Marketing Private Business on the Internet - Literature review Example

Marketing Your Business on the Internet Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Steps in Online Marketing 4 Designing the Layout of the Website 4 Creatinga Domain name 4 Choosing a Hosting Service 5 Use of Social Media 5 Mistakes to Avoid 6 Monitoring Online Marketing 7 Conclusion 8 Reference 10 Introduction Individuals and business are reaching and introducing the business on an international level through the World Wide Web, an ideal environment for business and individuals. As per reports about 30 million people are connected with the largest information portal and the number is growing at an unprecedented rate. The rush to form a part of the online business or community leads to growth in visibility and market share. One of the effective methods which the businesses and individuals are constantly using is showcasing the products and the services to the target customers through the website of the company. N order to own a website, business needs to own a domain name and the site to be stored on the web server. The web browser software such as Netscape and Explorer tends to communicate with the hosting server on the web in order to display and retrieve the web page on the screen of the users (James, n.d). In the competitive environment it is difficult to do business without having a website as the online business has taken a troll compared to the offline mode of business. The customers and the client expect that the business has a website which provides ample opportunity to promote the business and the services and the products in the market place. According to research conducted by Forrester research, online spending accounted to $95.7billion in the year 2003 and was projected to increase to $229 billion by 2008. Website tends to offer many advantages likes, opening up a worldwide market for the respective product and services, the products are made available 24*7, use of ecommerce, helps to generate sales lead, provide credibility, a platform where special promotional offers can be implemented along with other advantages. Steps in Online Marketing Designing the Layout of the Website The most critical step towards launching a website is designing that satisfies the current as well as the future needs of the business. Designing of website usually starts with some of the following question, the purpose of the website whether it is informational only or can the visitors buy from the site and others; the number of pages required on the website to satisfy the needs and how will the visitors navigate the website. Website should contain elements required for readability, logical flow, capturing the attention of the visitors and satisfy the legal requirements. Home Page is important and is the webpage which the visitors see when they visit the website. The address iswww.yourdomain.com, where the domain contains the name of unique website and includes an index which lets know the webpage of the site. The objective is to let the visitors get introduced about the company, its services and products, capture the attention of the visitors through attractive design and others. Other pages includes, product and service pages where description about each service and product are provided in order to motivate the visitors to take on desired action such as buy or get the desired information; About us page which .provide background of the company along with the history, mission statement, locations, contact information and others. Privacy page is another set of page which every website should link it from the Home page and contains statement as to how the website treats the information about the customers; Resource directory provides links with the complementary sites. Creating a Domain name Every website should have a unique name referred to as domain name and the URL identifies the website location. Most of the web hosting vendors tends to provide a service which involves registering a selected domain name when one sign up an account with the particular site. Before choosing the domain name it is necessary to give some thought as to what the domain name should communicate to the audience. It is essential to provide with a meaningful website address which relates the products and the services. Some of the other factors which are required to consider by the marketers before setting up the domain name is that the domain name should be easy to spell and remember so should the domain name should be short and simple. Choosing a Hosting Service Hosting service tends to provide computer server an online storage in which the website resides. It usually has large number of internet connection making the availability of the website much more and generates more visitors. For a typical website about 1MB of storage tends to accommodate 20-40 web pages, there should be at least five different email address. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate the potential vendor based on the merit of preparation of tools. The vendor needs to offer modified templates and instruction to assist the users (Kernek, 2005, p. 7-18). Use of Social Media In the process of marketing the business on the internet, a marketer should be aware of four types of social media which includes social networking sites, blogs, forums and social book marking sites. Social media helps in the promotion of site by way of sending traffic, producing important link with the site and helps to generate awareness. The marketer can begin a business blog hosting in the own domain. If it is possible to offer valuable and excellent content along with industry comment, the target customers are possible will be link to it increasing the page rank of the site. Secondly one can become part of the social media community in order to market the business