Previous
Effective e-marketing made easy
Added: (Thu Oct 27 2005)
More and more businesses are choosing digital technology to sell and promote their goods or services. Norma Foster, chief executive of The North East Regional Portal (TNERP) looks at the benefits of e-marketing and how to effectively use it.
E-marketing gives businesses of any size access to the mass market at an affordable price and, unlike TV or print advertising, it can be truly personalised.
An effectively planned and targeted e-marketing campaign can be specifically tailored to reach your target audience much more affordably than traditional marketing methods.
Building a website gives your company a global reach, 24 hours a day. This allows you to find new markets for only a small investment and compete internationally, even while you’re sleeping!
By linking your company database to your website, you can greet return visitors with personalised offers and messages. The more they buy, the better profile of them you build up, which means they are being directly targeted every time they visit the site, with the offers they want.
Email or banner advertising makes it easier to evaluate how successfully your campaign is running as you can obtain information about customers’ responses to your advertising.
E-marketing can also make a campaign much more interesting and interactive by adding music, graphics and videos. Games, quizzes and e-newsletters can also be used to communicate with customers, reminding them of your services.
The fundamentals of starting an e-marketing campaign are the same as starting a traditional marketing campaign. First, you need to identify your target audience; if you want to target more than one audience then prioritising the list is vital, as it allows resources to be allocated accordingly.
Next comes setting your objectives, such as brand awareness, sales focus and the efficiency of the company. Before any activity begins, it is important that everything behind the scenes is working properly and the company brand reflects the way you want the company to grow.
Before you can begin the campaign the planning stages need to be addressed. Budgeted planning and measuring success may vary along the way, but from the outset it is important to have a clear process planned out.
It is also important to set up a contingency plan with an extra pot of money. Starting a marketing campaign half-heartedly is not worth the time and effort, so in case you go over budget in the first few months, the extra money will allow the campaign to continue to its conclusion, without being forced to come to an abrupt end.
Now the fun starts, and you can decide on the right mix of marketing tools for you. Look at competitors’ websites and see what is or isn’t working well for them. Invest some money into researching what your customers want to see, it may be quite a big outlay at the start but it is likely to save the company a lot of money on wasted campaign ideas.
Customer feedback is essential for the effective running of your campaigns. Make your site easy to navigate so that customers want to return and repeat their good experiences. Happy customers are more likely to fill in surveys and give feedback. Include a FAQ’s page, ask visitors to register to you so that you can email newsletters to them; offer incentives and also give responses to customers to let them know that their thoughts are appreciated.
A not-for-profit organisation and a fully owned subsidiary of the Regional Development Agency One NorthEast, TNERP represents the North East England online via its n-e-life.com website. It can also provide e-commerce advice, funding, e-tendering services and online shopping.
For further information telephone 0191 487 2002 or visit www.n-e-life.com.