Ideas are the bread and butter of the marketing business, if you will ignore the cliché. Every commercial, every direct mail letter, every single email, almost every word of any marketing piece came from an idea. Ideas are important. They are the fun part of the process, and all too often undervalued. Clearly, your ideas for marketing your business have value. How you get marketers to listen and how you make your ideas reality, is all up to you.

Getting Ideas
Really, ideas just happen. You don’t necessarily get them in the shower or right when you’re about to fall sleep, but sometimes the best ideas come when you least expect them. That’s not to say that brainstorming is a waste of time. I find it’s still helpful and often get the best marketing ideas a few hours after a brainstorming session. That is after I’ve already brainstormed all the bad ones.

The important thing about generating ideas isn’t when or how you come up with them, it’s remembering them. The best way to do this, is to right them down. And I recommend writing all of them down, not just the ones you like because you may come back to them later, change you mind about which ones you like or find a way to improve a really bad one and turn it into a golden idea.

Sharing Ideas
In marketing, ideas are not a dime a dozen. Ideas are money. Of course, there is no guarantee that your idea is great, but quite even horrible ideas like a fussy grocery store manager running around squeezing toilet paper will generate results. So when you’re ready, share your ideas. Two heads truly are better than one and if you share an okay idea with someone, they might be able to take that idea, expand upon it and turn it into your next big marketing campaign.

If you’re not ready to take your ideas to your marketing agency, start by sharing with someone you’re comfortable with. The only way to find out if your marketing idea is any good is to share it with others. Someone thought of DOS, someone thought of Windows and people with a bit less in the bank thought up Google and YouTube. Quite often, these ideas came through trial and error. It’s important to bounce your ideas off others and for them to do the same, because it fosters a good marketing strategy.

Turning Ideas into Reality
An idea will always be just that unless you have the right tools to turn it into something more.

Working with a marketing or advertising team can help generate solid marketing ideas, but more than that, they can execute an entire advertising or marketing campaign based on that idea. They can turn a simply idea of a store manager squeezing toilet paper into the longest running tv commercial in history with over 500 ads.

Marketing isn’t just about having the best idea; you also need to be able to turn those ideas into something. And whether that ends up being 30-second spot that airs only once or a new slogan that will carry your brand for over 2 and a half decades, you’ll never know if you don’t first come up with the idea.

In terms of newspaper readers versus online readers, it is no longer a question of why online marketing has become a staple and print media is losing ground. The real question is why online marketing is working so well. Consider the advantages it has over print media in terms of time, costs, and effect. Let’s go into more detail of why online marketing is gaining popularity.

Buyers Look Online
Buyers are changing. While direct mail marketing isn’t one for the history books yet, the new aspects of marketing are web usage. Buyers are smarter with their money; they don’t just immediately spend it on the first ad they see. They research products, competitors and prices, often online, making direct marketing far more difficult. This is not to say you can no longer use direct marketing, but online marketing may have more of an immediate impact.

Media Usage Down, Web Usage Up
In the book “Get Content, Get Customers,” it’s noted that while newspaper sales are going down, PC usage is going up. Look at the huge growth in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn users, compare it to how major newspapers are losing ground and cutting budgets, and you’ll see why online marketing is superior. Again, this is not to say traditional media marketing and coverage has no place, but in the last 40 years, newspapers readers have almost been halved in certain age groups, while internet usage has gone from nothing to billions.

Immediate Impact of Online Marketing
Online marketing can be easier to track, easier to implement, and easier to see the results. This is because of advancing digital technologies for tracking search engine rates, site traffic, and click throughs. For example, with Google Analytics, you can get a free reporting tool showing visitor trends, traffic sources, page visits and even what keywords people are using to find your site. Try getting the same kind of information and reporting from your print marketing.

Easier to Build Prospect and Customer Base
With email marketing, blog RSS feeds, social media accounts, and other useful content technologies, building up a base of leads, prospects, and customers has become much more streamlined.

For example, you can use search engine marketing, either SEO or Pay-Per-Click, to capture leads and send them to your website. From there, say they fill out a form requesting more information. You provide said information, but they continue to shop around. You however, captured their email address and they agreed to opt-in to your monthly newsletter. Next month you send out your email, they never found a better solution and return to your website to make a purchase.