online. Face book, Twitter and LinkedIn are some of the best online communities for the business. It is advised to promote the site in online forums as well as in discussion lists (Wilson, 2011). In addition to the above, the use of pay per click advertisements. Pay per click is linked with SEO as a traffic building tool but the pay per click technique and SEO are different from each other. In PPC one can purchase specific key words and phrases from the SEO on the basis of pay per click. Whenever someone clicks on the advertisements, the owner of the website will have to pay a negotiated fee known as COC to the search engine. Electronic newsletter has the ability to drive on the traffic on the particular website and enables to reach potential customers and directs the customers on the website for much more detailed and quality information about the product, company and its offered services if any. Building up of newsletter is easy and less expensive. The key is to build in database and thus provide value added content. Other factors include use of blogs by the website, link exchanges also known as inbound and outbound exchanges which also helps to drive traffic in the website. It is also said that the websites needs to be promoted offline also. PPC, social media and SEO are the biggest and greatest online tools but the customers also tend to encounter the business in the outside world also, in the physical world (All Business, 2012). Mistakes to Avoid In order to successfully market the business in the internet, marketer needs to avoid major mistakes that are often conducted by the entrepreneurs or the marketers. Some of the major mistakes are, To believe that online marketing are all hype To get carried away. Online marketing is not silver bullet and will not transform the marketing performance Failing to incorporate with different types of online marketing Assuming that online marketing to be free marketing Delegating the online site to the IT department Trying hard to go viral and Laurel resting (Blyth, 2011, p. 4-12). Monitoring Online Marketing In marketing the business through online people get involved with web analytics data, top rankings mainly top 30 and also through number of daily visit in the website but there are three most important metrics which can improve the ranking of the website and search engine. The three online metrics business needs to pay attention are as follows, Conversion rate and goal completion While investing money as well as time in creation of the site and expanding the presence in the web, it is important to get something which is of value in return of the investment made by the owners. Different business have different goals and irrespective of the goals a method which helps in tracking the rates of conversion. In general one of the tools is Google Analytics which has the ability to track website sale to download. In addition to it another option available to the marketer is through KISS metrics whose price start from $29 per month. Back link profile With Google latest penguin algorithm update, the quality of the links is important which points at the website in terms of SEO. In order to gain an understanding of the back link profile assuming that the service chosen is Majestic SEO whose plan starts at $49.99 per month following are the things which a marketers needs to look for to understand the back link, any bad neighborhood links which points at the respective website; contains natural sounding text of anchor and does the links arise from sites which were solely built for SEO purpose. Therefore if any of the above conditions are detected at the respective website, as soon as possible these low quality back links should be removed and should be checked once a month. Visitors Engagement Visitor’s engagement refers to the time the visitors spend on the site and the value that the visitors see in the content. The value can be tracked by various ways such as the time spent on site, bounce rate, average pages per visit and number of social media shares. Visitor’s engagement is highly important because of the business gain obtained from providing the customers by engaging them with on site experience (Kumar, 2012). Conclusion Therefore it can be concluded that to conduct business through the internet is not as simple as thought so. It requires careful evaluation of all the process right from setting the website to implementing the design and going viral to the customers. Also just having a website is not enough to conduct business. Whether the business depends on e commerce or offline business the entrepreneur needs to learn as to how to successfully market the business online and generate more traffic with the above mentioned steps and process. In marketing the website, the domain name plays an important role and is one of the important elements in the success of the online business. Thus with creative and meaningful domain name the business will be able to achieve success on the online business world and create a competitive advantage over its competitors. Reference All Business. (2012). Ten Key Steps to Successfully Marketing Your Business Online. Retrieved from http://www.allbusiness.com/business-online-marketing Blyth, A. (2011). Brilliant Online Marketing: How to Use the Internet to Market Your Business. South Asia: Pearson Education India James, A. C. (No Date). Marketing your business on the Internet. Retrieved from http://da-academy.org/internetmarketing.html Kernek, Al. (2005). Put Your Business Online. Pacifica Endeavors LLC Kumar, A. K. (2012). The 3 Most Important Online Marketing Metrics to Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224291 Wilson, R. F. (2011). The Web Marketing Checklist: 37 Ways to Promote Your Website. Retrieved from http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/checklist/ Read More