product.
G - Gift Vouchers
Gift vouchers can be a good way of influencing users to your
site to buy a product/service. Not only can this be a good way
of adding conversions, it can increase your customer loyalty as
well.
H - High earners vs Low returners
Differentiating what products/services offer the highest return
on investment is often one of the best ways of increasing your
bottom line, and as a result your return on investment (ROI).
This may sound like common sense, however many companies
overlook this, and continue offering products or services that
never make any positive ROI.
The same applies to search engine marketing as a whole. For
example, If you have a pay-per-click campaign, and are using
very generic terms, you may find by tweaking the terms, and
making these more specific, you decrease the amount you are
spending on your PPC campaign, and increase your ROI as a
result.
I - Informative
Having a site that is informative, interesting and unique is
one of the best ways of keeping visitors coming back to your
site, whether they be human or robots. Visitor loyalty is
invaluable. This can be achieved via a number of ways whether
it be a niche product, well written technical articles, your
companies own PR or even just something that is just unique,
funny or controversial.
J - Just keep it simple
Over complicating the conversion process is often the biggest
barrier to obtaining a successful sale. Many companies place
barriers in the way, giving customers more reasons to pull out
of a sale before completion, whether it is up-selling, over
zealous data capture, or an inaccessible website.
A recent client�s buying process involved 10 clicks from site
entry to sale completion. By reducing the number of clicks
required to complete the sale from 10 to 6, sales increased by
400%. This involved streamlining the buying process, ensuring
that the customer completed in as little time as possible.
In the modern era, time is money. Therefore time can be
expensive so keep the time required to make a purchase to a
minimum.
K - Keywords
Research thoroughly the keywords that your website can
realistically be ranked for. If you have a new website in a
highly competitive market then ranking naturally for the major
terms will be close to impossible, so consider less competitive
and more targeted terms.
Higher levels of visitors do not necessarily mean an increase
in sales. A more focused set of keywords may mean lower traffic
but the quality of the traffic can lead to a better ROI.
L - Landing Pages
This is another asset of search engine marketers that is either
over-optimised for search engines or under-utilised for
visitors. Both can have a detrimental effect on sales
conversions and ultimately your ROI.
If you are using landing pages for any of your online
advertising/marketing, it is highly advisable to keep these
landing pages tailored to their requirement. You will find that
by sending potential customers directly to the area/product they
are looking for, you will significantly increase your sales as a
result, and ultimately your ROI.
M - Mod Rewrite
A Mod Rewrite engine is a piece of web server software used to
modify URLs, for the purpose of making your dynamic URLs more
user friendly to customers and search engines.
A rewritten URL is easier to use if it is short but
descriptive. The URL should have some text describing the
content, but should not be too long.
About The Author: E-Gain New Media is based in Burnley,
Lancashire and was founded by Peter Young, John Hill and Paul
Greaves. The new media company specialises in web development,
search engine marketing, online brand protection and traffic
analysis. Further information can be found at
http://www.e-gain.co.uk or by contacting Peter Young on 0845
671 0018.
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=63400
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For more free-reprint articles by Pete Young please visit:
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