Of course, there are many different ways online marketing works; this is just one example to demonstrate how simple online marketing can be when it comes to building a base of clients and reaching new customers.

Online Is Cheaper and Easier
While print media is likely going to stay for some time, it is simply easier and faster to publish online. You can run a blog, website, social page, and newsletter for incredibly low amounts and publish all the content yourself. With print, you’re restricted to publication deadlines and sometimes have to pay exorbitant amounts for ad space. This, however, is not to say effective online marketing is cheap, only that it can cut down marketing costs.

As you can see, online marketing is nothing new; we’ve been doing it for years. However, why we use it is changing. Buyers are adapting to being sold, having likely experienced thousands of commercials, received hundreds of direct mail letters, listened to radio ads, and looked over newspaper editorials. Now they are experiencing blogs, sites, email, and social pages. Why is simple: it is an easier way to get information.

In his book “Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing,” acclaimed marketer Drayton Bird highlights not only how direct marketing is still relevant, but how it can adapt to the buyer even more. While this blog post focuses more on the web part and goes beyond direct marketing, the points are still valid.

What is the purpose of direct marketing? Bird says it’s how you isolate each buyer and create a relationship with them. Sounds pretty relevant, right? There’s more. He says the main advantages of   direct marketing is how each customer is different, how you can build a relationship with them, and you can always test to see how that works.

Let’s leave aside the classic for a moment, and look at this in terms of web buyers. Your success in web marketing is defined by how you adapt to buyers, who are constantly changing in terms of wants and needs. The web buyer is changing, no doubt, but why?

Web buyers cannot be sold like they used to be. They are accessing traditional media less and new media more.  And technology is changing how buyers see and consider advertisements.

Why can’t web buyers be sold like other buyers?
They don’t conform to what you say they need. They listen less to the sales pitch, more on why this product can help them. In most cases, they ignore your ads and pitches. However, if you offer them benefits, such as saving time or saving money, and can do so without giving them a “sales” pitch, that’s just like a direct marketing ad selling to the individual on a more personal level.

Why are they accessing traditional media less?
This is an easy question to answer. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, WordPress, Blogger – the social media technologies are now overtaking printed material. Newspaper sales are down, press relations are being used in different ways, and more professional marketers are putting much more money into online advertising niches such as social networks, blogs, and email marketing.

How is technology changing marketing?
Buyers are accessing press releases on their own, for example. It used to be you went to the media companies to and submitted news releases to journalists. Now with sites like PRWeb and more, buyers are actively reading releases themselves (because search engines are picking them up). You know longer wait for advertisements to come to you via television, magazines, and mail. Now buyers are subscribing to company emails for items like sales, following interesting people and businesses on social networks, and reading blogs to find out immediate news.

This isn’t all new stuff, but it shows you why the buyer is changing, and how marketing is adapting. The point isn’t to say, “stop using traditional marketing,” but to point out that marketing, as always, is evolving.

The new rules of web marketing clearly put traditional marketing into the museum. Well, maybe not the museum, but the new rules of web marketing squeeze your dollar, increase niche product revenue, and introduce your product to more buyers than ever before.

Why is that? For many companies and industries, traditional advertising methods can waste money, while smaller amounts can have a more critical impact on a person-to-person level. With brands now using creative web marketing to up awareness about products, traditional advertising may seem like a dinosaur. Instead of wasting your money on one single shot, you can spread your marketing across more than magazines and TV: you can use banner ads, blogging, social marketing, affiliate marketing, and more.

Prior to web marketing, all businesses had was expensive advertising aimed at large segments who don’t care about the product and third party responses from the media. Now, you can direct web readers to literally hundreds if not thousands of your ads over the course of a year. The old axiom, a buyer needs to see your pitch several times, is only more proof on why web marketing should be used. If you just present your product once, your chances of selling are low. If you have several opportunities, the buyer at the least will notice your brand and at the most, decide to buy.

Web marketing does many things, but clearly being able to reach your specific target at just the right moment is key.

They may see your blog, your blog comments, your banner ads, your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Myspace pages. They may find articles published on your company website while searching for new products. This array of exposure is much better than traditional print and TV marketing.

What was the old way of traditional marketing like?

• Marketing was confined to advertising and branding
• Advertising had to pander to the masses instead of niche groups
• Advertising was focused on selling products
• Advertising and PR had no relationship

The new web marketing has clear advantages, namely in who you’re reaching out to, how you reach out to them, and when you reach out.

