This is the second of a three part series where we're looking at the realities of doing business over the Net. Last week, we looked at the real promise of e-business. This week, we look at your e-marketing options. Next week, we'll zoom in even more and look at your effective strategies on how to use search engines in your e-marketing.
Okay, you've got your website up and online. The entire world is just one click away. It's a heady moment, with new global markets just waiting to discover you. So, the question is, how do they find you? From the millions of websites out there to choose from, how do you direct traffic to yours?

Who Do You Want?

The first question is so obvious, many website owners forget to ever ask it. Who do you want to visit your site? Is it your existing customers? New customers in your geographic region? New customers that are defined by a specific interest or industry? Once these questions are answered, it becomes much easier to define your e-marketing strategy. As you define your target visitor, where to find that visitor will become more apparent.

How Much Do You Want to Spend?

The next step is to determine how many resources you want to throw at your e-marketing campaign. And when allocating a budget, please bear in mind that we're not just talking money here. One of the great democratic anomalies of the Net is that many times, unpaid methods for increasing your online visibility work better than paid options. I've found that an investment of time on the part of the site owner generally gives you a higher return than an investment of money. Carefully determine just how much of your time and your money you want to set aside to make sure your site is found.

Okay, Let's Begin.

Before we start laying siege to that vast online world of potential buyers, one thing has to be said up front. The better your site, the more successful your e-marketing efforts will be. This is particularly true in instances where you're generating that free visibility we talked about before. As we look at each of these strategies, you'll see why superior content and design are so important. If you're asking other websites to point traffic to yours, you'd better give them a good reason to do so. Please make sure you've done your housekeeping before you start building traffic. Ensure there's no broken links or scripting errors. Check your site on both Netscape and Explorer, going back a version or two. Remember that the majority of visitors will be accessing your site through a dial up connections. Don't throw huge graphics or other files that take forever to download in their path. And keep your content fresh. Give your visitors lots of up to date, relevant content that's easy to access and you'll find it much easier to attract visitors the first time and keep them coming back.

Now, let's look at your options for catching the attention of those visitors.

Traditional Marketing

Make your website an integral part of your traditional marketing. The website should be clearly noted on every piece of letterhead, every business card, every brochure and every advertisement. Consider a mail or e-mail campaign to your existing customers, announcing the launch of the website.

Banner Advertising

When the World Wide Web broke onto the world scene in the mid 90's, the Holy Grail for generating ad revenue was to be the banner ad. These ubiquitous little plots of online real estate sat on top of the most popular pages on the web, providing one click access to the wonders of the sponsor's site. All the major portals and search sites had them. It was this advertising tool that was supposed to pay the bills and keep the wheels of online commerce greased. And, like many things on the Web, they didn't quite meet expectations. By and large, online visitors have ignored banner advertising. The click thru rates have been disappointing to say the least (less that .5% for untargeted, 1-2% for targeted). While banner advertising is still a staple of online advertising, website owners have had to look for other solutions to drive traffic to their site.

Generally, banners are sold on a per impression or cost per thousand basis, where you'll pay a set amount each time (or thousand times) the banner is served up to a visitor. For example, cost per thousand rates for banners on Yahoo, the world's most popular site, range from $31 US per thousand for a run of site banner to $65 US per thousand for a keyword targeted banner that would appear on top of specific search results. Yahoo has a $1000 minimum buy. Smaller sites with less sophisticated tracking tools will often sell banner advertising based on a set monthly rate.

Now, $65 per thousand impressions may seem like a good deal, but let's do a little math. At a 1% click thru rate, that's $65 per 10 clicks, or $6.50 per click. Then, you have to evaluate the conversion rate on your site. How many visitors does it take to generate one solid lead or sale? You do the math and decide if banner advertising is the way to go.

The rule of thumb with banners? Unless you sell a product or service that appeals to absolutely everyone, go to a more targeted package that is only presenting your banner to people that are looking for what you sell. Another word of advice. Don't commit to a large banner campaign right off the bat. Test the waters with the minimum commitment the site will allow (again, with Yahoo, this would be $1000) and carefully monitor what your click thru rate is. If, like many web advertisers, you find the click thrus are disappointing, you want to discover this as soon as possible, before your entire e-marketing budget is shot.

