The Importance of Website as a Marketing Tool

Having a business without a website is almost as good as not having a business at all. However ridiculous that sounds, the internet age has made websites a primary requirement for companies changing buyer behaviour forever.

Please note that this is not just for companies who can sell online. It applies to the normal brick-and-cement business as well. Customers don’t just buy over instinct anymore or walk in ignorantly; they Google, read reviews, connect with previous customers and come into your office/store fully armed with information good enough to make their choice.

Big or small, product or service, profit or non-profit, every organization undoubtedly needs a website to make their presence felt in today’s market. Your website should embody your persona, style and story to make the first impression on customers even before you engage with them. This is where businesses identify their website as a core marketing tool.

·      One of the major functions of marketing is branding. Your company’s brand is the image and personality you convey to your customers. It’s a way to tell potential customers all about your company, your culture, and how you go about accomplishing your goals at every point of contact. To meet the company’s strategic goals, brands need to work on content, promotion and identity-building. Given that most or all of your customers are on the internet, websites bring alive branding to the online markets. It integrates the overall brand strategy with effective user experience thereby becoming a critical communication asset for all marketers.

·     Websites never sleep. Your website serves as a source of information and engagement for customers 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It’s not bound by the traditional business hours and helps you be at the customer’s fingertips even at an odd hour.

·         In this age of cut-throat competition, visibility is as valuable as sales. By putting together a website, you improve your overall visibility by simply being available at a web space shared by most of your potential customers. In fact, you are allowing your competitors to beat you to a sale just because your business doesn't have a website. A well designed business website is a vital marketing tool to both attract new customers and keep the existing ones informed of promotional activities or news.

·         A business website is also crucial to establish credibility to your company. Your potential customers will assume that you are a small time business just because you don’t have a website and since the vast majority of other businesses do. If you don't have a website to put on your business card or memorandums, potential customers are least likely to take you seriously.

·         Bringing marketing to the online world using websites creates a level playing field for small and big businesses alike. Websites help small companies build an impression that they are greater than they actually might be. One of the awesome things about marketing through your website is that the number of employees you house, size of your office building or annual turnover doesn’t really matter at all. With power-packed web tools and engaging content, there is every chance that your website ranks better than a larger competitor and channels off some of their traffic.

·         Hosting a website, gives companies a greater reach than any other form of advertising at a very feasible cost. There are remarkable examples of companies that have created their entire marketing campaigns around a website. Websites enable companies to employ an easy form of advertising through pay-per-click programs and social media activities.

Having a website is not good enough. Marketers need to create excellent content that drives them up Google’s SERP ladder. It is almost like a reality contest. You need to have masses liking your content and sharing it through inbound links so that Google identifies you as a top result for a related keyword. Much like you need audiences to like your performance vote for you in a reality event.

To wrap it up, it is critical for all businesses to have a website and it is the need of the hour for marketers to make it their core asset. 

The Art of Storytelling

Content is the mother of all marketing. It has been the core ingredient of every marketing activity of the past and in this age of chronic attention deficit; its significance has grown more than ever.

Content marketing helps brands engage with customers using clear, concise and compelling information that is useful for them. Information is the core differential between traditional and modern consumer behaviour.  

People are constantly Googling for information on products and services based on their needs or wants. This combined with the educated decision making pattern that has got into people, makes content marketing inevitable for modern businesses.

Brands need to put out their story on the World Wide Web and give themselves a chance to engage with customers and create a relationship of trust, loyalty and love. They need to be available with useful information within consumer reach; at their fingertips.

Content marketing is the art of storytelling that engages consumers through various forums thereby bringing in profitable relationships for the business. Creating compelling content on the internet is like leaving petrol near the fireplace. Useful content travels across boundaries and spreads like a wildfire to earn leads, likes, followers, tweets and most importantly an active customer base. This makes every piece of content created by a company important on a strategic level.

Though internet has become the greatest carrier of content, it doesn’t make sense for marketers to shout their brand story at a whopping 3 billion people who use the internet. And this is where content meets our concept of inbound marketing. Companies don’t have to tell their story to 3 billion people; they need to share it with only those who care. Content marketers need to optimize their content both for social media and search engines so that is easily available to prospective customers who search for them.

While your content is put up for the whole world to see, content marketing on the internet focuses on the individual. It is an online target marketing strategy delivering to the needs of people who show interest in your story thereby winning hearts, minds and wallets.