New web marketing creates brands, but more so, it focuses on niche groups. Here are a few of the movements in web marketing.

Facebook Marketing
Facebook has taken the world by storm, with user-friendly applications designed initially for conversation, but which soon became business portals for niche groups. You might not be interested in this group focused on cooking, but the other group on farming sounds interesting.

Twitter Marketing
Twitter is a second to Facebook, but with the potential to reach new niche audiences in one clear manner cannot be undervalued. While Twitter is small, it’s fast becoming a web marketing kingpin.

Blog Marketing
Blogs are more than a public relations portal. They build brands, get unique readers, and create interest via search engines to other unique niche buyers. Just like you’d hire someone to ghost write an article for you in a B2B magazine to get buzz for your name and business, you can do that and more with a updated and optimized blog. The usability of blogs make it simple for anyone to start one up, hosted or not.

We’re not saying in with the new and out with the old completely. Traditional advertising still has its place and will continue to offer valuable venues for distributing your marketing message. However, advertisers need to keep up with their target audience, and for most companies that requires going online.

Cory Doctorow, a now acclaimed science fiction novelist and professional blogger for Boing Boing, has an interesting take on the freedom of eBook publishing. And bear witness, it’s not quite gospel, but sometimes it sure sounds like it. He says he’s been giving away eBooks for free, and boy has he made some money off it.

His is a different story – the fact his books are fiction novels and collections of short stories – but for what this post is about, it’s even bigger. Giving away eBooks for free is not news, but why so many do it is often misunderstood.

Doctorow gave hundreds of thousands of copies of his first science fiction novel away for free. His rational was that you would be making money by those who chose to still buy the book, lose no money if readers who would not have otherwise picked the book the up did, and lose only some if a surprisingly low number of readers chose to read the eBook instead of the printed book. All his books have surpassed expectations on sales, and he’s now an acclaimed science fiction novelist.

The point here is that giving away free material, even if not as long as an eBook, has immense value in terms of branding. Doctorow was on the front page, so to speak, of hundreds of influential blogs and news sites when he did this. No, it’s not for everyone, but in terms of branding and marketing, it’s golden.

What will happen?
You commission someone to write an eBook for you, post it, and expect millions to just reach out. Depending on your business and marketing plan, various things might happen. First, you won’t be giving away millions of copies if you’re not well placed online. However, what will happen is, if the eBook is good, if you push it with many forms of marketing including social media, you can give away more copies. Now, those buyers if they like it might give your free eBook to a few more people or spread the word. Even if only 1,000 people read your book, if the subject is right, it can lead to more business. Why? You’re not just another business. You are showing expertise. You are becoming a hot brand, maybe in small business terms, but still a more known commodity. If you get 100 new clients because of it, most businesses would call that a success.

Why more sales?
People like free stuff, and in terms of giving away eBooks, some companies can see more effects than others. What’s interesting is that any company can do this to create more sales. There really are few who can’t say something in a short eBook. It can increase brand awareness, start to create a steady stream of prospects and buyers, and all for the cost of one free eBook you give away. More to the point, just as Doctorow used eBooks to build name power, so too can traditional businesses to get better known.

Build Your Brand
There are thousands of new eBooks given away every day, but what some fail to see is the real value. If you’re a small business with a tight marketing budget, in a crowded field, how can you stand out? If you’re a larger company in a more specific niche, you may wonder what you can do with a limited marketing budget. Giving away some form of free material – whether it’s a shorter white paper or a longer eBook – creates leads. That’s the main reason: you find more suitable prospects.

This is not all new material, but consider that by giving away information you’re telling more people about your expertise in a certain subject, and you’re also building buzz for your brand. If you, as many do, simply capture 1,000 emails by giving away a free eBook if someone subscribes, you’re doing more than building buzz: you can connect with many new prospects.

Target marketing is effective for all businesses but especially useful for small businesses needing to stand out and compete with smaller ad budgets. The more you know about your buyers, the more you’ll understand what they want and how to target them.

The problem is, no matter what you’re selling, online advertising can be expensive and has stiff competition. It does depend on your small business niche, but usually you have a clear buyer you are trying to reach. With Web marketing, you can target those buyers to be more effective.

