Direct vs Indirect Marketing Online

Direct or Indirect

So which will work better for you? If you’re on a budget, cost will decide. PPC can rack up a hefty bill fast, and unless you know how to convert those ‘clicks’ into paying customers it’ll drain your resources fast. Banner (or text) ads cost less, but still require some initial outlay. If you’re on a budget, begin with the indirect marketing approach.

If you have a budget which can cope with the costs of SEM (you want at least few thousand rupees), then direct marketing would be worth considering. 

The process of creating content, engaging on social media sites and forums, and blog commenting is time consuming (although to some degree it can be outsourced), and takes a while (several months at least) to bring in the kind of traffic volume that a good PPC campaign can attract in a much shorter period. If this is you, then a direct marketing strategy

 is probably the way to go.

Even if you decide that Direct marketing is the best option for your business, We would encourage you to establish Social media profiles as well. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the key ones to get started with – these profiles can easily be integrated with your main blog or website and will allow you to begin expanding your online presence for the long term whilst you focus on your direct marketing campaigns for more immediate results.

This is so because SEM (Search Engine Marketing) includes:-

1. Pay Per Click

2. Search Engine Optimization

3. Google Places Promotion

4. Social Media Optimization

In today’s highly networked, hyper linked and multi-media world, not to have at least a basic web presence for your business venture means you’re cutting off huge potential traffic and income (and who wants to do that?!).

Direct vs Indirect Marketing Online: Is a Direct Marketing Strategy really the best way to go, or is the Indirect Marketing approach more effective? Here We are going to look at the definitions and characteristics of both, and explore their advantages and disadvantages for online marketers.

The Direct Marketing Strategy

The Direct marketing Strategy actively takes the sale to the customer. 

The principle direct marketing strategy for online marketers is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising (usually via Google or Facebook but emerging on LinkedIn). In a social media context, Direct Marketing can be used to great effect as a way to attract fans, votes, likes and opt-ins to lead into an indirect marketing campaign. Banner advertising also falls into the direct marketing category.

Types of Direct Marketing:-

1. Search Engine Marketing

2. Paid Inclusions

3. Individual Website

4. Google Places

5. 

Advantages:

• Returns highly targeted traffic
• Low maintenance after set up and testing
• Very Easy to track
• Reliable
• Can bring in fast (almost immediate) results
• Wide reach even if you don’t have an established web presence

Disadvantages:

• Costs can rack up quickly with PPC
• Many people ignore the sponsored listings on Google and other Search Engines
• People are often suspicious of ads online
• Once you stop paying for it, it stops providing traffic
• Effective advertising requires some skill (or outsourcing)

The Indirect Marketing Strategy

In contrast to the Direct marketing Strategy of taking the sale to the customer, Indirect Marketing Strategies (also known as ‘Passive Marketing’) are designed to bring the customer in to the business place. In online marketing terms, this means driving traffic via Social Media, Blogging and Content Marketing (articles, video etc), Forums, and Blog Commenting.

Advantages:

• Low or no cost
• High leverage activities – once published your profiles and content continue to be effective
• Builds relationships which encourage long term and repeat custom
• Easy to target people interested in your niche
• Increases web presence and brand awareness
• Builds up trust in the eyes of prospects
• Increases networks, opens up JV potential

Disadvantages:

• Takes far longer than direct marketing
• Requires a consistent investment of time
• Prospects are usually not looking to buy when they are using social media sites etc.
• Needs some skill (or outsourcing)

Social Media Marketing - The 7Cs


7 Cs of Social Media Marketing
If you are looking at getting your organization involved with the social media then these 7 Cs should come in handy:-

C #1 – Context
First you need to focus on the context that you will be dealing with. This could be in the form of any social media platform. But before you start engaging with them, you need to understand who they are and more importantly what is the motivation that is binding them together, socially. In addition to this you should deliver messages in their language so that a sense of empathy is created.

C #2 – Communicate
Intention to communicate – if you do not have an intention, then you might as well just do a cut, copy, paste job and spam the comments section of the bloggers. You must communicate your own thoughts which would represent your ideology and would help you in differentiating from others.

C #3 – Conversation
You need to have a healthy conversation, with your fellow human beings even online. Our belief is that there was a time on the internet when people use to be faceless and anonymous and they use to take full advantage of it. But now these are the same people who have realized that they are not being able to handle multiple personalities.

