Weave more into your website
Invest in some online promotion and watch the Internet boost your business, writes Jim Cullen, Online Marketing Manager at Holt Interactive.
I'm often asked what it is that I do as an Online Marketing Manager. The job title is a fairly new one in the UK, emerging from the rapid growth of the new media industry. The specifics of the job may vary between companies, but the overall aims are the same; using the Internet environment to help achieve business objectives.
Surprisingly, businesses have been slow to embrace the concept of online promotion. In the early days of new media, businesses turned to Web developers and design agencies to create solutions for them. The new media firms consist of programmers and designers, most of whom have no marketing experience. And yet they often blind their clients with science, and sell them the old myth, "If you build it, they will come".
Marketing is an essential part of Web development, every bit as vital as the design, and yet the budgets haven't reflected this. In any other medium, marketing would take up most of the budget, so it is surprising how little is invested in online promotion. But gradually this has been changing and after some hard lessons, many companies have now seen the light. Online marketers like myself can now take our rightful place in new media firms across the country.
Unrivalled reach
The marketing potential of the Internet, and its implications for business, are huge, and have still to be fully realised. With a population close to 400 million (18 million in the UK alone), the Internet is unrivalled in its ability to reach an audience and raise public awareness. But marketing hasn't changed since going online; it's just the environment that is different. The Internet marketing process is much like traditional marketing in that your objective is to reach your market, arouse their interest, and earn their loyalty, encouraging repeat business.
An Internet Marketing Manager therefore needs to have both a marketing and IT background. In my role, I have to communicate equally well with both our clients, and our team of designers and developers. They live in different worlds, and part of my job is to marry our technical capabilities with our clients' objectives, creating Internet solutions to business problems.
Daily challenges
The online marketing job offers tremendous variety from day to day. There is such a wide range of activities and responsibilities, and every project is unique with its own set of challenges. One day I could be writing a marketing plan for an existing client, presenting a website audit to a potential client, or attending a conference on search engine strategies. Another day, I could be analysing a client's website traffic, or running a workshop for our designers on Web usability.
The Internet marketing process begins with traffic building. In order to find your customers online, you must first understand the nature of the Internet and its users. People use the Internet for many things: entertainment, news, research, but above all to source information. Potential customers are currently using the Net to look for products and services and the competition for their attention is fierce. My task is to place the client's website in the direct path taken by these users. Online, visibility is everything.
This is best achieved by creating multiple pathways to the website. There are many different sources of Internet traffic and they're not all on the World Wide Web. The Web is not the Internet, only one part of it.
Exploiting multiple challenges
Email is still more popular than the Web, and a more direct channel for reaching a customer. Usenet is where the Internet began: a global network where newsgroups are found. Newsgroups are a powerful and often overlooked area of the Internet that puts you in direct contact with the Internet's greatest resource: other people. They are devoted to specific areas of interest, some of which are consumer based. If customers are discussing a specific product or service, they could well be doing it on Usenet. And finally, let's not forget offline sources of traffic, like press, radio and TV.
Attracting visitors is one thing, but retaining them, and persuading them to return regularly is more difficult. This is where the content, design and navigation of the site have a major role to play. It's important than the designers, developers, writers and editors understand their impact on the user experience. Companies that have an in-house Online Marketing Manager have an advantage here.
A goldmine of customer information
The last stage in the marketing cycle is visitor tracking and analysis. Traffic analysis not only provides an excellent measurement tool, but also provides vital marketing data that can be used to fine-tune your promotion efforts. The Web enables you to measure marketing performance more easily and accurately than traditional media. Strangely though, few businesses are even aware of the goldmine of information that's available from their site, often relying on basic counters or simply measuring "hits". Understanding the online customer and all of the different aspects of a Web visitor's experience is critical to ensuring the effectiveness of a site and ensuring that the goals of the website are met.
(This article first appeared in The Scotsman, 11th May 2001)