Why Target Marketing?
Target marketing focuses on the specific audience you want to sell to. In short, the majority of people do not need your product. You need to target those who do. Some people have pets, and buy pet supplies. If you sell pet supplies, consumers who have no pets will never buy from you. Target marketing can save you time and money by directing your advertising toward smaller groups. Instead of reaching the whole world, you only want to target a smaller piece of the pie and can spend much less to get it.

Keyword Targeting
Keyword targeting concerns search engine marketing and contextual marketing. In both cases, you can narrow down your specific buyer with ease. If you rank highly for “pet supplies” on Google and Yahoo, you’re using search marketing. That would also be considered a short-tail keyword, a more basic search term.

Short tail keywords are very common and get good search volume, but the problem is the sheer number of sites competing for those keywords. If you are trying to rank well for “pet supplies,” you could get millions of hits, but you’d also have a large amount of competition, making it that much harder to rank well and even harder stand out. Using targeted keywords can help. 

A long-tail keyword is simply a more targeted search phrase, such as “Iams mature dog food”. That’s much more specific to the actual product the searcher is looking for and gives you have an immediate idea on what the buyer wants.

Searchers often get tired of sifting though page after page of results, and once they are done researching and are ready to make a purchase, will typically narrow their search by typing in keywords that are more specific. By focusing on targeted long-tail keywords, you can reach buyers with specific needs who are ready to make a purchase. In addition, you can also suggest additional products for them once they reach your site, since you already know a lot about them based just on their search terms.

Demographic Targeting
This is another useful way to narrow down your niche group of buyers, if not as effective as keyword targeting. For your small business, you can have a select group you know buys the most from you. A fashion store in Los Angeles might target women of a certain age, with a certain income, and using the English language. You can create demographic targeting in a variety of ways beyond that, such as interests and marital status. This directly markets to a target group most likely to buy your product or service.

Behavioral Targeting
The last target marketing method we’ll go over is the use of cookies to track users actions. This is rarely used by small businesses, but cookies enable companies to see what users are searching, reading, and buying online. “Cookies” work by recording your search history to better market to you. In other words, you may start seeing marketing more directly related to you, such as with online booksellers like Amazon.com, because what you’re doing is being tracked in order to better serve you. In some cases, prospects are against someone placing tracking info on their computer; most are harmless, but you must respect buyers’ privacy. Still, the better you know your prospect, the better chance you have of closing a sale.

Clearly, target marketing is very relevant online. If you can find out as much information as possible on prospects, you can stand apart as a business no matter your size. Once you target your best niche, you can turn more clicks into sales.

Just about every company is implementing cost-cutting measures to deal with the current recession. In many cases, companies are significantly cutting their advertising budget. A number of recent studies have come out that would suggest this is a significant mistake. Indeed, a recent research study by McGraw-Hill of 600 businesses found businesses that maintained or increased their ad spend saw higher sales growth during a recession and in the years following. The study found those who maintained or increased their ad budgets experienced a 256% increase in sales compared to those who cut their budgets.

Armed with this information, the prudent course would suggest a company maintain or increase its advertising budget during the current recession. Agree? Actually, this is a trick question. It’s similar to saying “practice makes perfect.” However, that’s simply not true. Only perfect practice makes perfect. This is also true of advertising. A significant amount of money can be easily wasted by advertising in the wrong media. For example, the phonebook is infrequently used to find business services. The go to source today has become Internet search engines. I doubt few would argue with this. Many of us use a search engine, like Google, every day. In my own case, which I believe is representative, I rarely use the phonebook to find goods and services. Today, Google is even used to find phone numbers. In effect, it has replaced the phonebook. Therefore, advertising in the phonebook would likely yield a poor return on investment.

Getting results in today’s economy

As the president of an Internet marketing company, it would be self-serving for me to suggest that search engine marketing is where a company should spend its advertising dollars. Not only would that be self-serving, but in my opinion it would be a half truth. Getting results in today’s recession economy requires a new approach. I believe the new mantra should be promotion during a recession, not simply advertising.

Obviously search engine advertising has its place and deserves serious consideration when developing your marketing communication plan. However, there are numerous other marketing, public relations and sales thrusts that deserve equal consideration.

