Web Technology in Marketing: Friend or Foe?Get The Edge Marketing on theedgemarketing.com. Web Technology in Marketing: Friend or Foe? topic will increase your understanding on The Edge Marketing. We at theedgemarketing.com only provide news, articles, information in The Edge Marketing. The Edge Marketing at theedgemarketing.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Before email was widely available, marketing newsletters were printed on paper and sent by mail. There's no question that e-mail is a more economical solution for sending a newsletter. Instead of being able to afford only a few hundred newsletters at a cost of $1 or more each, you can send tens of thousands for only pennies. With an ezine, technology can save you money and allow you to extend your marketing reach. This is one of the many ways that web technology can be your friend. Here are some others: - A web site can attract new customers to your business from across the street or far outside your local area. If your site has high rankings in the search engines under appropriate categories, or many links from keywords prospective clients might search for, you may get dozens of inquiries from people who otherwise would never hear of you. - Using email autoresponders can help you automate your follow-up with likely prospects. Just subscribe a prospect to an autoresponder list once, then send periodic broadcasts to the whole list, encouraging prospects to hire you or attend your learning programs. - Participating in online discussion lists and message boards can allow you to network with a large group of people in your target market without leaving your home or office. Appearing on live chats or webinars permits you to be a public speaker without the time and expense of travel, and speak to national or global audiences. For these reasons and more, it appears that using web technology is an affordable way to reach prospective clients easily. You can potentially attract larger numbers of prospects for fewer dollars than with many more traditional methods of outreach. But there are pitfalls. Broadcast email can be an efficient solution for following up with prospects who already know about you. But it's a terrible way to introduce yourself to a prospect for the first time. Far too many coaches, consultants, trainers, and other professionals add subscribers to their ezine or autoresponder lists without their permission. Not only is this ineffective as a marketing strategy since most readers simply delete e-mail from people they don't recognize, but it can seriously backfire when someone is offended by your unsolicited mail. Here are some other ways that using technology in marketing can become your foe: - Technology makes it easy to hide. When you have a web presence, an ezine, and use e-mail autoresponders to contact your customers, you may think there's no reason to contact them in person. You may feel justified in not picking up the phone, attending a business event, or suggesting a lunch date if you think your technology is doing the job for you. But a web site or e-mail isn't an equal substitute for a prospect hearing your voice or seeing your face. It's pretty rare for someone to hire a professional without talking to him or her first, so if you put off the talking, you may also be putting off the hiring. - Launching and maintaining an attractive and useful website, and achieving high search engine rankings for it, can be an expensive and time-consuming project. Unless you pay close attention to your budget, you can easily find yourself spending much more to land each client than you would ever pay using offline marketing methods. A high-traffic web site is a valuable resource for a business that can take advantage of a global presence or a large volume of new clients. But if your business is primarily local or you only need a few new clients each year, you may end up paying for a level of visibility you don't really need. - Too many inquiries from the web can waste your time. Anonymous visitors to your site will often email to ask about prices and other details. These inquiries are completely unqualified -- you don't know anything about the people who are writing. If you take the time for a thorough reply to each one, they can consume a significant amount of energy. On the web as well as off, prospects who are referred to you by people who know your work are much more likely to hire you than those who find you by accident. If that's so, perhaps it makes sense to put more effort into building referrals than into building a broader web presence. Web technology is really no different than any other method of marketing your services in that you must judge the appropriateness of each strategy for your unique circumstances. If you find writing to be a chore, perhaps a regular ezine is not the best choice for you. If you only need a few large, local clients each year, you may want a web site for prospects to explore after you contact them, but not spend your money on web directory listings or search engine optimization. Autoresponder reminders may be effective to increase enrollment in public workshops, but not such a good idea to sell in-house training to corporations. Just because a strategy is the latest and greatest doesn't mean it's the best. Publishing a blog may be terrific if your target market spends a lot of time online, but not so good to reach those who rarely open their browser. Webinars can be an effective tool for attracting high-tech or corporate clients, but not for home business owners or consumers who operate older, slower computers with dial-up Internet access. Relying completely on technology to bring in clients can also give you a false sense of productivity. When you are writing copy for your web site or setting up autoresponders, you feel like you are taking action about marketing. And these activities can be important behind the scenes steps, but you shouldn't confuse them with direct outreach to prospective clients. Web copy won't make any sales until people see it, and autoresponders will have no effect until people are subscribed to them. Web technology provides just another set of marketing tools, not a complete solution. Using every marketing tool the web has to offer is not a requirement of doing business. The purpose of your marketing should be to bring you enough clients to earn the level of profit you desire. When marketing technology adds to your bottom line, it's worth employing. When it doesn't, there's no reason to use it.
|
Advice Home Business Technology Online Advertising Motivational Internet Marketing SEO Help Online Games Science Articles Happiness More Articles:1. When Designing Postcards, Aim for "Refrigerator Door Mindshare" By Martha Retallick If you want to design effective marketing postcards, then aim for "Refrigerator Door Mindshare." By this, I mean that you should create a card that someone would be proud to display on his or her refrigerator door.The image on the front of your postcard should be simple, but attractive. I?ve found that brightly colored cards pull a better response than dark, moody cards. Save your artistic angst for some other medium. You should also create an … 2. AIDA From A Different View - I Call It the 5 W's By Van Lam My childhood was my foundation for how I write and how I think. I caught on at an early age that writing is an art and it has a very distinct way of reaching out to people depending on how you apply it. I used my own method of writing and applied it to the criteria my teachers needed. You see, the criteria is always changing from teacher to teacher or professor to professor but the method that is applied can be easily molded into place to make … 3. 14 Serious Mistakes of Your Tourism Brochure Marketing Strategy By David Kan This is a long article with many parts of interesting skills and knowledge and up to now is the best article about brochure marketing in the world; In fact, it's the first chapter of Advanced Tourism Brochure Marketing Package published by T-IM.com ; therefor, its content is also great for any businesses which have a marketing brochure.This article is so comprehensive and has 2 parts:Part 1: The first 7 serious brochure marketing mistakesPart 2… 4. Real Estate Web Design - 3 Items you Must Include on your Real Estate Web Site for Optimal Usability Real estate web design requires you to do things a little bit differently because you are selling either your services or actual homes, so there must be several things present on the web page to make it user friendly. Unfortunately, many real estate web sites are poorly designed, ask visitors to supply tons of personal information before being able to view any information, don’t provide enough information not to mention photos, and are all around… |