Internet Marketing - Online How To B2B B2C
Online paper discusses the issues on how to establish a solid online marketing presence for both B2B and B2C websites
by: James A. Warholic
Internet Marketing Services - Professional Web Services
Contents and Bookmarks
- Summary
- Marketing Performance Evaluation
- Understanding the Business (B2B or B2C)
- Identifying the Customer Base
- Incorporate Relevant Content
- Keywords and Key Phrases Analysis
- Online Content Updates
- Building Trust with Customers
- Understanding Various Marketing and Advertising Channels
- Conclusion
Marketing a B2B and B2C website requires a performance evaluation, a thorough understanding of the business being marketed, identifying the customer base, incorporating pertinent content with the keywords properly included, updating the content on a regular basis, establishing a foundation of trust with customers, and an understanding of the marketing channels available on the Internet.
Marketing Performance Evaluation
First off it is important to establish what the performance of the website is currently before any changes are embarked upon. Where is the traffic flowing from? What types of visitors are coming to the website? What type of online presence does a particular business have?
In order to establish what type of presence a business has may require some in-depth research into what it sells or what services are provided and understanding and identifying keywords or key phrases which are currently used for being found on the search engines. For a quick evaluation see the information on marketing B2B and B2C. Though a really thorough investigation would require more detailed analysis of the visitors by analyzing the log files of a particular website and analysis of a number of other factors.
Other factors include such items as understanding the competitors' vulnerabilities, partnerships, niche target markets, knowledge and experience of the management, and a host of other strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the business being evaluated. See: Strategic Marketing From an Internet Perspective
Understanding the Business (B2B or B2C)
Too often companies employ a nonchalant attitude to picking a website team that has no idea what the customer does but has been sold a bill of goods. A website is just a design to them with no thought placed into improving what is said or the marketing information that is presented on the site. Sometimes companies think that all they need is a fresh face on a website and that will make the difference for them in the way of traffic and lead generation. In fact, quite a few of these businesses have invested significantly in taking this approach and have seen very little improvements in their online presence. Some have even undoubtedly suffered with this approach due to changing a site's structure from one that had copy text to another that was only graphics. For example: an all flash site will be an impediment to obtaining higher rankings in the search engine results pages (SERP). There must be a design balance between graphics versus text in either a B2B site or a B2C site.
The basics of a website design needs to have text. Written text is what search engine spiders crawl and catalog. If the entire site is nothing more than flash graphics then this is starting from a position of weakness. Search engines are able to catalog flash graphics but that will not provide the same detailed information that can only be generated by physical body text.
Because text information is considerably important on a website this is the reason that careful considerations should be given to the technical nature and/or understanding a business which a website team should employ in order to implement a successful strategy for developing the website and marketing the company on the Internet.
In the process of developing a marketing strategy, considerations need to be given to the business's customer base. Identifying who the customers are is very important for Internet marketing. A few questions should be asked. Is the customer base B2B or B2C? Once that question is answered then answer this. Does the site need to speak to engineers or the general populace? Sometimes a site needs to be developed that must meet both.
Internet marketing involves understanding the customer just as much as having the detailed knowledge of the business. It is important to target the customer. With-out this understanding and failure in not having a targeted marketing plan geared toward the customer, will most likely result in an online presence failure.
Including relevant content is the most important part in marketing a business on the Internet. With-out content nothing else will matter. While content is the most important part of the equation, it is probably the least area of improvement for most businesses on the web. Content requires knowledge of the business and the customer base. It requires time to write and edit.
Technical writing is important when it comes to addressing the needs of an engineer. For some B2B companies this requires providing engineering data in a variety of forms. There are times where a picture tells a thousand words but once again the picture better have some text to go along with it for the search engines to catalog. While B2B may have these requirements, B2C would most likely need to explain things from laymen's terms, but once again, copy is important.
Update the content on a regular basis. Include new information that would be helpful to a customer or a potential customer. This is also helpful from an Internet marketing standpoint because new information is being cataloged by the search engines with the potential to provide multiple entry points to a website.
Some owners of businesses think that potential customers only come into the website from the front page. It is important to understand that the home page is not necessarily the main door or the only door of most sites. In fact it is quite difficult to cover all areas of some businesses from the home page. Because a business may have a diverse presence on the web, there would most likely be multiple entry points with significantly different information on the various pages of the site.
Think of a site as a scroll that is connected on both ends with see through doors or links. In this analogy there is no beginning or ending point. Each door provides a small amount of information included in the scroll. This is how a search engine reads the information. It sees the information through the door and catalogs it. Now along comes a potential customer that was searching for a phrase at one of the search engines. He then travels on the Internet highway and comes into a site through the door. Through navigation links provided in the site itself, a customer can explore more of a website. In all likelihood a visitor would cross back and forth from various doors that are of interest. Search engines catalog the pages in a similar way, by following the links.
Keywords and Key Phrases Analysis
It is important to identify the keywords and key phrases for Internet marketing purposes. By incorporating the words and phrases which apply to the respective business in the body copy is the way in which search engines would key upon the text for cataloging it into their SERP. There are a large number of additional variables here for establishing what a website is about. For example: the website theme, links from other websites, keyword text from other sites, and category directory placement are just to name a few.
As businesses evolve, with the development of new intellectual property, so do their keywords. It is important for ongoing marketing improvements to continually evaluate the differences in the words used to identify the products or services for a particular company.
Updating the content on a regular basis is just as important as adding new. It is important that the information be up to date. Not only does it demonstrate to customers that a house is in order but it also helps when it comes to search engines. Search engines tend to come and visit a site more often that is adding or updating content. This provides current information in the SERP. Information in the SERP is important from a marketing standpoint. Information is displayed in snippets in the SERP. Each snippet is grabbed by the search engine which surround or/are adjacent to the key words being searched for. Pages that are updated will have new snippets in the areas that are changed.
Sometimes the snippet that is displayed is not exactly the way a customer would like their page to be displayed in the results. In this case, some editing and or creative writing would be required to improve the marketing of the business. In some cases, where the page is really out of whack it might take a whole re-writing to bring it up to date.
Building a B2C Trust Relationship with Customers
When dealing with customers it is important to build trust relationships. Do this by following ethical, legal, and regulatory guidelines. There are a large number of businesses on the web that tear down the B2C trust relationship. For example, with the amount of unsolicited email that arrives at my email box daily it goes to prove that there are a lot of unethical sites on the web. It is important to establish trust. Incorporate a privacy policy that is strict. Do not share or sell information collected from a website. Privacy is a large issue for people today on the Internet. If you have an e-business or e-commerce business make sure that secure e-commerce shopping carts are employed. With the number of credit card frauds on the rise this is becoming a major concern for individuals.
Understanding Marketing / Advertising Channels
There are a number of ways to reach a new customer but the one that will work 24 x 7 is the website. If it has a good foundation it can support all the other marketing channels available to businesses today, i.e. direct marketing campaigns, online advertising, targeted email campaigns, plus the mainstream media outlets such as radio, magazine, and television advertising. Spend the time and money necessary to make improvements in the website area and the payback will be worth it.
As the Internet continues to grow, it will provide a fertile ground for the development and deployment of new technology, ideas, products, and services. How well those new technology, ideas, products, and services reach the customer online is dependent on the marketing know-how and implementation of the above.
NOW is the time to contact us for a free initial Internet marketing consultation with your questions, comments, or help improve ROI with your website or advertising campaigns.
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