Internet Marketing Clinic

The newsletter I get from eMarketer is one of my favorite sources of information about what is going on with businesses and marketing on the Internet. Today, they provide information about how businesses are using social media to improve their marketing efforts to other businesses.

We have talked in other postings about how social media can drive traffic directly to a web site, and how it can be used to improve brand awareness. These are fairly obvious applications of the medium, and are entirely consistent with the efforts we make at marketing through our web sites themselves.

Less obvious, perhaps, is the benefit that social media offers in doing research into customer attitudes and preferences. If your company has established a presence on social media, you have an opportunity to listen to what your audience is saying about your business. That kind of information can head off some serious customer relationship issues, on occasion, but can also contribute to strengthening y0ur marketing of your site in more traditional ways.

We are always on the lookout for keyword phrases that can be important to our audience, and, in particular, phrases that might be overlooked by our competition! Those phrases are of special interest because of the impact they can have on the specific audience we are trying to reach, and because they can be much easier to achieve very high rankings on!

Keep on top of this important medium by following our comments on social media marketing.

Marketing on the Internet is constantly changing, and it pays to stay in touch with what the changes are as they happen. eMarketer featured an interview about changes in retailing marketing that will be of interest to businesses in this market segment.

One interesting comment in this interview is, “I’m seeing retailers spend less in paid search and invest more in search engine optimization.” That indicates that ranking on organic results may get more difficult as more attention is paid to this method of getting attention on the Internet. That emphasized the importance of staying in  touch with the latest techniques for promoting your business on the web, and of continually working on your site to maintain the competitive position that you have achieved. As the saying goes, “Never look back, someone might be gaining on you!” Even if you are doing a great job and out-performing all your competition, you cannot afford to let up in your efforts.

Another comment that jumped out at me is, “It’s still a bit of a mystery as to how to monetize Facebook.” This is a medium that business has not mastered yet. That says two things to me. One is that if you don’t quite understand how to make use of this tool, you are not alone. The second is that if you can figure out how to make it work for you, you will be ahead of the pack!

Now this is not going to work for everyone, or for all kinds of businesses, but if you are in a position to benefit from the audience that you can reach through this tool (Note: I am specifically thinking of Facebook as I write this.), it can prove to be a powerful tool for you.

The way I am seeing this used to some good effect is for a business to create a Facebook Page for their business. It could be useful to create multiple pages for different product lines(?) Creating a page is not a big job and does not require a huge investment of your time or energy.

The next step is to get the page in front of an audience. You must have people who are willing to become  a fan of the page. When you have created this audience, what you do is post something of interest periodically to keep yourself and your business in front of your audience. The people who have signed up to get your information will see that while they are browsing their pages for information about their friends.

What kind of business might this be a good vehicle for? An easy answer might be restaurants. Restaurants are social businesses, and people are always interested in learning about new and interesting restaurants, and would be happy to learn about specials that a restaurant might be running or a new menu item they are introducing. And people are always interested in getting referrals to restaurants from their friends who like a place. If your business fits this kind of pattern, this could be a great tool for you to utilize. If your business is oilfield equipment, it could be a completely different situation!It all depends on you and how you can make this work for you!

“According to Forrester Research, 25% of US online retailers are planning at least some mobile features for 2010, compared with just 4% in 2009.”

.
Mobile applications have not achieved much penetration in the marketing area yet, but there are signs that this may be changing. An article from eMarketer provides some of the reasons why businesses have not yet turned to mobile applications.

.

In our Internet Marketing Clinic, we plan to have a presentation from a local developer of mobile applications in the near future. This will be a good opportunity to learn something about the mobile application environment and a chance to identify ways that mobile applications might offer some benefit to your web site and business.

.
Watch our schedule to see when our guest will be presenting!