Tried and Tested Online Marketing Tools

But in the twenty-first century, you have access to inexpensive and effective online marketing strategies. Now you can not only present your message to potential clients but also create a conversation that can increase customer pretension and overall profit. Three tried and tested online marketing tools include email, social media and blogs.

Using Emails to Start a Conversation

Traditional marketing relies on the use of print media, telemarketing, direct mail and broadcast media. All of these rely on the marketer speaking to the potential customer while the customer’s voice remains virtually silent. Other than surveys which are time-consuming nuisances for customers and might not relay accurate and up-to-date information, there is no interaction or communication between customer and business. The business may unnecessarily spend millions of dollars to assure that its marketing strategy is successful. With the use of email, the cost of any marketing strategy can directly decrease. While removing the costs of direct mail, email creates a conversation between business and potential customer that manifests as increased customer retention.

Of course, using email successfully can be difficult. For one, you want your email to stand out and look professional. Email marketing software such as Wisestamp allows you to do just this by using your name, company, title and contact information to create beautiful signatures to be attached to all of your emails.

Figure 1: An example of a Signature Created by Wisestamp

Dialogue via Social Media

It is, of course, unwise to place all of your eggs in one basket. While email marketing is surely helpful, used in isolation, its effectiveness decreases. Luckily, email marketing software such as Constant Contact not only gives you access to numerous templates for designing professional websites but also the tools for linking email to social media.

The use of social media has revolutionized the nature of marketing. Now, a business can create a virtual presence in which thousands if not millions of potential customers can be reached all over the globe with ease. If social media is used successfully, there is no need for expensive television commercials or massive billboards that customers might see. With social media, you or your business can communicate instantly with clients.

Twitter allows a business to “tweet” an advertisement with a catchy, humorous or emotional 140 characters. This “tweet” can be “re-tweeted” again and again by any of Twitter’s 302 million active users. Further, Facebook allows a business to create its own page in which it can post videos, images and longer status updates than Twitter. All of this can be liked, shared and commented upon by Facebook’s 1.44 billion clients.

Blogs and Perspective

Together email and social media allow for a conversation to be started and maintained between a business and a potential customer. The business is now able to better analyze customer behaviors, directly engage him or her and seek to ask questions on a massive public forum that might start a cross-cultural conversation that could fundamentally alter a business’s understanding of the market. But the business still needs to make sure that its presence does not get overshadowed as a mere participant in the conversation; it must stand out as a principal speaker with a voice that deserves to be heard.

The use of a blog such as WordPress can give a business just this voice. With a blog at hand, the business can write about recent acquisitions, engage the customer with longer anecdotes and stories and create a new platform for conversation. It can be used to direct the potential customer more easily and quickly through the business funnel and toward the final purchase.

A Website Valuation Tool

When trying to determine the value of your online business, the best place to start is by looking into valuation reports, such as Site Price, which show the values of hundreds of online businesses that were sold recently. Simply find businesses that are similar to yours in terms of size, history, and business model. Then check out the sales multiples assigned to these businesses and the final sales prices, and you’ll be able to get a better idea as to what your online business could be worth. The sales multiple is usually the most important thing to pay attention to in these reports.

Conclusion

There are numerous marketing tools that can be used to help a business succeed in the twenty-first century. While traditional marketing techniques still exist and can be useful, online marketing has created a means by which conversations can be started between business and customer in order to solicit the purchase of a good or service. Together email marketing, social media, and blogging are three of the most tried and tested marketing tools available and can help you increase the value of your business.