Anyone who’s anyone has a website these days, from Chicago businesses and professionals wanting to better serve their customers to people looking to provide convenient communication outlets. But how do you know that people will find your site among the millions of other websites that exist on the internet? How can you increase the chances that your site will be indexed and rank higher on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo? Popular search engines use complicated algorithms and automated analytic tools (which are sometimes called “spiders” or “crawlers”) that scan each web page to determine relevance and rank on a particular subject or topic. You need to be clever in order to make your web pages pertinent to spiders and crawlers, but it’s certainly not impossible to accomplish. Here are three words that can help you and your website succeed:  search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization, often referred to as the acronym SEO, doesn’t employ a one-size-fits-all formula. In order to effectively use SEO, you must be dedicated and you must follow the rules. As a solid beginning to the SEO process, you should analyze common search terms and search trends of customers regarding your particular industry, your specific company, or both. For example, a promotional products company would need to optimize for more keywords and keyword phrases than just “promotional products” and “promotional items”; customers of that industry are also likely to search for terms like “stress balls” or “personalized sports bottles,” among many others. Deciphering heavily-used keywords for your web pages is just one of the important SEO steps that you can take.

You can often increase your visibility by including commonly-queried terms, words, and phrases in your page content. Conduct some research if you don’t know which keywords and search terms are common for your industry or business, and be a thorough sleuth. Which keywords are searched for most often? Which keywords do you think people would be most likely to search for if they were in need of services you provide? After you’ve discovered those keywords, use them to your advantage! Weave popular keywords into your writing and make them sound as natural as you possibly can, but be sure not to go overboard by stuffing keywords into your copy. Keyword-stuffing is frowned upon by search engines and can cost you a high ranking if your content is deemed as such by crawlers and spiders. Keyword-stuffing is cheating, and you’ll never win the ranking race if you get caught trying to fabricate your relevance!

Once you have common keywords in place on your site, also try cross-linking a few of your web pages to one another in order to boost relevance. You can emphasize online visibility by linking to your most important pages from other pages. If your “Contact Us” page gets more traffic than anything else on your site, then link to it from as many other pages as you can and you’ll increase the ways in which it can be found and read. If your “Frequently Asked Questions” page includes questions that can be answered with information on your other pages, then include links to them so visitors can navigate to them if needed. Analyze the keywords you’ve used and decide whether or not any of them could be explained or better understood with a link to another one of your web pages. Just like being wary of your keyword use, be careful not to go overboard with links or your page will appear spammy to visitors. You could also speak with other webmasters about link exchanges, but you’ll want to use caution and only link to credible sites. Remember, you want to make it as easy as possible for visitors (and crawlers) to find your popular pages in order to increase traffic, popularity, and ranking of your site, but you must do everything in moderation.

Website layout is crucial to search engine optimization as well. Have a third party take a look at your company website and evaluate the layout, content, and general usability of it and then make note of any improvements that could be made. You may think that your keywords and keyword phrases sound natural or that your page links connect to their appropriate pages, but you could be mistaken! Verify that your website incorporates a user-friendly layout and organized information that’s easy to follow, and you could also improve your page’s relevancy through SEO. As a rule of thumb, put the page’s most relevant information toward the top and then work your way down from there; think of the upside-down triangle analogy that’s common in journalism—a story’s most important details should be toward the beginning of the article in order to draw in the reader, and then less crucial details should gradually taper downward toward the end of the article. Spiders and crawlers won’t make it far on your page if you put all of the most relevant and keyword-rich content in the last paragraph!

Essentially, SEO is the art of using keywords and keyword phrases to your advantage however possible on your site; you will increase your chances of getting found online if you optimize your content and copy, choose quality links and back links, and organize your page layout based on relevancy. SEO produces outstanding results when it’s done correctly. If you don’t feel comfortable implementing these search engine optimization strategies yourself, then remember there’s no shame in hiring a qualified Chicago SEO expert to assist you.

When attempting to improve your site’s ranking, it can be productive to examine your URL structure and do what you can to make it more SEO responsive. Namely, if your URLs are dynamic, it would be in your best interest to change them to static.

What is URL Structure?

