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. 

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.

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.