Tips from Norwich: an introduction to Internet Marketing beginners

The best thing about internet marketing is that it has massive scope beyond the traditional forms of marketing. Anyone who thinks that banner ads on websites are fulfilling the possibilities of internet marketing have missed a trick (or 87)!
No longer is marketing about finding ways of shouting your message out to the world and hoping that someone who cares is listening... the whole point is in-coming leads - you can put your message in the path of people who are already looking for it.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are two sides of the same coin.

SEO involves getting your website higher up the natural ranks for search phrases. It involves two types of work; on-page and off-page optimization techniques. It includes making sure that you have chosen the right keywords, that they are in all the right places on your site and that you have in-coming links from high value, relevant sites (check out our SEO tips lens for more!)

The simplest form of SEM involves advertising on search engines and is sometimes referred to as "AdWords" (which is Google's ad system), or PPC advertising. This means paying for the 'featured ads' that you see at the top and down the right hand side of your results page.

Debates are raging about whether PPC advertising on search engines is as effective as organic or natural SEO - some people never click on the Google ads as a rule.
Another reason that SEO might be seen as being more cost-effective is that once completed, organic SEO will continue to bring returns because your ranking will continue to be high after you stop paying for work on it - whereas PPC will stop bringing customers your way the moment you end the campaign.

Having said that, PPC is cheaper and more accessible than a complete SEO campaign and can help small businesses that don't yet have a budget for SEO to have a presence on their keywords and put themselves in path of potential clients looking for their services. Just remember that paid search engine advertising is a short-term fix - the best approach would be to combine SEO and SEM to cover both long and short term goals.

It's vital to ensure that your PPC budget is spent on the right keywords. You have to consider whether it's worth going for a national or international keywords that could cost you £10 per click? Unless you run an international business selling internationally available products, a more cost-effective approach is to choose a long-tail and precise keyword that is both cheaper and will bring much more relevant traffic. Also, make sure that the ads link to the right page of your website - link them straight to the 'buying' page or specific product/service page - no one will want to have to search more once having landed on your site.

Facebook advertising is another way of having extremely targeted ads that will reach your demographic. Just remember that people don't usually go onto social media sites in a buying mood - unlike on Google, they're not there searching for a product or service. If you're going to put effort into Facebook, instead of linking to your product page, why not see if you can build up the number of 'likes' your business' fan page. This will build the base of interested potential clients that you can reach with a social media campaign at a later date.

The reason that internet marketing is so effective, is that if you do it well it can be highly reactive to your market place.

Unlike a print run, billboards or print advertising, you can change your online ads instantly as soon as you see how well they are doing. Why not run two ads simultaneously and play them off against each other - when one does better, drop the loser and try to beat the one left with a whole new ad.
Use your analytics properly - monitor where people are leaving your site or which pages have the highest bounce rate - tweak your web copy, make sure that the ads aren't setting false expectation.
It's the same with mailer campaigns. You can track exactly who is opening your sales mailers, whether the reader is clicking through and how much time they spent on your site. This is another way that you can be completely reactive and hone your message to speak to your audience.

There's masses to say about internet marketing - starting a lens is like opening a can of worms! But for now I'll have to pack it in - and will return at a later date with some more internet marketing tips from the wonderful wich of Nor :)