URL structure is one factor that helps search engines find you.  Search engines generally find “clean” URLs faster and easier, which would translate into a static URL, or a URL that never changes, doesn’t have symbols, and uses keywords.  Some examples of dynamic vs. static:

A dynamic URL, which changes based on what database it was found by:

http://www.example.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date

A static URL on the other hand, is a URL that doesn’t change and ideally uses keywords. It looks like this:

http://www.example.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm

Dynamic URL vs. Static URL

A dynamic URL structure means that your URL is stored in a database and can change based on what database led the reader to your site.

The downside to a dynamic URL is that search engines don’t like them as much as static URLs, meaning they have a lower click-through rate and they can lead to duplicate content problems.

A static URL means that the URL cannot be changed unless the HTML code is re-written.

The advantage to a static URL is that search engines find them faster, and they help to keep your server more organized.  Additionally, it’s easier to use keywords in the URL, which attracts users, and results in more click-through.

Should You Switch?

If you use dynamic URLs you should switch to a static URL structure.  It will help keep your site more organized, increase your click-through rate, and help your site get found faster and easier by search engines.  Additionally, you would only have one URL assigned to each page and product.

When you make the switch, you should make sure your URLs are more consequential and use keywords.

For example, instead of having a URL that says www.example.com/store/prod1.html, you could have a URL that uses a keyword and looks more like this:  www.example.com/websitedesign.

When a customer sees this URL, they will know exactly what the page will hold — a page on web site designs.

The Bottom Line

Static URLs have an advantage.  They are easier for search engines to read and your users can easily figure out what the URL will lead them to.  Using keywords within the URL structure gives static URLs a lead over dynamic URLs. To increase your click-through rate and help out your SEO, I suggest you make the switch.

Notice the difference in the number of clicks between having your website in the top 3 results as opposed to being at the bottom of the page.

So you see that just being on page one of Google is not enough if you really want your website to stand out above the rest and get more clicks than your competitors.

Over 75% of the clicks go to the sites that are in position #1, #2, or #3.

Do you know where you rank for your keywords? contact us for an in depth report and analysis of what it would take to get your website to the top.

]]> http://www.designandpromote.com/why-it-is-not-enough-just-to-get-to-page-1-of-google/feed/ 0 http://www.designandpromote.com/step-by-step-inbound-marketing/ http://www.designandpromote.com/step-by-step-inbound-marketing/#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:01:14 +0000 Design & Promote http://www.designandpromote.com/?p=806 As I speak to different Chicago business owners and execs about search engine optimization campaigns that Design & Promote can provide them with and am often asked this question “what steps do we need to follow to be the most effective with inbound marketing”.

I understand some companies would like to handle SEO in house and feel that if they just had an instruction sheet that they could hand to their marketing manager or website guy or girl and everything would be peachy.
There are quite a few steps and many rules and best practices to follow to be successful at inbound marketing but here is a primer for you.
To learn more about search engine optimization or to get a free seo analysts of your website just give our office a call.

On Page SEO

1. Add Statcounter and Google Analytics – You will want to benchmark where your site is before you start improvements and you will also want to take note of what keywords are already possibly ranking well.
2. Keyword Research – Search for high volume related keywords using http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com or the keyword tool on http://www.seobook.com. Do not pick keywords that have too much competition, better to be on the top of a small mountain than at the base of a large one.  Add town modifiers if you have a local business.  Time spent here will make or break your seo campaign. Check your competitor’s keywords and back links.
3. Change Page Titles – These should be up to 70 characters in length and contain keywords and be relative and different for each page of your site.
4. Change Page Descriptions –These should be up to 150 characters or less in length and have keywords, a call to action and be unique for each page.
5. Change Page Keywords – You should add no more than 10 keyword phrases separated by commas and be relative and different for each page.
6. Add Alt Image Tags – Add an alt description tag to every image that includes a keyword phrase. For a bonus change the name of images to match your keywords separated by dashes such as keyword1-keyword2.jpg.
7. Add Keywords To Page Content – Judiciously add keywords to all page content taking note of keywords used in title and keywords tags for each page. If you can include your keyword in a header or sub header font  all the better.
8. Landing Pages – Create landing pages that offer high value advanced information such as a white paper in trade for contact information using an email form. The goal here is to capture at least an email address that you can use to follow up or add to your newsletter.
9. Site Navigation – All navigation should include http://www. Not just /
10. Create Site Maps – Add an html and xml site map and submit to Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Off Page SEO