Here are some to consider:

Search Engine Optimized Website

Every company, from a one-person consultancy to a Fortune 500 enterprise, needs a search engine optimized Website equal to or better than the competition they face in the marketplace. Let’s face reality. The go-to source for information has become Internet search engines. Having a competitive Website is simply not enough. Statistics show that approximately 90% of all Websites are found as the result of a search. Therefore, if your Website is not found in the search engines, and more specifically within the first two pages of search returns, your Website is virtually invisible. 65% of searches stop on the first page of search returns. Only 35% proceed to the second page. Seldom does anyone go further. Therefore, the first step in the new mantra of promotion is to have a search engine optimized Website equal to or better than the competition.

• Read more about search engine optimized web design. (http://www.iblogmarketing.com/2009/06/01/website-design-critical-to-business-success-online-and-off-line/)

Optimized Press Releases

Companies want to work with companies that are busy. They probably don’t teach that in the Harvard business school, but it’s a fact of life. One great way to demonstrate that the company is both busy and in the forefront of its industry is through the use of search engine optimized press releases. When done properly, the search engine optimized press release will rank highly in key news portals, such as Google News and Yahoo! News. Over 70% of journalists use news portals to keep abreast of the news in the industries they cover. In addition, search optimized press releases are picked up by numerous Websites throughout the Internet. This is also a great way to build link popularity (i.e. external links pointing to your Website), which in turn will help your Website rank highly in the search engines.

E-Mail Marketing

E-mail is making a comeback and provides an excellent way to generate leads, increase sales, and keep your company top of mind. I covered this in a recent blog post, E-mail Marketing Soars in Recession.

• Read more about e-mail marketing. (http://www.iblogmarketing.com/2009/05/26/email-marketing-soars-in-recession)

Social Media Marketing

Lastly, consider launching a social media marketing campaign. Social media sites like Facebook, networking sites like LinkedIn, and micro-blogs like Twitter are proving to be highly effective marketing and communication channels. Our agency, TMA E-Marketing, has been helping a wide spectrum of clients, ranging from Fortune 500 enterprises to startups, develop effective social media marketing campaigns tailored to their specific objectives.

• Read more about social media marketing. (http://www.iblogmarketing.com/2009/04/20/social-media-marketing-critical-to-business-success-part-i/)

As an Internet marketing, advertising and public relations agency, we strongly believe in the value of advertising. However, don’t be fooled by statistics that simply hail the merits of advertising in a recession. We believe that the advertising must be strategically targeted to reach the right audience. We also believe in a balanced approach, including the elements discussed above. Don’t simply develop an advertising plan. Develop an integrated marketing communication plan that cost-effectively promotes your company to your target market.

I doubt many people would argue that Website design can play a critical role in a business’ success online, but few understand it also can play a critical role off-line. To understand this, we need to first understand what constitutes an effective Website design, how the target market arrives at the Website, and how they take action (i.e. make a purchase at an ecommerce site or provide contact information at a lead generation site).

What Goes into an Effective Website Design
At TMA E-Marketing all Website design starts with focusing on the target market. In particular, we look at “pain points”. What is a “pain point”? It’s the needs that your potential client or consumer has relative to the products and services your business offers. In simple terms: we work with our Website client to uncover their target market’s pain points and design the Website to offer solutions. We term that “designing the Website from a marketing perspective.”

The fundamental purpose of the Website is to get the visitor to take action, whether that is a purchase in an ecommerce site or a form fill-out / phone call in a lead generation site. However, let me be clear on one critical point. The attractiveness and user friendliness of the site should not suffer from designing the site from a marketing perspective. In fact, the user friendliness in particular should actually benefit since the navigation and content of the site will directly address the market’s pain points (i.e. their needs). All this sounds simple, but can require a good deal of research. Would it surprise you if I told you that many businesses don’t fully understand their target market?

Next, let’s consider how visitors find the Website. Just about 90% of all first visits to a Website are the result of a search, typically in one of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. That’s right, almost 90%. Many people that have evenly previously visited the site or learned about it via off-line advertising will type the name of the company in a search engine since this is easier than remembering the company’s URL (i.e. the actual Web address) or phone number.

This leads us to the next critical element of an effective Website. It must be search engine optimized and easily found on either the first page or second page of the major search engines. Statistics indicate that 65% of searchers stop after looking at the first page of search returns. Only 35% will look at the second page. Anything beyond the first two pages of search results essentially means that your site is invisible.