KFC India took to content marketing recently using pictures of crisp zinger burgers and compelling web feed which talked about its quality measures, company values and kitchen secrets. They urged customers/readers to use #KFCTasteTheNew and the result was phenomenal. Thousands of people used the hashtag on Twitter within a week, followed by more than 15,000 social shares across different internet platforms. The content from their web feed engaged hundreds of thousand people generating love, feedback, questions and discussions on their comments page.  

The art of effective storytelling is a story in itself. Every campaign driven by good content is a strategic step towards engaging people who make choices that bring profits to businesses. It is vital that marketers deliver content that leverages their “choosability”.

From internet to inbound marketing – Understanding the change in approach

Until recently, the digital landscape was a stark and mysterious web space of unending opportunities driven by the search button. But today, though search continues to be the face of it, we have gained a much better understanding of using the internet as a powerful marketing tool.

All the latest innovations on the internet direct to one common goal – connecting people to ideas, interesting offerings and other people. Inbound marketing just makes it better.

The basic difference between regular internet marketing and inbound is in the approach. Inbound marketing is a smart and tailored approach to digital marketing adapting to all the changes in consumer behavior caused by progress.

It revolves on a four-pillared mechanism that considers the needs of businesses and delivers incredible results.

1.    Content

Content is the mother of all marketing. It was the key to all kinds of traditional marketing and continues to be the source of all marketing action in the digital age. To attain best results, your internet marketing campaign needs to have useful content at its fulcrum.

It helps communicate with your potential customers without spamming and interrupting. It is a method of delivering information to those who need it. The logic is that if businesses give consistent and continuing content through their web resources, customers will reward them with leads and loyalty. Online marketing is impossible without attractive content.

2.    Traffic

You have the best product ever. Everybody will love it because it is as desirable as hot cakes. But if you have just three page views in a month and they come from your mom, sister and a creep from Nigeria, you aren’t going to achieve the kind of results you deserve. This is where inbound marketing empowers your business by generating targeted traffic and using the right channels to hit your marketing goals. Search engine and social media optimization along with paid media and email marketing all contribute to generating targeted traffic.

3.    Tools

Mobile responsive websites, latest social media platforms, PPC landing pages and e-commerce solutions are very useful tools to be used in your inbound marketing campaign. These tools improve the design aspect of your online marketing and play a crucial role in creating better user interface.

4.    Continuous evolution

The fourth pillar of inbound marketing is one that calls for continuous improvement and openness to better change. Given the dynamics of the internet, businesses need to play their cards with an open mind and constantly adapt to the changing social trends. Inbound marketing promotes the continuous monitoring of metrics to create and maintain a winning brand image at all times.

These four pillars define the future of marketing; they merge to create an integrated strategic concept that will multiply not only your leads but your ROI and brand equity. 

Why do modern businesses need Internet marketing?

Before we tackle this question, let’s have a look at the facts.

#There are 3,210,598,922 internet users in the world and this number is expected to double by 2025.#

#India is the third largest consumer of the internet just behind China and the United States.#

#Facebook has 1,350,029,100 active users as of 2014. This means if Facebook was a country it would be the second largest in the world in between China and India.#

#There are 31 billion searches in Google every month. This number was 2.7 billion until 2006.#

For those of you who have deduced the answer to the question at the beginning of this page, thank you for reading and do come back for more interesting posts. And for the others who haven’t bothered or managed to read the ten digit figures, all that interesting math was a prelude to explain the growing importance of internet as a marketing platform to draw attention, interest, desire from people and convert it into useful business leads.

Alongside the dynamic environment and the billions of users, one of the key attractions for marketers to get onto the internet is the large amount of content it shares and contains. Smart internet marketing begins with creating, curating, promoting useful content and measuring its effect on attracting people through search engines and social media.

Internet marketing involves managing all aspects of the online presence enjoyed by a business. This includes the company’s websites, social media handles, e-commerce portals and all kinds of advertisements.  

For those of you who wouldn’t mind scrolling down a little further, below are some more reasons why internet marketing is not just good but essential for your business.

• Internet facilitates the most efficient and unbiased kind of branding

Internet marketing is driven by the persona created by businesses using power packed web tools and attractive content. The identity of your brand on the internet is not based on the size of your office or the number of employees you house but the content you deliver and your level of engagement. Online marketing enables small and large businesses alike to wield the power to draw masses through an analytical and creative approach.

