Cost Effective Online Marketing

The ever growing popularity of the Internet with consumers (15.5 million Australians now online) combined with the low cost benefits of targeted online marketing provides the ideal platform to deliver superior returns on your marketing spend.

In the last couple of years, according to reputed Marketing Sherpa’s analysis of different marketing innovations, the online medium (SEO – search engine optimisation, e-mail, PPC , banner ads) has delivered better ROI over offline measures (advertising, PR) consistently.

As technology improves so does the user friendliness of the Internet with innovations such as RSS feeds which means the consumer does not need to make the effort to purchase the media (such as magazines) From the marketers perspective smart tools like web analytics, permission marketing (for e-mail / e-newsletters), and sales enabled banner ads/landing pages, the Internet is a smart, customer friendly and extremely cost effective marketing medium. As marketers can easily track targeted customers buying behaviour, they can cost effectively tailor their marketing programmes to meet evolving customer preferences in shorter time frames to enhance the returns on their marketing spends.

Internet marketing also offers unmatched creative and business advantages as you can embed real-time videos, downloadable freebies/coupons, customer chat, comparison forums to banner /PPC ads and  landing-pages / website sections. Globally, customer preference and marketers’ choice have converged to make Internet marketing the preferred mode of brand promotion for driving innovative sales initiatives.

SEO and Email marketing synergies

Enhanced relevance boosts the success of most marketing initiatives. As the consumer buying process becomes more complex thanks to the ever growing choice of purchase options; niche marketing that targets changing buying patterns successfully is becoming increasingly important.
Two marketing innovations stand out in their overall returns on spends: e-mail marketing and SEO according to the latest Marketing Sherpa report. Both SEO and e-mail marketing owe their success on consistent customer focus.

While e-mail marketing enlists support right at the beginning through permission marketing wherein customers input their e-mail address willingly, SEO ensures delivery of preferred content and product/service choice by way of chosen keywords and phrases on different web pages . Smart marketers are now combining these two powerful marketing innovations to boost the marketing spends’ returns even more.

The synergies of SEO and e-mail marketing gives marketers options to run 24X7 marketing and sales operations without any human intervention. While ‘permission e-mail marketing campaigns inform customers of the latest offers, the hyperlinks of the web-sales / landing pages contained therein lead customers to purchase more.

This great ease of use and cost efficient web offers makes such offers extremely appealing. Smart and timely web-alerts automate the information dissemination and buying process for the benefit of both the customers and marketers. For example registered customers (those who have inputted their e-mail IDs) are regularly sent updates through e-mails as well new RSS feeds of any new product/service launch that meets their preference. This smart targeting enhances relevance of offers to customers and conversion rates for businesses.

Data driven web marketing (SEO and e-mailers) enhances accuracy and speed of marketing campaigns and helps build brand salience of the business amongst discerning customers, across different segments and geographies.  

The bottom line is that if you are wanting to achieve better returns from your marketing dollar the research clearly indicates that it pays to invest in SEO and email marketing.