Have you already tried to attract customers via the Internet? I think so. Did it work? I think that even if and more or less it turned out, there is still a precipitate that the result could be even better. Who is to blame for the fact that you have not received enough customers from the Internet? Of course, those who were engaged in promoting your company on the Internet.
Are we talking right? Unfortunately, no. Now I will say a stinging thing: most likely it is your fault. It’s your fault that you gave the introduction of a separate sales channel into your business to people who do not understand anything in your business.
In this article, I want to talk about how to act correctly for a businessman or manager, so that the money invested in online advertising and promotion bring profit, not headaches. You do not need to take my article as an excuse for dishonest or unqualified contractors, there are also enough of them. This is not about them.
What is internet marketing?
To answer this question, you must first understand what any business consists of.
For starters, business is people. Those who do the work. People need to be managed, taught, punished, encouraged, etc. Then, perhaps, the most important part of the business is the production of goods or performance of works. What customers pay you money for.
But customers still need to be found, and this task has to be solved by marketing, which is also an important part of the system called “business”. It is not enough to attract customers, but they have to sell your product or service.
Sales department, to work! And after the sale of the client you need to serve, provide a warranty on the product or periodically perform work for a subscription fee, not the point is important.
Thus, we can conditionally divide business dealing on kinds of works:
- Work with staff (search, training, punishment, incentives)
- production, execution of works
- customer search (marketing)
- sale
- After-sales service (warranty, escort)
Only qualitative performance of all these kinds of works can provide business success, that is profitability. After all, you can consider successful only the business that brings profit.
What kind of work can be attributed to Internet marketing? Of course, to marketing activities. That is, Internet marketing is one of the elements of a complex system called “marketing”.
Let’s remember what exactly marketing should be responsible for:
- positioning the company in the market;
- determination of the target audience (TA);
- studying demand and problems of CA;
- adaptation of the product to the needs of CA;
- selection of ways to address CA (advertising messages and channels).
Logic suggests that Internet marketing is the part of business marketing that is implemented through the Internet.
That is, it is clear that it is not just the use of SEO, contextual advertising or SMM, it is a full-fledged element in the system of general promotion of your business, which should solve marketing problems, but with the use of appropriate promotion tools and channels on the Internet.
What tasks does internet marketing solve?
As we have already found out a successful business is a profitable business. And all types of work that are carried out within the framework of doing business should be aimed at increasing this very profit. Internet marketing is no exception.
Accordingly, the task of run contextual advertising can not be the right task of Internet marketing, as contextual advertising and profitability is not always the same concepts.
To determine what tasks you need to set, you need to understand what can be the result in the form of increasing business profits.
Let’s find out what indicators directly affect the profitability:
- the number of clients;
- average check;
- marginality, i.e. the difference between the cost of production and the cost.
If you increase any of these indicators or all at once, you will increase the profitability of the business.
Which of these indicators may be affected by internet marketing? Since in most cases it is still a job related to attracting the target audience from the Internet, let’s leave the average check and marginality to regular marketing, and focus on the number of customers.
This indicator can be increased in several ways:
- Increase the reach of the target audience. The more people see our ads, the more they buy. Direct linear connection.
- Increase the conversion of the audience into leaders. We need to make the percentage of people who have seen our ads, to leave requests.
- Increase the conversion of leads into sales. To increase the efficiency of the sales department, so that the percentage of leads closed for the transaction was higher.
- Increase the number of repeat sales. Ensure that customers contact you again after the first purchase.
Reaching the target audience
This is a basic task that will allow you to grow your business. Where does the sale come from on the Internet? The user leaves an order on your site (it may be a group in a social network or a personal page on some portal, but for the sake of brevity in the article we will consider the site as a tool for receiving orders).
That is, you need to bring as many target audiences as possible to your site. This is the main task of online marketing. Increase recognition, the first place in the list of ads on some request, the number of likes per month – it does not matter if the site does not come to people who are interested in your proposal.
Conversion of site visitors into leaders
But visitors to the site is only the beginning of the way to increase the profitability of business. It is necessary to work on increasing the percentage of conversion of visitors to applications and calls. And what influences this conversion? Of course, this site: its appearance, usability, clarity or usability.
Here come to the aid of systems of analytics of attendance of a site. We need to understand how people behave on the site, what they like to do, and what scares them away and how to do so that what scares them would start to like.
You need to test different options for presenting information, competently assess the results of tests and make decisions on further improvement.
Conversion of Leads into Sales
This is the entire area of responsibility of the business owner, i.e. you. The quality of this stage depends on how you organize the work in the sales department, how competent and interested your managers are as a result.
Repeated sales
When can a resale take place? To do so, two conditions must be met: the customer must be satisfied with the first purchase and must see your offer when he needs your services again. Of course, they can just remember you and ask you again on their own initiative.
But it works only if the re-turn period is small or the amount of the transaction is large enough and there are no other competitors on the market that are comparable to you in quality, and this is rarely the case. Therefore, to remind about yourself at the right time – it will never be superfluous.
Errors in using internet marketing
The most common mistake is a lack of understanding of the tasks that need to be set by an Internet marketing specialist. We still have most customers coming to us with a request to “make me SEO (SMM, contextual advertising: emphasize the need to emphasize)”.
Do you know who is to blame for the fact that your internet marketing failed? Contractor, not customer as. Either the contractor has done his job poorly, or took on a project, the owner of which is not ready for promotion on the Internet.
Remember that internet marketing is just a tool and a small link in the big integrated strategy of your company. Do not think that you can bring money to an online agency and get ready-made customers in your business. That’s how it doesn’t work.
You should clearly understand what you need from the Internet channels of promotion and why, and the agency should competently implement your wishes in the form of advertising campaigns, optimized site, active groups in social networks.This is the only way to achieve success.