•  It is the only kind of marketing left

With traditional marketing broken and the rapid shift in consumer behavior, the only market left for businesses to tap is the internet population. People are so sick and tired of conventional ads that they have learnt to use all methods to block them. Internet marketing on the other hand helps businesses focus on buyers who need them by delivering and directing the right content on the right search page.

• Online marketing is measurable

This does not mean every promotional email you send or blog post you share will return as a million rupee cheque but it implies that when your marketing effort on the internet generates leads, you will definitely be able to keep a record of it. You can easily measure the popularity and efficiency of your activities through the various analytical tools and plan your future efforts accordingly.

• It’s recession-friendly

Though this is the last point, I am sure this is a favorite for all business owners. It is an honest fact that businesses are on the lookout for newer cost-effective marketing tactics that suit the needs of these tough financial times. This is where internet marketing turns out to be an effective strategy. Almost all internet marketing campaigns require more time and much lesser money when compared to its traditional alternatives.

If you haven’t fallen in love with internet marketing yet, you need to know that it is a kinder form of marketing. It is about attracting people through helpful resources rather than harassing them with interruptive advertising. Most importantly, it is your greatest competitive strategy to help your business grow in this digital age.

Change beyond Chillar !

Change seems to be the most appealing 21st century idea in our society. Though we have learnt and heard repeatedly that change is disliked by the majority and change always faces unbeatable resistance, facts around us seem to project the contrary. 

History presents change to us as a phenomenon associated with the passing of thousands of years, war, disaster or fall of regimes. But today change has taken a new and powerful form all together. A form that has been upheld by technological growth, media and most importantly youth. We have seen this very change electing to power the first African American President in the world's largest superpower which allowed Blacks to vote only less than 50 years before.

Barack Obama is serving his second term as Commander in Chief of the world's most powerful democracy presiding over a nation that oppressed his forefathers less than a century ago. Today he is regarded as the world's most powerful man and a true American hero by one and all around the world. Looking back at his campaign to understand what brought about the historic election of a black President, we will clearly see it wasn't any revolutionary event, definitely not a war and as a matter of fact not an eventual happening over time. It was simply a brilliant change mantra he believed in, propagated, marketed and clung on right throughout. "Change we can believe in" and "Vote for change" became very popular brands being used on t-shirts, caps, wristbands, shoes, plates and almost everywhere.  It was the perfect branding strategy. We do not know if they really understood what the change they sought but the whole idea of showing solidarity to a mass movement that chanted "change" and showed rebellious commitment to its manifesto was alluring and exciting to the people; especially the youth.

Talking about youth, India has been ranked as one of the youngest countries in the world with more than 50 percent of its population below the age of 30. It is said the 2014 elections registered up to 150 million first time voters. It was doubtless that most of these new voters would be eager to make difference and will quickly declare allegiance to the change movement. In the recent past we have seen plenty of change movements.  The biggest one being the Anna Hazare led Lokpal movement which became popular among the women, working middle class, bureaucrats and students who were for a long time silent in the nation's political process. 

The so called Gandhian movement led by Team Anna for a corruption free India, saw colorful and eager participants in bike rallies, social media debates, PR campaigns and even a strip tease courtesy Poonam Pandey.

The Aam Aadmi Party leveraged the appeal towards change by asking voters to elect the broomstick that would cleanse the scam-struck national political scene but having attracted support from movie stars and socialites probably didn't make everybody feel Aam enough. 

 

Self proclaimed national savior Narendra Modi with mind-blowing marketing campaigns and promotions encouraged the public to vote for change and believe that the NaMo chant is what the nation needs. Though this repeated promise of making India like Gujarat was slightly terrifying for those who remember the Godhra incidents and Gujarat riots, he managed to create a well planned virus that challenged the Obama campaign and dethroned the Indian National Congress.

The effect of this change is much more than one expects. This change overwhelms the conservationists, relieves the transgenders, ignores the tribals, gives hope to the poor, excites the modern educated youth, confuses the middle class and balances the spirits of our diversity.

Pampakottu Family

Pampakottu is a prominent Suriyani (Syrian) Christian family of Uthimoodu in Pathanamthitta district. It is a branch of the ancient Pakalomattom Vadakkantedathu Mahakudumbam and shares the legacy of the renowned Pakalomattom Tharavadu Palli.

