New Business and Online Marketing

Today, Internet marketing has become the most popular form of advertising, surpassing physical media such as direct mail and billboard ads. While traditional business owners may think that the Internet is just a commodity for big businesses, many small businesses have now switched completely to this relatively new form of advertisement. This is due to the numerous advantages that this form of marketing has, including lower costs, higher effectiveness and data collection.

However in this article, we would not be reviewing the advantages of online marketing; rather, we would be going through some guidelines on how a new business can use internet marketing to its full advantage.

Target Your Market

This is the most common step that most business owners overlook for their marketing campaigns. Improper segmentation of your target market can not only lead to an ineffective campaign, it can also have a negative effect on your business’s public image.

Consider yourself in the place of a prospective consumer. You start getting emails from a company offering pool cleaning services in Philadelphia, even though you are located in Miami. What impression would you get of the company? Segmentation allows you to target customers that can actually avail your services, which means higher effectiveness. Secondly, segmentation also allows you to save up on costs due to the lower number of ads you would be placing.

Directly Address Prospective Clients through Social Media

The pages option for Facebook is often an overlooked blessing for small businesses. Having your brand’s official representation in the form of a Facebook page holds many unseen advantages. Firstly, you have the option of directly addressing the consumers by simply ‘replying’ to their individual comments using the reply option. This not only gives consumers a sense of better customer service, it can also help small businesses save up on costs relating to customer service departments.

Secondly, social media marketing also allows for free publicity. Suppose a customer was satisfied with your service and leaves a positive feedback on the page. This feedback will also show up on the newsfeeds of people linked to the customer, in effect generating free publicity for your brand.

Keep a Lower Email Frequency

Lastly, new business owners also need to respect a customer’s personal space and not bombard him with emails. You may think that a lower email frequency is counterproductive, when in fact it is more effective than a high number of emails. Think about it; what good is sending the same information to the consumer over and over again? In fact, many email clients even have an automatic screening process which blacklists email addresses sending a high volume of emails. So your client might not even be getting your emails at all.

In summation for effective online marketing keep your message simple, targeted and valuable.