11. Record Existing Back Links – Use Yahoo Site Explorer to export a back link report and save for later comparison.
12. Universal Business Listing – Add your site including a description that include keywords from above $30 http://www.ubl.org
13. Blog Comments – Comment on blogs related to your website’s topic that are meaningful and try to include your keywords in the comment text and your name field.
14. Directory Submits – Locate free niche and local directories related to your website’s topic and submit your site to these.
15. Press Releases – Write a press release where the title and content contains your keywords and provides anchor text links within the body of the release, submit to many online press release sites including the $12 option at http://www.onlineprnews.com  I suggest reading their instructions before submitting. One press release per month is optimal.
Social Media.
16. Linkedin – Add your link in your Linkedin profile and update your profile to include a pretty large description including keywords. Add connections and join groups related to your main topic. Connect to your customers and not your peers. Add recommendations to your best customers and business partners. Update your status regularly and sometimes include links to your site or other related resources.
17. Facebook – Create a Facebook page and add links to your website pages, add friends and suggest to friends. Update your status regularly and sometimes include links to your site or other related resources.
18. Social Media Bookmarks – Create an account in Digg, Stumbleupon and as many other sites that time affords and add links to your pages that include your keywords in the title and description.

Extra Credit

• WordPress Blog – Add a WordPress blog to your site and write one post a week taking note to include your keywords in the title and content. Use All In 1 SEO, Google XML Sitemap and ShareThis plugins. Change the Permalinks to Post-Name and add sites to ping list.  Link RSS feed to Linkedin, Facebook & other social media sites.
• Article Writing – Create informative articles and submit to http://www.ezinearticles and http://www.goarticles.com
• Hub Pages – Create a Hub Page about your topic and use anchor text back links to your site.
• Squidoo Lens – Create a Lens about your topic and use anchor text back links to your site.
• YouTube Video – Create a video with a title and credit screen that contains your contact info including website and add to http://www.youtube.com and other video sites.  Make sure you include a title and description that includes your keywords.
• 301 Redirect – Direct all visitors to www not without by using special code otherwise you will have 2 sets of back links not one.
• Auto Responders – Create a drip marketing email campaign using contact forms.

Reporting  & Notes

• These items are arranged in order of importance and should be followed step by step for best results.

• Keep track of your keyword ranking, back links and traffic counts weekly or monthly and adjust accordingly.

• You can’t improve what you can’t measure.

• The top 3 website that come up for each search get 70% of all the clicks.

• 90% of people do not go past page 1 in the search engines, they just search again using a different phrase.

• Over 80% of people use Google for  online searches so Yahoo 6%, Bing 4%, and the other search engines don’t matter much.

• Many visitors and no sales means you need a better call to action on your site.

• Until you get more back links than the website in any position you will never top them.

• Link exchanges give away as much power as you gain so the net result is usually not much more than 0.

I hope this helps you understand the many steps it takes to succeed in inbound marketing

What is a Keyword?

The keyword is what a potential customer is going to type into the search box on Google or one of the other search engines when looking for your product or service.  Finding out what the best keyword phrase is for your business can be tricky.  There are many people right now dedicated to doing research in order to figure out the correct keyword density for SEO.  For example, if searching for website design, which would be a more effective keyword?  Web site design or website design?  Website design wins with 5,425 searches vs. web site design at 2,729.  So you can see how important doing your keyword research is.

What is Keyword Density?

Now that you know you understand the importance of doing keyword density for SEO research, it’s time to focus on keyword density.  In the most layman terms possible, keyword density is the percentage of times you use your keyword within a post. Percentage is important because it’s how Google and other search engines read your content.  Google is going to scan the content on your website and based on what the most used keyword or phrase is, that is how Google is going to categorize your website and then rank it.

How Many Keywords Should I Use?

It’s best to focus on only one or two keywords per page, especially if your keyword is extremely competitive.  For example, the phrase: keyword density for SEO gets 8 searches but Chicago gets 5,698.  Chicago obviously is the more competitive keyword here.  It will be more difficult to get the number one page rank using the keyword Chicago, so it will be important to focus completely on Chicago and not worry about other keywords.  But don’t forget that keywords can also be phrases.  So adding another word to Chicago can really narrow down your competition.  Chicago pizza only has 522 searches.  Again, doing your keyword research is incredibly important.

