It is an exciting time to be involved in emarketing. Traditional marketing practices are evolving to keep pace with the growing number of online consumers of information, products and services. What are the best ways to reach them?
1. Email marketing: Over 900 Million people use email to send and receive messages each day. Still the killer app of online communication, email is a proven marketing channel for reaching large, targeted audiences and strengthening relationships with customers.
2. Blogging: Never before have customers had the opportunity to communicate with product and service providers that they do today. Blogging helps to establish trust and provides customers with the ability to communicate regularly with even the top echelons of leading businesses. Blogging makes it easy for marketers to tell their story in an unfolding, historical way and creates an informal, personal environment for customers to exchange ideas, applaud and criticize service providers.
3. RSS: Years ago, we had to take the time to visit multiple websites to find information that was relevant to us. Today, relevant information is delivered to us via RSS feeds as it is updated on the Internet. Online customers can subscribe to information that they find relevant and receive updated content as it is created – saving time and effort. RSS also allows marketers to have a steady stream of information delivered as feeds across the Internet for consumers to see.
4. Podcasting: Expected to reach critical mass by 2010, podcasting is already becoming very popular this year. We like to listen to each other. Until recently, the internet was full of text-based information that dried our eyes after reading too much of it. Today, we can listen to industry experts discuss issues, interview guests or provide tips. Podcasting allows us to consume Internet content in our office, at home or when travelling in trains, planes or automobiles.
5. Online Surveys: Online surveys make getting feedback easy, even for small businesses that don’t have the budget required for traditional market research. Online surveys provide valuable feedback from customers and employees. Today, it is easy to create, manage and distribute surveys and get feedback on your products or services.
6. Multimedia: High speed Internet access is available in most areas today. These high speed connections to the Internet allow us to consume multimedia content that was not possible even 5 years ago. One of the most popular formats of multimedia today is digital video. Anyone can create a short video segment today without spending a fortune and distribute it on the Internet. And we love it. Evidence of our penchant for video, especially humorous video can be found on sites like YouTube, which are soaring in popularity – and traffic!
7. Social Networks: Often thought of as teenage communities, social network sites like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook enjoy visitor numbers in the millions. Today, marketers understand the value of social networking, and more niche networking sites are being developed on a regular basis. Now, there are social networking sites for mothers, small children, college students, professionals, and every other possible demographic. Such sites provide a forum for like-minded people to share information, ideas, tips, resources, experiences, photos, videos, music and anything else that is relevant to the community.
8. Word of Mouth (WOM): Word of mouth marketing is becoming extremely popular today. Marketers realize that the power of 10 customers talking positively about their products or services to their circle of friends or colleagues is priceless. Even better if they blog themselves about it to an even larger audience. Many businesses are taking some money from their traditional advertising budgets and investing it in their loyal customers, hoping that they will spread the good news, by word-of-mouth, about the company – often providing platforms for them to do so.
9. Search Engines: Search is the second most widely used application on the Internet after email. As such, it has received quite a bit of attention from advertisers and marketers. Your online business and website is only effective if your potential customers can find it amongst the millions of others out there in cyberspace. Most people use search engines to find what they are looking for on the Internet. Optimizing your website so that it will be found when people search for things relevant to your business is paramount to your online success.
Successful emarketing involves all of the above in one form or another. It is not a one-or-the-other game. Good marketers create strategies that involve content creation in various formats for distribution across multiple channels in order to reach the widest possible, most relevant audience.
Emarketing is not a one-click industry. Like traditional marketing, establishing a competitive presence online requires time, continual effort and attention to all available channels.
