So, you have become the proud owner of the online store. Well, I wish you achieve your online business objectives. Certainly, you must have worked really hard, invested a lot of money, and took real pain in planning, designing and developing your e-commerce website. Here, I would like to ask you a few questions which are: “Are you sure your online store will enjoy web traffic that can fulfill your business objectives and goals?,” “Do you think your e-commerce website or online store would get higher ranking from search engines?” and “Have you integrated your marketing message in this online store and is it perfectly made to get this message across?”

Well, it is not enough to have an online store or e-commerce website made. In this age of fierce competition, online marketers have to leverage the online marketing strategies available to promote their business and generate leads. Such strategies require hard efforts from the marketers and are really crucial. If you do not implement online marketing strategies then you won’t enjoy web traffic, cannot generate leads and moreover your website will be lost in this virtual world of Web.

Following common online marketing strategies must be used to market your products or services over internet and attract web audiences.

1. E-Mail Marketing –
   Very important and still a gem for marketers. E-mail marketing gives you a platform to get in touch with your target audience and customers. It helps two way communication between you and your clients or prospects. All you need to do this build a list of e-mail ids of your visitors and send them, newsletters, information about offers, schemes and events on a regular basis. E-mail marketing is a direct form of marketing and connects you well with your audience.
2. Search Engine Optimisation –
   Importance of SEO or search engine optimisation can never be ignored. SEO is a long term process and help your website get higher search engine rankings. Today, almost 80 percent of web audience refers search engines to find out a website that serve information, products or services they are looking for. If your website is search engine friendly then it will certainly get good traffic volume which you can convert to achieve your business goal.
3. Pay Per Click Management –
   After you successfully launched your online retail store, the first online strategy that you can utilize to market your store is PPC or Pay Per Click. It is an exclusive advertising model or a type of paid search marketing. It is really cost-effective and offer promising results quickly. In PPC, a marketer has to pay only for the clicks that online visitors make to get redirected to your website from search engines.
4. Banner Advertising –
   It is a type of display advertising on internet. The primary idea behind banner advertising is same i.e. to get a stream of web traffic flowing into your website. Marketers advertise with the banner ads of their website on popular websites. The idea is to get your information or marketing message exposed to a lot of online visitors and attract them to visit your store and convince them to buy your products or services.
5. Social Media Optimisation –
   In the present web scenario, the best way to market your business online is social media optimisation. Today, the trend is social networking through several websites. Social media optimisation (SMO) is almost no cost way to advertise or market your business and build a solid customer base. You can reach masses and enhance your online presence and brand reputation. Also called as Social media marketing (SMM), SMO gives you an opportunity to interact with web audience and let them form opinions about your store or business. It helps you create buzz.
6. Video Marketing –
   Sometimes words fail to paint pictures and impress your target audience or your online visitors just browse through your website and do not read content. In such condition, you have only a few minutes to impress your audience and get your marketing message across. To do this video marketing serves as the best online marketing strategy available. Simple, you can upload a video of your product or message to your website. Web audiences, usually watch videos and understand what you want to express. It is an impressive way to address your online visitors personally and convert them.
7. Online Press Release –
   Just like traditional press releases, online press releases help you share your news / views, opinion or information about events, products, services, etc. with online visitors. Press releases help you generate traffic to your website which gets redirected from PR directories or websites. Online press releases help you build and maintain strong public relations.
8. Blogging –
   Blogging is not a new online marketing strategy. However, it could help you tremendously with your marketing objectives. Blogging help you share your views, information or news with web audience. It gives you a platform to interact with them directly. By blogging you can inspire online visitors to participate in online discussions and provide you an opportunity to find out what your web audience thinks about your products or business.
9. Viral Marketing –
   Viral marketing is nothing but a new form of traditional word of mouth advertising. Here marketer can create a buzz around his website, products or services and business. Viral marketing give opportunity to marketers to improve their brand awareness. It creates a buzz and inspires audiences to share your marketing message with their friends, family or relatives on social networks and through other mediums. It is very effective medium but requires close monitoring otherwise you may end up with ruining your brand image.
10. Web Analytics –
    It is not an online marketing strategy as such but it is the back bone of all your online marketing efforts. The best advantage of marketing your business online is that you can track the performance of your campaigns and make necessary changes as desired. Web analytics help you understand visitors’ behavior, their responses towards your marketing efforts. Web analytics can measure the effectiveness of any of your online marketing campaign.