What Should My Keyword Density Be?

Google’s requirements say that no more than 2% of a web page’s words should be the keyword.  Any more than that will be considered spam.  However, Yahoo and MSN Search will permit as high as 5% keyword density for SEO.  Therefore, hitting a sweet spot of between 2% and 5% keyword density is probably your best bet.

How Do I figure Out My Keyword Density for SEO percentage?

There is actually a nice tool that does all the work for you.  In fact, I used the tool to figure out that my percentage for my keyword (which was: keyword density for SEO) is at 1.9%.  If my keyword was simply keyword density, I would be at 3.7%.

Keyword Research for Titles

We’ve been talking about the body of your website as of now, but it’s important that your title have a much, much higher keyword density for SEO.  The title should have between 30% – 75% density.

Keyword Conclusion

When writing, keep in mind what your keyword density for SEO should be.  It’s important your content still flows well and is rich in information and entertainment, but doing your keyword research and keeping your keywords in the forefront of your mind will help you get found on the Internet.  Love your keywords and they will love you back.

By the way the keyword density of this post for “keyword density for seo” is just under 2%

Find out which keywords your website is currently optimized for with this simple test:

Is your website not optimized for the correct keyword density for SEO?

Our search engine optimization copy writing services can help! Contact Design & Promote today at 630-995-7109.

Yesterday, I did a presentation covering the basics of  inbound marketing for the Glenview Jewish Woman’s Networking Group ( GJW)  in one of the conference rooms at the Glenview public library.

Pamela Pearl a business partner and client, invited me to speak to her networking group because of the increase in leads she experienced from a small campaign that we worked on together for IntelliClick Software. IntelliClick is a GoldMine CRM email tracking solution developed by Pamela and her husband Steven Pearl . IntelliClick Software is a Division of Business Automation Solutions, a GoldMine CRM consulting firm, based in the Chicagoland area. Their website is IntelliClickSoftware.com and their focus is on Goldmine CRM eMarketing utilizing email marketing hyperlink tracking and personalized website navigation.

12 women from the group attended and most were small business owners covering many  areas  including eldercare marketing, financial services, and a nanny agency. They each had a variety of experience levels with internet marketing.  Some were already experts in their field, so it was nice to get fresh input and suggestions on what is working for them related to inbound marking in the Chicago area.

After some initial networking I kicked off the meeting with this video –> Did You Know -V 2009

Here is the presentation in PDF format that started from a PowerPoint template that was graciously provided by HubSpot –> Inbound-Marketing-101

I thought that it might be fun to watch this video You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing after we were done with the serious stuff and it did get a few laughs.

After the presentation we did a Q&A session and took a look at a few of the members websites including First Class Care and Focus On Aging

One of the things I realized that could be valuable to GJW would be an itemized punch list of things that a website owner could do to help with their own inbound marketing efforts.  Here is a quick list I came up with that entails all the steps that would help to get your website found online and convert leads into customers using search engine optimization.  Here is the list –> Step-By-Step-Inbound-Marketing

I’m looking forward to being a helpful resource for the Glenview Jewish Woman’s networking Group and am happy to present something similar to the other members of your group.

Just contact me for details on how I can help members of GJW succeed in inbound marketing.

Just five or ten years ago, the competition for local search results was much lower. If, for example, your auto shop in Naperville decided to create a website back then, there would be a good chance that it would easily end up high on the search engines for certain keywords like Naperville auto shop or Naperville car repair. As long as this site was easy for Google and other search engines to find, it wouldn’t require a lot of effort to have good search results.

As most of us know now, getting clicks from Google has become extremely competitive, and companies are even paying thousands of dollars a month to have a sponsored link on Google. Instead of throwing your money away on every click that doesn’t convert to sales, why not focus on the organic search results that you don’t have to pay for? Once your website is at the top of Google for your most important keywords, you won’t have to pay for every visitor to your site and you can have significant increases in total visitors to your website.