C #4 – Content
What does not work on the Internet is a copy. We need to be the original content providers for what we are trying to engage the Internet users into. The other element to the content is that we need to have contextually relevant content or else again; we will be seen as spammers. The rule is customizing your messages according to the motivation of the individuals that make the communities or groups on the various social media platform.

C #5 – Create
One of the complaints that have been with clients is that communications consultants are not proactive enough. Here on these multiple channels of social media, they have the endless possibilities to create original content that is being provided to them by their clients and not only prove that they are proactive, but the original content can be used (hint) in combination of text, audio, video, graphical images, animation, pictures to benefit the clients. Don’t want to actually, boost ourselves, but we do not have any form of 30-second barrier, we need not have a limitations in our word length (copy). We have the power to inform, influence and impress with the power of words.

C #6 – Collaborate
Here we have a platform not only build, but also to maintain the relationships that have been fostered over each and every social media platform. Technology gives us the opportunity to collaborate and enhance our relationships virtually. Relationships could be built on social platform based common interests and business platforms based on professional experience or expertise that one has.

C #7 – Contacts
Contacts – This may be one of the results that you will achieve in the process of your social media marketing effort. You would enjoy being a part of the wise world where knowledge sharing and problem solving are the things to do on a daily basis. This is the element that builds up the social support that you receive even from the online world, which helps individuals at the need of the hour in taking action at both personal front as well as professional.

Search Engine Optimization - Web Initiate

If you own a business it’s a necessity to generate leads. The Internet offers plenty of them if you know how to advertise and market your business. However, the majority of the businesses out there are neglecting their Search Engine Optimization strategies. Most of them use advertising or cold calling as opposed to search engine optimization.

Do you fall into this category?

Did you know SEO is one of the best ways to generate leads?

Cold calling doesn’t always generate qualified leads, but SEO will with ease. Your target audience will be looking through the search engines for specific keywords, which means increased traffic for you. This also means they will already be interested in what you’re selling.

If you are wondering what is meant by keywords in Online Marketing terms, then we shall explain you over here. Keyword is any word related to your business, product or industry. For example you deal in shoe manufacturing/retailing then the desired keywords would be :-

1. Shoe manufacturer in Delhi
2. Shoe retailer in Delhi
3. Shoe sale in Delhi
4. Shoes in Delhi
5. Durable shoes brand etc.

There are more benefits to using SEO. Web Initiate management team can set up your site and optimize it for the search engines and expect it deliver a dependable source of leads. Unlike paid advertising, rankings in the search engines will last for quite some time and after you’ve achieved your ranking, you will only need maintenance to keep up with your campaigns, making SEO very cost effective.

You can also track your campaigns (by the use of Google Analytic etc). It helps you figure out what people are searching for and which techniques bring in the best results. It’s a testing process that has plenty of opportunities, especially since there are so many tools. We would agree that offline marketing is important, but it doesn’t deliver the same type of benefits when it comes to tracking and reports.

More and more people are now using the search engines to look for local businesses and find information on various products and services. If you’re not taking advantage of this fact, then chances are that your competitors will be. It’s now becoming important for both local and national businesses to use SEO in order to get quality leads.

We understand the biggest challenge is actually figuring out how to use SEO Services. You can either spent months studying all the ins and outs of this strategy or you can hire people to build the campaigns. So it really comes down to what type of budget you’re dealing with and whether or not it’s an affordable. Plus, we only recommend doing it on your own if you have knowledge behind it.

In conclusion, search engine optimization is one of the best source of leads for any business. As mentioned in this article, there are many benefits of using SEO. Web Initiate team should seek help or educate themselves on how to take advantage of this lead generation strategy. The return on investment is very good for SEO and is worth putting your investment into.

Starting a new business is a bit like caring for your first born. Now while you don’t need to write a marketing strategy for your first born; you do need to ensure that you are giving your business the best chance of success. That is done by ensuring that you are placing it in front of people looking for your product.

When you are devising your business strategy; planning the supply chain; product specifications; looking at costing models and ultimately picturing your retirement on a Caribbean beach; don’t forget your marketing strategy – specifically your internet marketing strategy.

The reason we are stressing internet marketing strategy is because as a start-up; there is not a lot of loose change lying around and internet marketing lets you easily account for every cent you spend and then track this back to measure a Return on Investment (ROI).

Once you have done a little bit of market research and determined who your ideal audience is and how your product can service their needs, you need to start making that research and your business strategy bind together to start informing and attracting your audience.