Now we’re ready to answer the two key questions:

1.    What gets the target market to take action?
2.    What form will their actions take?

What gets the target market to take action?
The answer is deceptively simple. You must satisfy the visitor’s need with a compelling offer. I told you it was deceptively simple. The real challenge is creating a compelling offer that satisfies the visitor’s need. This is where the pain points come in. If you’ve developed the Website to address the visitor’s pain points, then providing compelling solutions becomes easier. Notice, I didn’t say easy. I said easier. Compelling offers can be developed in a number of ways, including information learned from the Website visitors’ pain points, competitive research, and even focus groups. The right compelling offer can change the visitor’s action rate immensely.

What form will their actions take?
The answer to this question is also deceptively simple. They are going to respond in the way they feel most comfortable. For some, that means they will do the entire transaction online. These people feel comfortable with the security of the Internet and rightly so. If properly constructed, online transactions in a properly secured Website are among the most secure transactions on the planet. For example, if you use your credit card in a restaurant, you have no control on how the credit may be used or copied when the server takes it to process your bill. Online, you have total control over how it will be used; if the Website transaction is secure (i.e. special coding that encrypts the transaction).

However this will not prevent fraud. Therefore, it is important to have confidence in which companies you do business with online. Many people still don’t trust Internet transactions and would prefer to call the company directly. You can use trackable phone numbers that redirect to the company’s actual phone numbers. In that way, you are able to tell exactly how many calls you’ve received from your Website. Some people want the company to call them. In that case, you can provide a call back option. They can specify their number and the time they would like to be called back. Lastly, provide a faxable form. Yes, some people actually like to fax the information and trust faxing more than an Internet transaction. The key point to all of this is to provide the visitor with numerous ways in which they can take action and let them pick the one they are most comfortable with using.

Before I conclude this blog, remember I stated that Website design can play a critical role off-line. That’s totally true. It takes several forms. Two have already been mentioned above, namely telephone calls and faxing. There is an important 3rd option. Consumers, in increasing numbers, are researching online before buying offline (ROBO). The visitor may choose to visit the “store,” especially if you have a retail location near them and if part of your compelling offer involves a coupon offering discounts on merchandise or services of interest to them. In fact, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project 2007, 81% of Americans typically do research online for a product they may buy offline.

Yes, I know it’s old! And yes, I know the Internet is clogged with spam! But the recession is giving email marketing new life! Why the new life? The answer is simple. Businesses are turning to cost-effective proven programs that get results. Email marketing fits this bill perfectly.

First, email is one of the most cost-effective direct marketing methods. Email campaigns can be fully implemented at a fraction of the cost of direct mail campaigns. Unlike direct mail campaigns every element of an email campaign is trackable including open rate, click through rate (to a landing page, if one is used in the campaign), and recipients’ response rate. This allows the return on investment (ROI) to be easily calculated. Lastly, it’s fast. Email campaigns can be quickly developed, precisely launched (including targeting and timing), and 80% of the recipients will respond (i.e. either take action or ignore it) within 48 hours.

Retailers in particular are embracing email marketing along with their shift in focus to customer retention in the current recession-era market. Longer-term marketing programs are being shelved in favor of low hanging fruit. The fact is email is low hanging fruit. According to a Shop.org study, 64% of the retailers increasing their advertising spending are putting more dollars into email marketing. That same study indicated that 96% of those retailers decreasing their advertising spending are still maintaining their email advertising budgets.

We have done countless email campaigns at TMA E-Marketing, for start-ups to enterprise companies. We were there when email was the hottest Internet marketing arrow in the quiver. We saw it decline as spam clogged email in-boxes and as search engine marketing became king. Now, it’s making a comeback and with good reason. When done properly, it is capable of yielding amazing results. There’s the catch. What does it mean to do it properly? Here are the three top rules we consider important:

1. The list is the most critical element. The only list that will work is a targeted opt-in list. If it’s not targeted, the results will be hit and miss. If it’s not opt-in, it will not comply with the Can-Spam law. The best list is a company’s in-house opt-in email list. This is a list where the company’s clients and prospects have agreed to accept email messages from them. We are generally able to routinely get 25-50% open rates using in-house opt-in lists.
2. The second critical element is the offer. The offer needs to be compelling. Finding the right compelling offer is far from easy and generally requires careful testing of different offers.
3. Everything else is tied for third! This includes email design, copy, landing page, etc. In short, if you don’t get the first two elements right (i.e. the list and a compelling offer), nothing you do from that point on will matter.