Sponsor Links and Pay Per Clicks

As banner advertising failed to bring in the revenue expected, many portals and search sites experimented with sponsor links and pay per clicks. These would generally be hypertext links that would be set apart from the main search results. AltaVista and MSN both tried experiments with paid sponsor links that didn't prove successful. Currently, Google (which is the one search site that doesn't have banner advertising) is also trying a paid sponsor link program. Goto has gone all the way and built an entire search engine around paid sponsor links. Rates for these links can vary with the payment model use. Some use a bidding program with advertisers placing bids to determine which links will appear and how close to the top. The bids could be for the rate charged per click through (as in Goto's model) for a specific keyword phrase or for the link to appear for a specified period of time for that phrase (as with MSN's ill fated attempt). With Goto, depending on the competitiveness of the phrase you're bidding on, you could pay anywhere from a few cents per click to 6 or 7 dollars for a top ten ranking. And while you may say that at least you're only paying for actual visits to your site, people have been known to visit Goto and repeatedly click through to a site, just for the heck of it. At 6 dollars a click, this could prove to be a very expensive way to provide mindless amusement for one of your competitors.

Again, my advice would be the same as for banner advertising. Take a small amount of your advertising budget and experiment with the placement and the site that delivers the best results. We have clients who are thrilled with their Goto conversion results and other's that thought they were a waste of time and energy.

Bulk E-mail

Here's a marketing tool that I would not generally recommend. Bulk e-mailers generally utilize either a service or a program that compiles a list of e-mail addresses randomly from the web. Usually the program spiders a site and pulls any e-mail links from the coding. This would include any contact e-mails or webmaster links from the bottom of the page. These e-mail addresses are put into a database and bulk e-mail messages can then be generated and mailed out to these prospects.

Bulk e-mail is the digital equivalent of junk mail. Using this marketing technique will place you in the company of many of the web's most annoying and unscrupulous marketers. It's a cheap way to get a message out to a huge audience. It's also a very effective way to alienate them and ensure they'll never visit your site.

Opt In E-mail

A more preferable e-mail marketing technique is to use opt in or permission based e-mail. Here, you purchase an e-mail address list from another site which has compiled the list from visitors to their site who have indicated that they do not object to being placed on a mail list. Generally, you can buy a list pre-sorted according to certain geographic, demographic, industry or interest specific parameters. This is akin to doing targeted direct mail in the real world, a marketing technique that has proven itself to be quite effective. And, like direct mail, there are certain things you can do to make it more effective. We don't have the time to delve into it here, but the golden rule is, the more personal you can make the message, the more effective it will be.

Of course, anyone who has visited your site and given you their e-mail address is a prime candidate for using opt in e-mail to continue to build a relationship with them.

Targeted Unsolicited E-mail

The last e-mail technique falls somewhere between bulk e-mail and opt in e-mail. Here, you would actively search out prospects on the web.

Let's say you sell accounting software designed for professional accountants that deal with clients with small businesses in the high tech field. You use some of the search tools available on the web and compile a list of e-mail addresses from websites for small accounting firms in areas like Seattle, San Jose, Irvine and other high tech hot beds. Then, you send a personal message to these contacts, introducing your software and inviting them to come and visit your site.

While this e-mail is unsolicited, you have taken the time to pre-qualify the prospect and you are sending them a personalized message. This is one of the marketing techniques that costs nothing but your time and that you will find very effective.

Articles and Media Releases

If you site contains information specific about an industry, you're in an ideal position to begin positioning yourself as the expert in your field. Pick your niche and begin writing about it. Create media releases about developments in your business. When new articles or releases are prepared, put them on your site and also distribute them by e-mail. Send them to any strategic contacts that could help you raise awareness of your site. This includes editors of online and traditional news sources, industry specific sites, key financial people and existing members of your contact list. What we do with this column is indicate that the content can be reproduced, as long as we're indicated as authors and there's a link back to our site. One well placed link on a popular site can drive an amazing amount of traffic your way. Also, encourage people on your mailing list to share the article with friends.

The Big Two

So, what are the number one and two ways people find new sites? Links from other sites and search engines. Both of which usually won't cost you a dime. Next week, we'll tell you how to get this potent twosome working for your online marketing campaign.