Promoting your start-up effectively is a critical step towards ensuring that your business makes it from being a big idea to a well known and self-sustaining Brand.

There are a few basic internet marketing strategies that every start-up needs to get right from the beginning:

1. Website
The website is the first and most important aspect of a holistic internet marketing strategy. There are two facets to website design. The front end and the back end. 

The front end determines the user experience. It needs to be :

• easy to navigate
• easy to understand
• get the point across quickly
• be search engine friendly

The backend of the site is what the browsers and the search engines look at when they read your site and need to follow the following rules:

• adhere to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines
• be code light (good text to code ratio)
• be search engine friendly
• include the appropriate meta data

Generally, website audiences do not like to read and are easily distracted. Your website design needs to communicate why your product can fulfill their need as quickly as possible and with the minimum of distractions.

2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is critically important, not only for start-ups, but for online business in general. Simply put, SEO is a process which ensures your website is made as relevant as possible to specific searches performed on sites such as Google. There is a near inexhaustible list of SEO checks that need to be performed, the most important of which are:

• Page Load Speed
• Meta data
• H1 tags (heading tags)
• Content, content, content
• Back links
• Image Alt tags

There are literally hundreds more checks in this list and each has a different degree of importance. There is no definitive list which lays out the process to follow and every SEO company in India has their own interpretations of exactly what is important.

3. Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)
There are a number of pay per click platforms on the web at the moment; the most notable of which are : Google Ad-words; Facebook Ads and Yahoo Ads. These ads are served mainly as text ads; but image and video ad formats are also available.

The major benefit of PPC advertising over traditional advertising is the fact that it is not priced on an impression basis, but rather, as the name says, a cost per click model. These ads are served on pages where the ads are relevant to the search term that is being searched (with Search engine PPC models) or to the demographic of the person on whose profile the ad is being served on (in the case of social media PPC ads).

PPC ads have to be highly relevant to:

• The search term of the user
• The landing page where the ad will direct the user

The above affects your cost per click and determines how well your ad will perform on the networks.

These three internet marketing strategies need to be done right! There are many more strategies that come further down the line like social media; display advertising; website optimization and so forth.

Getting these basics right is like instilling the right values and morals in your child. They need them like your business needs a sounds marketing platform in order to succeed and achieve a big life.

This is not to say that the first steps are complete and you can forget about them and move on; but rather that you should now build on to your existing marketing arsenal.

Content and social media are incredibly intertwined and they must work together with every other aspect of your digital marketing strategy in order to be as effective as possible.

The following two important aspects of digital marketing will help to ensure the longevity of your fledgling business in the digital environment:

4. Content

Web content is critical to convincing your potential customers that they need to use your product to make their lives better and solve their problems. There are five key things that content must have in order to make it compelling:

• It needs to be able to tell a story
• Make sure that you are invested in your content
• It must add value to the reader
• Include a price tag or value proposition
• Be a timeless as possible as great content does not date

Further to being compelling to human audiences, your website content must be equally compelling to search engines.

It is appropriate content, combined with the other ranking factors, that will ensure that your website ranks highly in the Search Engine Results Pages.

5. Social Media

The new buzz word of the marketing world. Social media has very quickly become the “go to” aspect of marketing and it definitely does deserve to be there. Ideally for new businesses the major platforms to explore would be : LinkedIn; Facebook and Twitter. Each of these social networks have their own idiosyncrasies and a cookie cutter, “one size fits all” approach does not work.

Facebook audiences respond incredibly well to promotions and competitions, while Twitter is ideal for quickly sharing short bursts of compelling content and having that content shared again and again.

LinkedIn on the other hand is a true business network where you can highlight and profile a specific set of skills that will ultimately allow prospective clients to trust you (especially if you are selling a service). You can also create a business profile where your specific services/products can be highlighted and promoted on LinkedIn.

How does a business properly harness content and social media?

The key take away from this is context. There needs to be context in what you are saying on your site and on your social media platforms.

This context is what makes your content relevant to your audience; and it is this relevance that is the first step to converting them into customers.

As a business you need to understand your potential customers frame of reference and then construct your content around this. This is how context is built.

The working together of your website, SEO, PPC, content and social media profiles are a recipe for digital marketing success and will ensure that you as a business owner are able to raise your baby from being a fragile new born through to a brave and exploratory toddler. There are many more aspects which are equally important in ensuring the success of your business; but these foundation steps are critical.