Like I said earlier, the more competitors who have a website, the more important it will be to focus your efforts on SEO. Search Engine Optimization goes beyond creating a good website with engaging content. After all, what is the point of even having a website if people can’t find you on Google and other search engines?

At Design & Promote, we will work with you to closely evaluate how we can get your website closer to the #1 position on Google. SEO is an ongoing task that requires an initial time investment, but it rewards companies in the long run with exposure to more people than any advertisement can generate.

With a higher ranking on search engines, your website is bound to get more visitors. Over time, this will not only increase your revenue, but also increase the popularity in your brand. More people will become loyal to your product or service, which will help spread the word that your company is offering something everyone needs.

Today, it is imperative that you use proper SEO techniques that will lead to long-term growth. Find a good SEO company that will do quality research, measure their efforts, and report progress frequently. A well-balanced Search Engine Optimization approach will finally make you happy that you invested in a website in the first place.

A month or so ago we posted this article on Using Keywords To Create The Most Efficient Website Title, which outlined the importance of titles and how to write a good one. We will be getting to some tips on writing affective descriptions, but let’s first start with why they are so important.

Google is constantly changing how they measure websites and list them on search results for certain keywords. This is why it is so important to have a professional SEO company that knows the latest trends in the different search engines. What was important yesterday or a year ago might actually hurt your search results tomorrow or somewhere down the road.

We are seeing a strong difference in the importance of the meta description on your web pages compared to the past. For example, what Google and Yahoo used to use in place of your description on their search results was the description your website had on different open directory sites. Now, you can add the “NOODP” and “NoYdir” meta tags to your pages to prevent this.

This type of change by Google indicates that they are giving more control to the website owners in terms of what they want to display in the description on the Google search engine results page. Another difference is that Google used to always disregard the meta description and just use a snippet of information from the specific page that ended up on the search results. However, Google is now choosing to use the meta description in certain instances, when they feel like it is relevant to the search query. Watch this short video by Google’s Matt Cutts to hear how they are changing their philosophy on meta descriptions.

As you can see, it is important to have a description not only on your homepage, but to include a unique one on all of your website’s pages. If you don’t, Google will always just use a snippet of information that you can’t control. Like Matt Cutts said, Google isn’t always using the description, so in order to have the most control of the search result that is your first impression to thousands of people, you need to write the most relevant and helpful description possible.

Here is some basic information to get started on writing a quality meta description:

• Google will display a maximum of 160 characters, so keep the description down to 5-24 words to make sure a searcher can read the whole thing
• The description promotes your company—use appealing words that will attract people to click on your link
• Like we said earlier—write a different description for every page to make it relevant to the content on that page and better for search results
• Include the specific page’s keywords in the description to increase search results

Whether you believe the meta description on your website pages will affect how close you end up to the number one position on Google or other search engines or you don’t, you definitely need to realize that SEO isn’t just about making the robots happy. Enticing the people that search for your product or service is the most important part of SEO, so remember to write descriptions that people will want to learn more about.

Online Marketing

Online marketing is any marketing strategy that takes place online. Also referred to as Internet marketing, it encompasses a variety of marketing forms like video advertisements, search engine marketing and e-mail marketing. It is the opposite of offline marketing, and can also fall under digital marketing. Online marketing needs a good approach in areas of design, development and advertising. A company with a total web site marketing plan will have more success online than one that has just designed a web site without thinking of how to market their company through it.

Offline Marketing

Offline marketing, the opposite of online marketing, includes all forms of marketing that aren’t done on the Internet. Examples of offline marketing are local advertising in newspapers and on television. In today’s marketing world, companies are finding ways to leverage their offline marketing campaigns with their online ones, making them complement each other.

Outbound Marketing

When you think of marketing, the different forms you come up with are mostly outbound marketing (also called traditional marketing). In fact, the majority of companies today are using different types of outbound marketing to reach their potential customers. Outbound marketing includes any marketing efforts that are taken to introduce a product or service to someone who isn’t looking for that product or service. Some examples are cold calling, sending newsletters, billboards, and banner ads on different web sites.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing focuses on having your company found by customers, as opposed to reaching out to them directly like in outbound marketing. The important thing to remember here is that a person starts out with the want/need to purchase a product or service, and they go out to find it. When they search for that product/service on a search engine, the search engine results page will show inbound marketing results. Instead of using paid advertisements, inbound marketing is the search engine optimization (SEO) part of web marketing.