Pakalomattom Tharavadu Palli

According to known history, 12 families from Pakalomattom tharavadu migrated to Kozhencherry early in the 16th century as an aftermath of the Koonen Kurish Satyam (Coonan Cross Oath). This marked the beginning of the illustrious Pakalomattom Vadakkantedathu Mahakudumbam. A few hundred years later, Pampakottu Thomas Mathai and brothers moved towards the East in search of new agricultural spaces and opportunities; eventually becoming pioneers in developing Uthimoodu as a livable village. (Refer to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uthimoodu)

Uthimoodu Mar Thoma Church

Uthimoodu town which celebrated it's 110th anniversary in 2014, is now the second largest business center in Ranni panchayat. The Pampakottu family also played significant role alongside Mannil and Korattikkara to establish the Uthimoodu Mar Thoma church which is a major religious center in the region best known for the annual Olivu Mala (Olive Mount) convention.

Pampakottu, Uthimoodu

Inbound Marketing - The new form of brand marketing

Print advertisements, TV commercials, brochures and email promotions are the different methods of marketing we are familiar with. These methods don’t involve creating personal relationships, loyalty or brand equity instead makes use of every opportunity to spam, cold call and cram consumer minds with their sales stunts. These are the very reasons why these classic marketing methods have been under-performing in the digital age.

Inbound marketing on the other hand, understands people’s ability to ignore and filter out traditional marketing efforts. It realizes that the best way to earn people’s attention is by delivering personal and relevant content to those who actually need it. This attention earned, gradually becomes consent to engage and remains a key asset to inbound marketers.

Regular marketing which we call outbound marketing, is not only is ineffective due the shifts in buyer behavior but also damages your brand when you continue to irritate your way into people’s spaces. Inbound marketing transforms your marketing strategy to match the way people buy and the general consumer behavior.

So how do we employ this new form of marketing? How do we pull people towards our brand?

The answer to this has three dimensions.

Undoubtedly number one is content. To be recognized and heard in today’s digital world, you need to create and deliver ample amount of content. Content in any of it forms – blog posts, webinars, e-books, videos or podcasts need to reach people constantly and consistently. The more you turn yourself into a content publishing engine, the more leads and customers you attract towards yourself.

Two, you need to optimize this content in the best way possible so that it reaches your potential customer on the other side of the World Wide Web. While people are slowly getting familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization is also very relevant. Your customers are no longer “Googling stuff” off their desktops; they are active and reactive on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and all the different social media channels.

Number three is deploying the right kind of promotion for this content. Content needs to be shared through the right channels reaching the right people at the right time. An inbound marketer is like a smart farmer and content is like the seed. Relating this to the parable of the sower, it is likely that some content falls on rocky ground, among thorns and on the path. An inbound marketer needs to ensure that he sows his content in the right web channels to receive an abundant yield of leads.

Inbound marketing makes you a popular hub on the internet helping you invest lesser in traditional marketing and creating a leverage of impulse. It is a blend of content and context marketing which tries to understand people through their online behavior and establishes a relationship of mutual interest.

In simpler terms, inbound marketing is a four-step process which begins with attracting potential customers towards your website, generating leads, closing sales and retaining customers as future promoters of your business. While the first, second and the fourth steps are managed by delivering creative and useful content, the third step is managed by context marketing.

Context marketing is the most personalized form of marketing based on the specific interests and behavioral inclination of your customer. The more time a customer spends on your website, the more information you have about his/her choices and that helps you customize the content you deliver to him or her. This may be enabled through smart call to actions and customer monitoring. Online shopping websites such as Flipkart and Snapdeal are best known to make use of this kind of marketing to sell, cross-sell and up-sell products of our interest.

Alongside being your best marketing option, inbound marketing sets very high entry barriers for your potential competitors. Every time you publish new content, it is optimized for search and also simultaneously reaches thousands of customers who have subscribed to your email, liked, followed and connected with you on social media. This can never be matched by a relatively new competitor.

Inbound marketing makes maximum utilization of the internet to generate better leads at a much lower cost making your brand lovable and indomitable. This is the new marketing.

Overview

In case you didn't figure out from the blog URL, my name is Jeffin Thomas and I am a marketing communication professional, writer, traveler, foodie and movie enthusiast.

                       

As a reflection of my varied interests and inclinations, Write It Down and Make It Happen will contain blog posts ranging from Narendra Modi to changing dynamics of inbound marketing or the best cheesecake in town.

Any queries or concerns may be directed to my email address.