So, once again I would like you to congratulate for your online store and remind you to use online marketing strategies discussed above to be successful in all your endeavors.

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Guidelines to improve your search engine rankings

The advent of Web 2.0 and new media is witness to a plethora of corporate organisations today out there blogging, trying to give a personal touch to an impersonal business organisation. However, keeping in mind the premise of the Web 2.0 platform as a forum for building relationships, I’m not sure everyone is doing it right. I have noticed several companies using blogs to wax eloquent about their products and services, doing the very same thing they are doing on their websites.

At the very outset of creating your corporate blog, you must realise that a blog is not a sales tool. Rather, look at it as a customer experience enhancement device to understand your customers and prospects better, which can serve as a catalyst to future sales. Your organisation’s financial success will be guaranteed if you focus on bonding with your customers and prospects through shared experiences, building a community of individuals who value your domain expertise and appreciate your resolve to solving their problems.  Taking that into consideration let us focus on how a corporate can avoid blogging blunders and the measures it should incorporate to improve search engine rankings.

Define your blog raison d’être

Most organisations join the blog bandwagon simply because their competitors are on it. While blogs have transformed into a me-too phenomenon at most companies, there are others who use blogs as a disguise to market their products and services. Just as you set goals for your business, your blog too must be driven by specific business goals. Carefully think through your raison d’être, the goal you need to attain through your blog. It could be a platform to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, function as an online resource help or generate leads.

Set basis blog rules

Ones credibility takes prime focus within the blogosphere. Fool around with it and you stand to face ostracism from social media communities, something you won’t be able to undo for a very long time. As a corporate, is it even more pertinent for you to set some basic rules of conduct like acceptable topics, tonality, dos and don’ts, etc. Set accountability parameters and benchmarks to ensure that your blog attracts the right audience and functions as a productive resource. Circulate the blog rules in advance to employees who will double up as bloggers so that they can abide by them.

Create frequent posts

Blogs must be updated regularly and frequent posts are the norm. However blog update frequencies must again be set from within the company. A standard recommendation for blog updates is a commitment of at least two per week. Irregular posts can result in a vital loss of readership as people will stop visiting the blog if new posts are unavailable.

Get interactive and social

You don’t want your blog to function as a boring extension of your website. Based on the goals set for your blog you can invite participation from users through various means. Liven up your blog with sound and video bytes. Research indicates that blogs with interactive media, especially video and podcasts attract repeat visitors because of the ‘sticky’ user experience they deliver.

Make the most of social media channels; add social bookmarking buttons like digg, del.i.cio.us, Facebook, LinkedIn and others to your blog. Empower your readers to bookmark your content and share it through their networks. Enabling these influencers to spread your content across the web is a proven and effective method to gain prominence across online networks and rank high on search engines.

Focus on the right metrics

You must monitor your blog using web analytics to gain further insight into the credibility of your blog – to understand what content is popular with readers and what is not. However, while analytics are important, you must be careful not to focus on the wrong metrics. Most bloggers end up obsessing upon how many people are linking in, who’s mentioning their name and what their Technorati rankings are. While it’s ok to get excited about these things, it would be prudent to sideline metrics that are not in sync with your blog’s business goals.

For instance, a focus on lead generation should attract different metrics as against a blog focused on gaining advertising revenues.  Thus to increase your search engine rankings, your blog needs to attract the right metrics viz.:

• Domain expert blogs – media feeds, links from prominent bloggers, subscribers, inclusion in ‘lists’
• Advertising revenue blogs – unique visitors, page views and subscribers
• Lead generation blogs – inquires, duration on site, repeat visitors
• Blogs aimed at SEO – keyword rankings, links, referring traffic

While common metrics like RSS subscribers, unique visitors and page views are relevant to any blog type, focussing on metrics according to your blog goals will ensure significant improvements in your content creation and promotion effectiveness.

Turn influencer for maximum online visibility

It’s all about inclusion in the online community. Thus, while you follow all the rules and do a pretty good job of handling your corporate blog, you must maximise your online visibility and reach by simultaneously researching what other popular bloggers within your industry are saying on their blogs. Post comments on their posts and engage them in conversation. There’s a possibility that they could link up to your blog even as your extend your online community reach.

Remember, your blog will always be work in progress; you need to continually figure out ways to add value through it to your users. As you blog, ensure that your posts utilize search-engine friendly titles, keywords and links. These small SEO additions will surely ensure your blog gains top rankings, lending further credibility to your organisation.

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