Newsletter Marketing

Newsletter marketing and email marketing refer to ways of promoting your company through emails. Typically, a firm using newsletter marketing will have a group of contacts that they will send a newsletter containing some interesting information to. The success of newsletter marketing depends on grabbing attention, writing good content and reaching a large number of potential clients.

Article Marketing

Businesses will often write articles related to the industry they are in and distribute them online and offline. These free articles will inform people about an important topic and give the company that wrote it more credibility within the market. The organization can also include their business contact information in the article, allowing them to get new clients.

Trade Show Marketing

Companies that want to reach a large number of potential customers can participate in public or private trade shows. Trade shows and other forms of event marketing are often a large investment to participate in, but trade shows allow companies to demonstrate new products and examine what is going on in the industry.

Search Marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the way in which companies promote their business through paid placement on search engines like Google. Instead of increasing the organic search results that a website has, companies will pay to have their advertisements in the sponsored section of search engines.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing’s main goal is to send a message directly to consumers, without having to use any third party outlets. Examples of direct marketing include mail marketing, telemarketing and direct selling. Direct marketing is often preferable because the results can be easily measured, giving the marketer a better understanding of the success of that campaign.

Niche Marketing

When a product or service is not being readily supplied to a certain portion of a market, a company can focus their efforts on that niche to address a need that isn’t currently being addressed. This targeted marketing is successful because the marketer has identified a need that isn’t being resolved by mainstream providers. Sometimes it is beneficial for a company to focus on a niche instead of trying to compete in a larger market.

Drip marketing

Drip marketing is the act of sending out scheduled targeted emails that are all coordinated to a specific goal of client conversion. The sender uses email marketing software that allows them to setup multiple emails at one time and let them “drip” over time. This sometimes includes phone calls to check in on the clients along the way.

Social Media Marketing

Social network marketing and social media campaigns provide a window to market a product or service on the Internet through different social networks. Companies can use these outlets for their marketing, customer service and sales. The most common and successful means of social media marketing are found on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and even company blogs.

Referral Marketing

One of the less strategic types of marketing, referral marketing relies on a company’s customers to refer new customers to that company. Also called word of mouth marketing, this is a more spontaneous way of receiving new business, and can not be solely relied on because results aren’t very predictable. However, word of mouth is still a powerful part of a company’s efforts to bring in new business, especially in the social media community where communication travels freely.

Guerrilla Marketing

With a smaller budget, guerrilla marketing makes a splash by relying on energy, timing and unusual approaches to get the consumer’s attention. The unconventional marketing involved tries to get the most out something small, and make a lasting brand image in the consumer’s mind.

Promotional Marketing

Promotional marketing is a common form of marketing strategy that companies use to motivate a consumer to make a decision and purchase their product. There are a number of ways that businesses will promote a product or service, including holding contests to win a prize, offering coupons for purchasing a product at a discount, and having samples of the product so people can experience it before they purchase.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing most likely involves four different groups that contribute to the marketing effort. The Merchant is the company that is producing and selling the product, the Network is the outlet that is used to promote the affiliate link, the Publisher or Affiliate is the person who has the website with the affiliate ad and of course the customer doing the purchasing. Affiliate links are found on all types of websites, and they are used to drive traffic to outside websites.

Viral Marketing

This type of marketing relies on the message of a marketer being spread quickly through various social networks in order to increase brand awareness. The name viral marketing stems from the rapid spread of viruses in general. Typically, a viral marketing campaign will not last as long as other marketing efforts, but if a company can come up with a good idea for viral marketing and reach the right people, it will become highly successful in a short amount of time.

B2B Marketing

Any type of business, whether an organization, individual, government or other institution that markets to other businesses is involved in business to business marketing. Since B2B marketing involves companies trying to sell mass quantities of product to one another, there is a more personal relationship that needs to be established between businesses. If your company sells to other businesses, your marketing efforts will most likely be more direct.

B2C Marketing

Business to consumer marketing campaigns try to reach a category of people that will be likely to purchase their product or service. The marketing efforts the company takes should be more broad than B2B, which focuses on specific companies. B2C marketing can involve different marketing techniques such as door to door marketing, promotion marketing, newspaper marketing, television marketing and radio marketing. In today’s marketing world, B2C Internet marketing is becoming more important to reach consumers.

