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What is e-marketing?
E-marketing means using digital technologies to help sell your goods or services. These technologies, like e-mail and web sites, are available complement to traditional marketing methods whatever the size of your company or your business model. The basics of marketing remain the same creating a strategy to deliver the right messages to the right people. What has changed is the number of options you have. Though businesses will continue to make use of traditional marketing methods, such as advertising, direct mail and PR, e-marketing adds a whole new element to the marketing mix.Simply put, e-marketing gives you lots of new ways to reach
your customers, many of them cheaper and more effective than traditional channels. British consumers now spend over 1 billion a month online six per cent of all UK retail sales. And half of all UK firms buy goods and services online, spending 23 billion in the process a year. Obviously these figures don’t tell the whole story not all sales made online are the result of e-marketing and not every business has benefited equally. What is certain though, is that many businesses are producing great results with e-marketing and its flexible and cost-effective nature make it particularly suitable for small and medium sized businesses.
Global Reach
If you build a Web site you can reach anyone, anywhere in the world, provided they have internet access. This allows you to tap new markets and compete globally with only a small investment. This can be particularly useful for niche providers, companies whose products can be posted easily, or businesses who are looking to expand geographically but cannot afford to invest in new offices or businesses.
Lower Cost
A properly planned and effectively targeted e-marketing campaign can reach the right customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods. You can build a Web site for as little as a few hundred pounds or send e-mail for a fraction of a penny.
Trackable and, Measurable Results
Marketing by e-mail or banner advertising makes it easier to establish how effective your campaign has been. If someone clicks on a banner advert, or a link in an e-mail or on a Web site, you can see how they arrived at your Web site. This detailed information about customers responses to your advertising allows you to assess
the effectiveness of different campaigns.
24-Hour Marketing
With a Web site your customers can find out about your products even if your office is closed.
Shorter Lead Times
If you have a Web site or an e-mail template, you can react to events much more quickly giving your marketing a much more contemporary feel. If one of your products is in the news or something important happens in your industry, you can capitalize on it without having to print or post anything.
A Level Playing Field
With a well-designed Web site, you can show yourself to be as professional and credible as your larger competitors.
Personalisation
If your customer database is linked to your Web site, then whenever someone visits the site, you can greet them with targeted offers. The more they buy from you, the more you can refine your customer profile and market effectively to them. A great example of this is Amazons Web site which suggests products based on your and other peoples previous purchases.
Promoting your Web site
There are three main ways that people arrive at web sites: direct navigation, web referrals and search engines.
Direct Navigation
The best way of generating web traffic is also the cheapest to implement simply make sure you include your web address on all printed material: business cards, letters, flyers, newsletters posters etc. If you have chosen a simple URL, it will also make it easier for people to remember from television and radio adverts or personal recommendations f you operate exclusively in the UK, choose a .co.uk address. If you trade abroad, you might want to consider a .com address as well. To make it easy for someone to find your Web site, avoid hyphens or other punctuation in your web address.
Web Referrals
Over a fifth of web visits come from web referrals. There are number of ways you can generate these: Include your web address as a standard part of all e-mail footers. E-mail marketing targeted electronic newsletters and offers to customers can be very effective. If the offer is interesting, it is also very easy for people to pass the e-mail on to friends and colleagues. Online advertising the use of banner and pop-up adverts on other web sites to drive people to yours is a contentious issue. Response rates tend to be very low. However, the amount of money spent on them continues to increase. If you are considering paying for online advertising, its essential to have a clear idea of your objectives and to take advice from an agency on the best way to reach your audience.
Reciprocal marketing this involves finding sites with complementary content and agreeing to have links or banners to each others sites. A good example of this would be your Trade Association.
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