Internet Marketing Objectives For Your Business Online Presence
When it comes to marketing, internet marketing becomes more and more popular among small business owners. Many businesses completely transferred their marketing activities on the internet. The power of the internet is so big that you as an entrepreneur cannot allow yourself to miss those opportunities.
But, there are too many marketers on the internet that also want to sell their products. Many of them are competing for the same visitors and potential customers that you want to attract. Sometimes this can be a huge problem for you.
Also, there are some entrepreneurs that simply misunderstand marketing on the internet, or internet marketing. They think that internet marketing is only to have a website. But, website is only one small part of this type of marketing. What is a website?
Internet Marketing and Having Only a Website
According to Wikipedia a website (or web site or web-site):
…is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network.
This collection of web pages, documents, images, videos or other digital assets can be from every topic. So, having only the website doesn’t mean that you have an effective marketing strategy for your business presence online.
For internet marketing, you must have a website where you will present your company and your products and services. But, this is not enough. Let’s see what is internet marketing.
According About.com internet marketing:
…refers to the strategies that are used to market a product or service online, marketing strategies that include search engine optimization and search engine submission, copywriting that encourages site visitors to take action, web site design strategies, online promotions, reciprocal linking, and email marketing – and that’s just hitting the highlights.
This definition covers all most important activities when it comes to internet marketing:
- Reaching the target market.
- Attract visitors to your website.
- Encouraging those visitors to buy your products and services. Or, simply said to take some desired action.
- Make them to want to come back to your website for free or paid content, products or services.
Two Different Types of Internet Marketing Objectives You Must Have
As you can see the website is only the mean that you can use to market your business online. But, there are also many more activities that you must take in order to say that you are marketing your company online. Because of that, for business purpose, you must have two different internet marketing objectives:
- Primary objectives. Internet marketing objectives that will identify the internet marketing purpose for your company.
- Secondary objectives. Internet marketing objectives that can help you to achieve your primary objectives.
Primary Objectives for Small Business Online Presence
There are too many possible internet marketing objectives related to online presence of small businesses.
You can start defining these objectives if you start thinking about possible answers to this question: What I want to achieve with my internet marketing efforts?
Here I want to mention only a small part of them, or basic objectives that you must take into the consideration before you start building your online presence. You can have all of these objectives or simply a part of them.
- Brand building.
- Advertising.
- Selling.
- Provide information about your business, products or services.
- Provide customer service and support.
- To Improve interaction with current and potential customers.
Secondary Objectives for Small Business Online Presence
When you know your primary internet marketing objectives, you must think about secondary. These objectives can help you to achieve the primary internet marketing objectives. This is a logic that you must follow when it comes to the definition or redefinition of how you use your website for business purpose. You need to have in mind that your website should:
- Be designed to be search engine friendly and to encourage repeat traffic. This is how people will find your website, or your company and your messages you send to the potential customers.
- Have a viral marketing incorporated in it in order to encourage visitors to make a recommendation of your products, services or the website itself to other people. In such a way, you will integrate mechanism of the viral effect of your internet marketing efforts.
- Enable visitors to spend more time when they come to your website. If you succeed in this internet marketing objectives, the visitors will spend more time on your website and will become closer to you and your company.
- Be able to encourage interest about your company, products and services. Why you need to invest your effort, time and money if you not try to put your visitors in your sales funnel?
- Convert visitors into potential customers. You must move your visitors through your sales funnel different stages.
- Have incorporated e-mail marketing that will convert potential customers into buyers.
The Right Combination – Your Path to Success
As you can see the first type – primary objectives are goals or targets that you want your online business presence to achieve for your business. Ask yourself one simple question: What I want my web site to do for my business? Is it branding or advertising or all 7 objectives? Maybe your primary internet marketing objectives will be to promote your products and services without selling them online. But, also an objective can be to sell those products and services in addition to advertising them.
When you decide about what you want your web site to do for your business, you must go with secondary goals that will help you in achieving your primary objectives. The secondary internet marketing objectives must be standard for all types of websites. You can see that secondary objectives start with attracting visitors, that will come back from time to time. They can also recommend your web site to other persons. They will have an interest about your products and services and will be converted into real customer – buyer. With these secondary goals, you will build your business brand and advertise your products and services. Moreover, you will make all primary goals to become reality.
