Getting the best return from Online Marketing

People are going online in record numbers, which means you can acquire new customers in cost effective ways like paid search and email. If you choose your medium carefully and measure the results, we can, as SME's create effective marketing campaigns and generate more customers.

Lets begin by looking at the best performing online advertising tactics, according to US Online Marketers, in 2005 and 2006:

Notice the demise of pop-ups and banner ads. As people become more familiar with the internet and use it more and more for everyday tasks such as shopping, they prefer options that offer information rather than push information. This is especially important in the SME market where our customers are looking for someone they can trust.

The best performing ads for 2006 were paid search ads (i.e. Google Adwords) and emailing to a house list (i.e. where people have given permission to be emailed), closely followed by search engine optimisation. The first two of these you can do yourself

for paid search ads sign up with Google Adwords and start counting the new customers you'll get
to email to your house list you can use Outlook or one of a number of web-hosted email marketing packages (including ours).

It's all about results

We all want to get the best return possible on every dollar we spend, so the key here is to measure the results of whatever it is you do. When you send that email to your customers, find out how many opened it. Take note when people first approach you of how they found you. After you sign up for Google Adwords, go back at least every month to see what results you are getting then adjust, tweek and modify to get the returns you want.

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