Mobile Marketing

Along with Internet marketing, mobile marketing is part of the newest groups of marketing activities. Companies have been experimenting with the certain ways to reach consumers through their phones, especially with the rise of Apple’s iphone. Some ways to marketing a product or service through a mobile phone include SMS marketing, in-game marketing, banner marketing on different web pages and location based marketing.

Reverse Marketing

This form of marketing is similar to inbound marketing. The goal of reverse marketing is to market a product in a way that will cause the consumer to seek the firm doing the marketing. Reverse marketing can be conducted through such means as television, print and Internet marketing. If a company has a product that solves a problem in the market, they will have more success using reverse marketing because they will seek out that product.

Telemarketing

A form of direct marketing, telemarketing’s focus is on reaching consumers by phone. Most of what we thing of as telemarketing is cold call marketing, which is unpopular and has lead to laws being created against it. However, telemarketing can be effective if the right person is reached on the phone at the right time.

Direct Mail Marketing

Most people receive large quantities of marketing material in the mail, which is considered direct mail marketing. Companies will send paper mail with promotions or other information to a list of addresses, usually in a common geographical area. This form of marketing is also called junk mail by some, because the customers receiving the mail aren’t expecting it and usually don’t want to open it.

Database Marketing

Database marketing is similar to other types of direct marketing, but the focus is more directed towards analyzing data. Companies try to narrow their marketing efforts down to certain groups of people, and they use database marketing to analyze statistics like name, address, or sales history, in order to create the most accurate model possible.

Personalized marketing

The goal of personalized marketing is to create a unique offer for each individual customer. This form of marketing doesn’t work for every company, but certain ones can capitalize on their unique products and customer demographics to market to individuals. With the Internet becoming a more popular place for marketing, companies are finding that personalized marketing is affective in cases when they can track a customer’s specific interests and send them more information for future suggestions.

This list should give you a good idea of different ways companies can market themselves to consumers or other companies, but there are still more types of marketing out there. If you think of any, let us know and we’ll add it to the list.

Depending on your company and the industry you are in, you will definitely choose different kinds of marketing that will produce the best results for you. No matter which type of marketing you want to use for your company, Design & Promote can help you research and implement a marketing campaign that will allow your company to win the consumer’s attention and hold the search engine results. Contact us today to explore more ways Design & Promote can help market your company.

Don't bully your fans

In our last post, we discussed some ways that companies frequently make mistakes while using social media for their business, resulting in a passive approach and eventually a failing social media campaign. The following tips will help you and your company avoid making the opposite types of mistakes, being too aggressive with social media:

Creating Pages On Too Many Sites: Since social media for business is a time consuming endeavor, it is impossible to reach everyone and be involved on every social media website, all while running a successful business. Devote some time to research your industry on different social media sites and identify which ones will benefit your company the most. You need to find the place that will allow you to interact the most with your potential customers, and that is going to be different for every company.

Abusing The Rules: Social media users are a group of intelligent people that don’t want to be manipulated. If your organization uses certain techniques, for example, posting multiple spam-like messages in Facebook or Twitter to try and attract more fans, people will get upset with your company and stop following you. The majority of companies that make this mistake are just starting their efforts in social media and want to try and get their message out to the highest number of people as fast as possible. However, the better approach is to sign up, read what other people are talking about and get a good feeling about the overall conversation on that social media site, and then slowly join in with valuable information.

Obvious Selling: Companies that go on social media and try the usual hard sell tactics in business will find that followers/fans don’t respond positively to it. The whole social media culture is based on people communicating with others in order to help everyone. It is not about businesses selling their products to consumers in the social media realm, so don’t treat your followers like they are just there to buy your product. Remember, you have to contribute to the conversation before you can expect anyone to buy what you’re offering.

Deliberate SEO: It is not a secret that social media has become an important part of search engine optimization. This shouldn’t mean that the only reason why you’re on social media sites is to get more links to your website. Your success on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else depends on how much you offer other people. They aren’t just search engine robots scanning your page and looking for keywords, so don’t expect them to stay your follower if all you’re looking for are keywords and backlinks.