Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

When times are tough, business owners and leaders look closely at discretionary spending, scrutinizing each line item expense based on its potential to grow the business and demonstrate clear ROI (Return on Investment). As a small business owner myself, that is exactly what I do. While considered “discretionary spending” by some, marketing and advertising investments are necessary to grow any business. Internet marketing and advertising investments, whose impact can easily be tracked, enable businesses to increase marketing ROI while being able to directly correlate investments with incremental results. A business website is the central component of any Internet marketing strategy, regardless of the products and services a business sells.

The most important benefit a business website provides is visibility, including company, product and service visibility. What portion of the target market is a company and its offers visible to? If its not 100%, then there is room to grow. Imagine the opportunity cost of a company not being visible to its prospects that are actively searching on the Internet for exactly what it is that business offers. Recent studies have shown that a majority of buyers rely on Internet search as their primary source of local business information. Businesses that rely solely on the print yellow pages, classifieds and word of mouth are missing a large part of their addressable market. If a business is a services business as opposed to product business, its primary (and in many cases only) market is local. Like the saying goes, “You have to be in it to win it.” In other words, a business has to be visible as an option before it can be considered.

Since more and more businesses and individuals are now using the Internet to research products and services before buying, companies must provide online prospects with ready access to company, product and service information positioned with unique selling points. Buyers expect anytime access to this information since many companies are and have been providing it. For example, many restaurants often have websites that provide hours of operation, locations, driving or walking directions, menu content, email contact and a phone number so that those interested can email or call to make a reservation. Restaurants without business websites miss out on potential customers who are planning online.

Understanding what a company needs in a business website and how that website supports business objectives is critical. At a minimum, companies going online need a domain name relevant to their business. A company domain name becomes a pivotal part of that company’s online corporate identity. An email address with the same domain name is also very important. This provides much more credibility than using a free email account from a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail domain. Email from these domains is often blocked by filters since much unsolicited email originates from them. All business websites should include a company background with mission and values, up to date offer information, hours of operation, contact information, and directions (if applicable). It is also important to budget for basic website promotion to ensure that the business website is visible to those searching online. Many cost effective options such as search engine optimization and pay per click advertising exist.

If the business objective is to grow revenue profitably while increasing marketing ROI, then a business website is absolutely a necessity and not an accessory. The good news is that there are a number of affordable Internet marketing solutions available. The cost varies depending on how much initial and ongoing support a specific business requires. Having a business website today does not necessarily set a company apart from its competition, but does afford increased visibility and a chance to cost effectively compete for customers online that would otherwise be forfeited.

BCRN6F83Z5C9

What makes the Internet advertising an attractive vehicle relative to other mediums? Is it because it’s “cool” and “everybody’s doing it” or is it viewed as a necessary evil with little expectations of results? Internet advertising and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) in particular, has continued to get a larger share of advertising funding even while the overall advertising industry has contracted. This is continued growth is enabled by the measurement and ROI (Return on Investment) accountability of Internet advertising necessary to justify continued advertising during a recessionary economy.

How does Internet Advertising provide accountability? The Internet provides accountability through measurement and analysis which enables marketers to confidentially estimate Internet advertising ROI. With the proliferation of many traffic measurement and analysis low or no cost software and services, it is very easy for Internet advertisers to establish key performance metrics, capture those metrics by inserting some simple html/JavaScript into the web pages to be tracked, and within 24 hours or less, you are able to measure things like visits, unique visitors, origination, key word use if through a search engine, bounce rates and more. It is also easy to measure and monitor conversion rates of visitors per sale or lead captured.

Once we have begun capturing the key Internet advertising performance metrics, we can analyze to establish metric baselines to test one or more Internet advertising strategies with high ROI such as SEM. SEM includes techniques such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click). By measuring, monitoring and analyzing traffic relative to SEM initiatives, we can begin to correlate marketing initiatives results. This correlation to results can be used to estimate Internet advertising ROI relative to individual marketing initiatives, providing creditable accountability for those individual investments. For SEO initiatives, the correlation is more difficult as these initiatives provide residual impact but tend to have impacts that lag.

A wise businessman told me early in my career that to be successful, that I would have to fail often and early. This principle is one that is grasped best through years of application. The beauty of Internet advertising, SEM and paid placement in particular, is that with measurement and analytic capabilities today, Internet Marketers can have strong indications if their online campaigns will succeed or fail within 24 hours. This knowledge, obtained through measurement and analysis, enables Internet advertisers to adjust campaigns early and test suggested campaign improvements often, reducing negative impacts of poor performing campaigns, while providing actionable data to tune campaigns and their results sooner.

As Internet advertising performance measurement and analysis tools become more mature and shift from a paradigm of providing raw data with summaries to automated analysis and recommendation solutions, the ability to test and tune Internet advertising campaigns will become even more widespread. This unique, near-real time accountability through measurably will continue to accelerate the growth of Internet advertising at the expense of traditional offline media.