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Beginners
How To Guide
Promoting your Online Presence
If
you are prepared to invest in developing a website,
then be prepared to budget for promoting it. Build it
and they will not come! This Guide is for those with
little or no experience of marketing their online facilities.
The main considerations are;
-
Make sure your website is going to deliver on visitor
expectations -before the launch undertake a thorough
testing programme and be confident that it will
represent your business in the best possible light.
- Use
a Launch event to create interest in your site and
put your site address on all your literature; stationary,
brochures, adverts etc.
- Working
to get a high listing when a search is undertaken
on a search engine is called Search Engine Optimisation..
This can be costly and there is no guarantee of
success. However if you can stay near the top of
these lists, the costs may be justified. However
search engine listings are based on complex factors
that change over time - it's likely that you'll
need to outsource this to an expert.
- Opt-in
email marketing (where the recipient agrees to receive
your emails) offers low cost, direct access, higher
response rates than conventional marketing , the
ability to directly track responses and speed. It's
an excellent marketing tool that's generally under-utilised
by Irish businesses. To make the most of it you
will need to invest in building an opt-in (also
called permission) email database. Once you have
this, you can use email to issue seminar invites,
to identify leads, to keep customers informed (using
an online magazine or ezine) and to generate sales.
- Banner
ads can be targeted to a particular audience. They
are also useful in allowing the company to deliver
more detailed information when a person clicks on
the advertised site. Ads can be placed not only
on sites, but also in ezines.
- A
key advantage of online promotion is that it is
possible to set up systems that allow you to automatically
track the impact of the different promotional activities.
You can electronically monitor how many people click
through from a particular online ad to your site,
which article in an ezine generates the most interest,
how many people visit your site and which search
engines referred them. Make sure you have a tracking
system in place to make this information available.
If you want to find out more information on this topic,
refer to the Advanced How To Guide "Promoting
your Online Presence" |
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