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As opposed to traditional marketing such as newspaper adverts, banner advertisements, radio adverts and so on; Internet Marketing simply means reaching your target market online. This may seem obvious but a surprising number of small businesses fail to realise that a significant proportion of their target market are using the internet to find products and services like theirs. Before venturing into email marketing you need to be aware of the legislation in your part of the world. I’m assuming that your email list/s are opt-in. By this I don’t mean that you’ve bought a list of emails address which have been opted in to receive offers like yours, I actually mean that they have sign up on your website, flyers at a trade show and agreed as your customer, to receive YOUR emails.
What does it cost?
Internet Marketing, done properly, does not come cheap but neither does traditional marketing. You get what you pay for and the question should not be what does it cost, it should be what does it cost against what it returns. Well Internet Marketing usually costs you time and money. Time to organise an Internet Marketing expert to develop and execute a professional Internet Marketing campaign and money to pay them.
What does it consist of?
Search Marketing – this includes Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). Very effective if your target market are searching for a product or service like yours using Google or Yahoo.
But not everyone is using Google or Yahoo to search are they? What are they using instead? The local newspaper or a Social Media Networking website. Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn and MySpace and used frequently by a wide range of people. But my type of business wouldn’t use Facebook I here you say? Well probably not in work hours but when they get home, are relaxed talking to their mates online and generally more susceptible to Internet Marketing.
Email Marketing Work out how much it takes to send a traditional letter and then how long it takes to gather email address data, create emails that will be compatible across a range of email browsers and of course there are the laws governing data protection. Email marketing actually can cost more in the short term but the long term is when it becomes a much more cost effective form of marketing. Developed and executed properly, an email marketing campaign can significantly improve your revenue. Once email marketing processes are in place it is simply a matter of ensuring that your email addresses are current and your email designs are effective.
