If your objectives include trying to sell your products, you might want to leverage your sales force by making use of an affiliate or associate program. Affiliate programs once again use the advantage of having your site recommended to create traffic to your site. The difference is that an affiliate program is more formal than just having your site recommended by site visitors. Most affiliate programs involve having a contractual agreement, having specific links placed on the affiliate’s site to yours, and having software to track where your traffic is coming from so that you can compute and send referral fees to your affiliates as they are earned. The contract usually states the compensation you will pay to your affiliates for the sales they produce. This is one more way to have other people working to build traffic to your Web site.
Using Permission Marketing
You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation, so it is important not to send out unsolicited e-mail or spam promoting your company or its products. This is why it’s important to develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them messages, including company news and promotions. When you’re developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings. You can do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, notices of changes to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways.
Creating Loyalty among Visitors
The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some incentives for joining your online community and provide them with proof that you really appreciate their business. You can do this by having a members-only section of your Web site that has special offers for them as well as discounts or freebies. When people sign up to join your members-only section, you can ask for their permission and their e-mail address to send them e-mails regarding company or product promotions and news. People like to do business with people who appreciate their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.
Including “Stickiness” Elements
To get your visitors to visit your site often and have them visit a number of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting , interactive, and relevant content. You want to have your site visitors feel as if they are part of your online community and to want to make your site one of the sites they visit every day. You create “stickiness” by including many elements that keep your visitors’ attention. Your site can have a daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter. The combination of these elements makes a site sticky. You want your site to be a resource people return to often and not a one-time event.
A Final Word on Objectives
Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve. You obviously want to create a number of different objectives for your site, but many of the objectives you set can work together to make your Web site complete.
Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them. Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter.
Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry experts.
Target Markets
It is important to define every one of your target markets. Your Web site is designed for them! For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine
Your main target market might be your potential customer, but other target markets might include existing customers, or the media, or those who influence the buying decision for your potential customers, associates, or affiliates.
When you look at really look at potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site are probably different. Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Your products, your business practices, and the like are not a priority for them on your site. A potential customer needs these things before giving you their first order. “Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments. Every business is different. If you were a hotel, for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into:
If you intend to market children’s products, your Web site should be colorful and the text simple and easy to understand in keeping with what appeals to your target market. Chances are, fun-looking graphics will be used extensively on your site to draw children further into it. If you market financial services, your Web site requires a more professional approach. Your graphics must convey a clean appearance, and the text should be informative and written in a business like fashion. As this example demonstrates, the content and tone of your site must be tailored to your target market. After all, this is the best way to attract the attention of the people who are interested in purchasing your product or service.
Another aspect to consider when designing your Web site is your target market’s propensity to utilize the latest technologies and the configuration they are likely to be using. An online business that markets custom, streaming multimedia presentations expects its clientele to be technically inclined. These clients are more likely to have the latest software, advanced Web browser technologies, and faster machines.
On the other hand, clients of a vendor who sells gardening supplies online might be less likely to have fully embraced the latest technologies. Most people looking for these products are connecting from home rather than from their workplace. They might have a slow dial-up connection to the Internet, slower machines, and older software. They might still be using the Web browser that was originally installed on their system, simply because they are uncomfortable downloading the latest version of the browser, are unaware of the more recent version, or are uninterested in downloading a large file. If your target market includes this demographic, be careful with your use of Java, Flash, and large graphic files.
What does this mean for developing and designing your Web site? Well, streaming multimedia developers can design their Web sites with more graphics and dynamic multimedia effects because their clients expect to be impressed when they visit the developer’s site. If vendors of gardening supplies designed their sites similarly, many of their clients might be alienated because the site would be too slow to load. They might take their business elsewhere. The gardening supplies site requires a more basic design with less concentration on large graphics and multimedia effects and more focus on presenting information.
Using Permission Marketing
You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation, so it is important not to send out unsolicited e-mail or spam promoting your company or its products. This is why it’s important to develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them messages, including company news and promotions. When you’re developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings. You can do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, notices of changes to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways.
Creating Loyalty among Visitors
The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some incentives for joining your online community and provide them with proof that you really appreciate their business. You can do this by having a members-only section of your Web site that has special offers for them as well as discounts or freebies. When people sign up to join your members-only section, you can ask for their permission and their e-mail address to send them e-mails regarding company or product promotions and news. People like to do business with people who appreciate their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.
Including “Stickiness” Elements
To get your visitors to visit your site often and have them visit a number of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting , interactive, and relevant content. You want to have your site visitors feel as if they are part of your online community and to want to make your site one of the sites they visit every day. You create “stickiness” by including many elements that keep your visitors’ attention. Your site can have a daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter. The combination of these elements makes a site sticky. You want your site to be a resource people return to often and not a one-time event.
A Final Word on Objectives
Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve. You obviously want to create a number of different objectives for your site, but many of the objectives you set can work together to make your Web site complete.
Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them. Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter.
Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry experts.
Target Markets
It is important to define every one of your target markets. Your Web site is designed for them! For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine
- Their needs
- Their wants
- Their expectations
For each and every one of your target markets, you should also try to determine an appropriate “WOW” factor. What can you provide for them on your Web site that will WOW them? Your objective should be to exceed the target market’s expectations.
Your main target market might be your potential customer, but other target markets might include existing customers, or the media, or those who influence the buying decision for your potential customers, associates, or affiliates.
When you look at really look at potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site are probably different. Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Your products, your business practices, and the like are not a priority for them on your site. A potential customer needs these things before giving you their first order. “Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments. Every business is different. If you were a hotel, for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into:
- Business travelers
- Vacation travelers
- Family travelers
- Meeting planners
- Handicapped travelers
- Tour operators
- Groups
If you intend to market children’s products, your Web site should be colorful and the text simple and easy to understand in keeping with what appeals to your target market. Chances are, fun-looking graphics will be used extensively on your site to draw children further into it. If you market financial services, your Web site requires a more professional approach. Your graphics must convey a clean appearance, and the text should be informative and written in a business like fashion. As this example demonstrates, the content and tone of your site must be tailored to your target market. After all, this is the best way to attract the attention of the people who are interested in purchasing your product or service.
Another aspect to consider when designing your Web site is your target market’s propensity to utilize the latest technologies and the configuration they are likely to be using. An online business that markets custom, streaming multimedia presentations expects its clientele to be technically inclined. These clients are more likely to have the latest software, advanced Web browser technologies, and faster machines.
On the other hand, clients of a vendor who sells gardening supplies online might be less likely to have fully embraced the latest technologies. Most people looking for these products are connecting from home rather than from their workplace. They might have a slow dial-up connection to the Internet, slower machines, and older software. They might still be using the Web browser that was originally installed on their system, simply because they are uncomfortable downloading the latest version of the browser, are unaware of the more recent version, or are uninterested in downloading a large file. If your target market includes this demographic, be careful with your use of Java, Flash, and large graphic files.
What does this mean for developing and designing your Web site? Well, streaming multimedia developers can design their Web sites with more graphics and dynamic multimedia effects because their clients expect to be impressed when they visit the developer’s site. If vendors of gardening supplies designed their sites similarly, many of their clients might be alienated because the site would be too slow to load. They might take their business elsewhere. The gardening supplies site requires a more basic design with less concentration on large graphics and multimedia effects and more focus on presenting information.