Obviously, tracking every element of the email campaign is essential. With careful tracking you will be able to segment the list, test different offers, and test other elements of the campaign. Ultimately, tracking will enable a return on investment to be calculated. Doing an email campaign without tracking is equivalent to driving with a blindfold. The results are likely to be disastrous.

One last point that is often overlooked is email’s branding power. Email is generally viewed as a direct response marketing tool. However, email provides an opportunity for a company to raise brand awareness and to maintain its brand. Even those recipients that don’t take action are still exposed to the company’s brand and messaging.

The recession has required companies to pinch pennies and focus on what works. Guess what? They are rediscovering that email is cost-effective and works!

Part 2:  The Internet Marketing Plan

It is widely accepted that the Internet has become the “go to” source to find products and services.  For this reason and in today’s difficult economy, it’s critical for every company to utilize the Internet to generate sales and/or leads to fuel their business.  Whether you’re an enterprise company or a small business, you should have an Internet marketing plan.  Obviously, a larger company requires a more sophisticated and comprehensive Internet marketing plan.  However, independent of company size, the central element of any Internet marketing plan is a search engine optimized Website.  This being the case, let’s examine what it means to have a search engine optimized Website.

A question I am often asked in my seminars and workshops is:  What makes a good Website?   The answer to this question is relatively simple:  It needs to be equal to or better than your competitors’ Websites and it needs to be easily found in the search engines.  There are all types of Websites and generally, the price of the Website is directly proportional to the level of sophistication.    It is possible to spend millions of dollars developing a Website.  Good examples of a multimillion-dollar Websites are Amazon and Dell.  These Websites contain some of the most sophisticated technology available.  However, the technology has only one goal: Meet the company’s online sales objectives.  So the complete answer to what makes a good Website is three fold:

1. It must be equal to or better that your competitors
2. It must be built to achieve your company’s online objectives
3. It must be easily found in the search engines for keywords that your target market is likely to use

If it doesn’t meet all three criteria, it isn’t a “good” Website.  No matter how attractive and sophisticated a Website may be, it must meet the above three critical criteria to actually do a company much good.  Think about it.  Let’s assume you have an attractive Website and when people see it they usually say “Wow.”  That’s really a “so what” if it isn’t easily found in the search engines.  The reason for this is that search engines account for almost 90% of all the found sites on the Internet.  That means that even a company like Amazon must be easily found in the search engines.  Do a simple search for any thing that Amazon sells, for example “gardening books” and you will find them on the first page of Google.  If the result isn’t in the natural listings it will be found in the paid listing (i.e. listings a company pays for when someone clicks on their advertisement).  They do this because even with their immense branding and online presence, they completely understand the power of search engine marketing.  In the example I just gave, as of March 8, 2009, Amazon had the number one paid listing in Google and the number one natural listing.

Do you have to spend millions to have a “good” Website?  The answer for most of the companies that will read this blog is no.  You will need to spend whatever it takes to meet or beat the competition and be easily found in the search engines. 

Another question I am often asked in my seminars and workshops is:  Can I do it myself?  For most companies, even those with Information Technology people on staff, the answer is no.  The techniques of building a competitive Website that is easily found in the search engines isn’t just a technology challenge.  Technology plays a role, but it also requires:
• A thorough understanding of user friendly, as well as attractive, Web design
• Online copy writing that compels the target market to take action once they get to the site
• A thorough knowledge of search engine optimization

Obviously, while a search engine optimized Website is the central element of any Internet Marketing Plan, there are numerous other elements to consider.  These include:

• Social Media Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Online/Traditional Public Relations & Branding
• Shopping Comparison Site Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Integrated Media Advertising (i.e. integrating Print/Radio/TV with Internet marketing)
• Blog Development & Promotion
• Audio/Video Production
• 360’s Panoramic Views
• Podcasting & Promotion
• Contextual Internet Marketing (example:  a hotel banner ad on a travel site)
• International & Multicultural Internet Marketing

All elements of the Internet Marketing Plan need to be responsive to the company’s objectives.  Some companies may stop with a search engine optimized Website, while others may utilize some or all of the elements delineated above. 

Once again, it’s not about technology.  It’s about using technology combined with marketing savvy to meet the company’s return on investment (ROI) objectives.