Introduction
A website is an investment that can benefit you in many ways; from being actively visible in your market space (without or alongside your competitors), to providing you with a communications tool that can open up all kinds of new opportunities to grow your business, to implementing an e-business and e-commerce platform that drives additional revenues and reduces TCOS. And to get the most from your investment you need to ensure that your solution is well maintained and remains visible and focused in your target market(s)

Marketing Online
The World Wide Web is a very busy market space full of competition (over 3 billion websites), but also full of opportunities. The WWW is an electronic market space which requires its own unique marketing methods for gaining share and driving traffic to your website. Gone are the days when you could simply launch a website and the market would find you (circa 1995). You now need to ensure your place in your market space by actively promoting your website both online and offline.
Online Marketing Tools
There are three key tools used in marketing your business online:

1. Search Engine Listing
2. Direct Marketing via Email
3. Online Advertising

1. Search Engine Listing
A Search Engine is the ‘yellow pages’ of the Internet and there are more than just one of them. In fact there are several main players and many smaller ones focusing on niche markets. The main player is currently Google (and its associated network).
Search engines use automated ‘spiders’ to find your website and review its content. From this (and many other aspects of your website) they add you to their listings so that you are found when someone does a search.

As you know from searching yourself, the best place to be on a list is at the top. This is however a pursuit that can take a lot of time and effort. Your site needs to be conditioned to promote your key business propositions and focused to rate well using key words and phrases. Different search engines use different criteria to rate your site’s importance to a search (including your connection to other websites). It is therefore essential to target to your chosen market(s) and use the best practices for each search engine that will fulfil your market visibility requirement.

Paid advertising
Another way to ‘get in front of customers’ through search engine listings is to use a paid advertising campaign. Most search engines offer these programmes and each has their own way of promoting your website. A paid campaign is a guaranteed way to put your message in the desired category listings using your business keywords. Paid campaigns can be easily managed and set up and allow you to use a set budget as required.

2. Direct Marketing via Email
Email is the main one-to-one communications method used over the Internet. An email can be a simple text-only message or a colourful eye-catching branded communication from you to your customers/suppliers.
You can use email to update your customers on your business, promote and feature products or services, and grow repeat customers and build customer loyalty.
Because of the nature of email as a casual form of communication, and the social context in which they are viewed, it is important to deliver your messages in the correct way to build your relationships in a positive manner.
To get the most from email marketing you need to use a tool that provides an easy interface to your customer database, a simple way to create a rich email message and a system for managing the message deliveries, tracking the results, and dealing with the many trip-falls of email marketing (SPAM, VIRUS, Unsubscribes, Bounce-backs etc).

3. Online Advertising
Just like traditional bricks-and-mortar advertising (offline), there are many opportunities in online advertising to promote your brand, products, and services.
The most common forms of advertising online are ‘Banner-Advertising’ and ‘Sponsorship’. Both these forms offer you the ability to put yourself in front of particular markets.
Traffic Analysis
To fully benefit from these marketing tools it is essential that their effect is monitored and analysed. Website traffic analysis will help you understand the impact of your online marketing initiatives and provide a platform for you to make further marketing decisions.
Good traffic analysis can tell you a lot about your visitors, where they are from, how long they visit you for and what content the view. You can build up demographic information on your visitors and use this to make further focused campaign decisions.

How we can help
Massive has a team of Internet wizards who specialize in putting you online.
We will provide you with consultation and support to scope out your requirements and communicate them to our technical teams.
Our designers will create the right image for your brand and the right functionality for your requirement – all to promote your business in the best possible light.
Our technical team can take the design and work their magic in the coding and operation of your solution.
Our marketing team can design a campaign to your requirements that will provide you with the best combination of online initiatives to drive your business forward.

All in all we can implement any type of e-business application to provide you with the tools you need to operate in the electronic world. Call us to talk about your solution.