Читать книгу The Small Business Guide to Online Marketing - Lola Bailey - Страница 7
What is internet marketing?
ОглавлениеWell, marketing is the art of selling more of your products or your services. That’s my KISS (keeping it short n’ simple) definition of its core; fuller definitions depend on who you ask.
Internet marketing (which is sometimes called digital marketing) refers to the use of digital technologies and communications for marketing outcomes. Or (if you prefer a longer definition), it is the practice of harnessing digital technologies and media, including web, email, databases, mobile/wireless and digital TV, to support marketing activities which are aimed at achieving the profitable acquisition and retention of customers. The practice relies on developing a planned approach to reach customers and migrate them to online services through ecommunications and traditional communications. Customers are retained through the business improving their knowledge about those customers, interacting with them and then delivering targeted communications and offerings that match their needs to them.
Tip
The terms internet and World Wide Web (WWW) are frequently used synonymously. In fact, the World Wide Web is just one application running on the internet. Email is another, different application that runs on the internet.
Perhaps the clearest model I have come across to explain the internet marketing process is the RACE framework. RACE is reproduced here with the kind permission of one of the UK’s foremost digital marketers, Dr. Dave Chaffey:
“We created RACE on www.smartinsights.com to give a simple framework to help small and large businesses alike take advantage of the opportunities available from digital marketing. There are so many tools and tactics available that it’s difficult to know where to start. We hope RACE gives a structure to help you review and prioritise when there are so many options, but some options work better than others.”
RACE consists of four steps, or online marketing activities, designed to help brands engage their customers throughout the customer lifecycle.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the measures that judge the performance of your business based on the success you wish to achieve. Examples of key performance indicators are: sales/revenues, cost of goods sold, number of products returned, number of new customers, number of sales calls made, number of downloads of your sales brochure, number of subscribers to your newsletter or the number of new website visitors. KPIs are therefore of great importance and I suggest you invest sufficient time to work out the KPIs you need to measure. In addition, it is important to determine what you will measure each of your KPIs against. For example, you could measure this month’s sales against the previous month’s results, or this month’s sales against the same period last year. Doing this will help you understand the ‘direction of travel’ of your business – in other words, are you moving in the right or wrong direction? You will also need to work out how often the KPIs you have selected will need to be reviewed; daily, weekly or monthly? A simple Excel spreadsheet is all you need to record your KPIs. (Google has a online spreadsheet programme that multiple users can view and update. For more information on this feature visit www.google.com/intl/en_US/drive/start/features.html.
Step 1 – Reach: Reach means building an awareness of a brand, its products and its services on other websites and in offline media, in order to build traffic by driving visits to different web presences, such as your main site, microsites (small websites that are an off-shoot of the parent website, and which are considered a separate entity as they may present different content or indeed, a different URL) or social media sites.
Step 2 – Act: Act is about persuading site visitors to take the next step on their journey when they initially reach your site or social network presence. It may mean finding out more about your company or your products, searching to find a product or reading a blog post. It is about engaging the audience through relevant, compelling content and clear navigation pathways so that they don’t hit the back button. The bounce rates on many sites is greater than 50%, so getting the audience to act or participate is a major challenge – which is why I have identified it separately.
Step 3 – Convert: Conversion is where the visitor commits to form a relationship, which will generate commercial value for the business.
Step 4 – Engage: Build customer relationships over time, to achieve retention goals.
Digital marketing should not be driven by technology; it should be driven by the business returns from gaining new customers and maintaining relationships with those customers.
Effective digital marketing rarely occurs in isolation; rather it is most effective when integrated with other communications channels, such as phone, direct mail or face-to-face. Online channels should be used to support the whole buying process, from pre-sale to sale, to post-sale and further development of customer relationships.
