Introduction
Online marketing is essential for marketing and selling products and services to target audiences who are known to use the internet and commercial online services. EasyRider is a medium size organisation that sells and service pushbikes as their business. To promote their products, there is already an existing but conservative websites. However, integrated online marketing as they have not yet effectively and the achievement of the business goals are still low. This discussion paper describes online tools, techniques, approaches and strategies for EasyRider to adopt while utilising internet as communication medium to achieve its marketing goals.
Online Marketing Tools
Nowadays, it is essential that companies execute online marketing tools to achieve a competitive advantage as a means responding to the changing social and technological environment of the business.
There are several online methods EasyRiders can to promote their business by using and to achieve set marketing goals.
a. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising in Google
Ø Pay Per Click advertising is a useful way to immediately launch products and help existing poor performing sites to gain exposure by appearing in Google through natural searches.
Ø Moreover, millions of people use Google each day to search for information and research something specific interest and to purchase goods from commercial sites.
Ø This search process just requires the user to type into Google a 'keyword phrase'. A keyword phrase can be a single word such as 'EasyRider' or it can be a multi-word phrase such as “pushbike EasyRider”.
Ø Traffic generated via PPC search engines makes a web site more popular, and may indirectly help improve its ranking in the organic search results.
Ø New sites such as EasyRider, will be benefit from using such search engine because PPC advertising can become the most reliable source of traffic. As an element of a search engine, PPC advertising will give a great opportunity to your site to showing up in Google.
Ø It will increase the volume of visitors who are actually interested in buying the products offered and ensuring a higher conversion rate.
There are several reasons why EasyRider should use PPC advertising through search engine;
- More then 90% of web site visitors are referred to by search engines (Rightfoot Marketing, 2008)
- Advertising campaigns on the Internet is relatively cheap in comparison with others activities.
- PPC allow gaining a competitive advantage against oppositions who do not have an optimised web site.
Major Benefit of Pay Per Click advertising
Ø EasyRider’s campaign through PPC can directly target continuing customers who have shown interest in its products/services.
Ø The company only pay according to the number of visitors who actually visit the site, thus its coast are kept to the minimum.
Ø Moreover, PPC advertising through search engines make it possible for EasyRiders to evaluate the number of visitors attracted and the times that relevant keywords had been entered.
Ø PPC enables the company to gain a position at the top of the search result by advertising keywords that best describe the product or service. It is a dynamic marketplace and the greater the number of visitors, higher the company company’s advertisement will be displayed within the list.
Ø The risks are very limited and with sophisticated analysis and reporting tools. EasyRider can evaluate the number of visitors, the times of visits and how many times keywords were entered. This can be included as a part of the campaign management interface. You can clearly track the effectiveness of your advertising campaign and gather valuable quantitative and market research information.
Ø PPC search engine efficiently connects consumers’ information, products and services. As a result, this greatly impact to the company, benefiting it by increasing the reach of target audiences especially for young generation.
It is recommended that EasyRider should:
· Use a prepaid advertising account.
· An efficient and user-friendly counter management interface.
· Attract a reasonable visitors by providing multiple keywords and;
· Update editorial review when introducing new products to inform customers.
Marketing goals for using pay per click advertising
Ø To attract the visitors to purchase the company’s products or service
Ø To increase visitors’ brand awareness from the visitors
Ø Also provides the company’s products and services information when potential customers seek.
Issue for EasyRider to use Pay-per-click
The lists below are explanation of the strength and the weakness of using pay per click advertising.
Benefits
Ø Pay per click is easy for people who are not familiar with the internet (Wright, 2006, p.245).
Ø It can identify which terms worked to adopt the site for greater effectiveness.
Ø Customers can be identified and targeted to increase sales.
Ø Only a small investment is required because search engines do not charge for the placement of the advertisement, but only for the each click view received.
Ø Using PPC through Google is the best placement and is a very effective branding method.
Weakness
Ø Inadequate keyword targeting
This is a common mistake which marketers make by not using the keywords that searchers use to find answers to the queries. For example, a pushbike retailer’s PPC campaign may just use the keyword "pushbike". However, a person who is searching may input a lot of different keywords, like “pushbike reviews” or “cheap pushbike”. Therefore the company must conduct sufficient research to ensure that most effective keyword is listed.
Ø Small Daily Budget
A mistake often made by web marketers that are not familiar with all the variety of Internet advertising. For example, if company has a $20 budget, decide to pay 50c per click, and it happens to reach $20 mark (of click through) by lunch time. In this case, EasyRider will not appear for the rest of the day.
Ø Not using location keywords
If you are a local business owner looking to attract customers of a specific location, then you can easily be skipped, if you do not include information your specific location. Ideally you should set up all your keywords with specific matches using ("[" and "]” to connect a number of keywords), and also set up keywords about specific locations.
a.1. Search Directories
This is a good approach fro the company because:
Ø Search directories required to register the site such as Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) is one of the best directories and most used for companies to promote their business.
Ø Yahoo maintains a strict categorisation of the companies it lists. This is good for EasyRider as a competitor who is listed in the same area as many others to be compared with others products.
Ø Search directories are beneficial for companies to sell products to customers.
However a weakness search directories is that site index content are chosen by human editors, rather than as an automatic process.
b. E- mail
Email is an online tool to interact with customers and is the best strategy for reaching people in “a cost-effective manner” (Janal, 2000). In addition, this is a popular tool most internet users have.
There are several reasons that EasyRiders may use e-mail as an online tool;
Ø Firstly, email is of the most common activities internet with 99 percent of internet users claiming as to be doing regular on a basis (Harris and Dennis, 2008).
Ø Using email as an online tool is a cheap and quick method to communicate with customers.
Ø E-mail provides two way dialogues to show that the company’s cares about customers.
Ø E-mail for online business is useful to handle administrative and billing questions, as well as for technical support (Dahl and Lesnick, 1996).
According to Harris and Dennis (2008), there are several basic rules of e-mail as communication tools to achieve in marketing goals of EasyRider.
- The company should focus on the quantity of contact using a customer’s database and making it is easy for customers to unscribe.
- Using e-mail can enhance the customer experience, such as to promote a product to customers who have not yet purchased it.
- Combining other channels with other can produce more creative emails which can contain images and videos to encourage customer interaction and interest to more likely attract customers to visit the website.
According to Janal (1997), there are benefits of using e-mail for EasyRider. This includes;
Ø Introducing customers to the company’s products and service
Ø Providing the customers with requested information, such as company overview, products overview, reports and surveys
Ø Building relationships and developing brand loyalty by regularly informing customers of new products or services, sales, events or discounts.
Ø Conducting market research based on customers’ messages, and
Ø Creating and maintaining one to one relationships with customers and prospects.
Moreover, Janal (1997) pointed out that to write an e-mail “netiquette”, for online several points should be considered. Email should;
- The contain information that is polite
- Be specific of information or news
- Be brief about the information
- Should be grammatically accurate in the sentences
- Identify the company’s brand
- Be informative to encourage customers’ interested to seek further information.
Weakness
Ø Customers must have an e-mail account to receive the messages
Ø A massive increase in junk mail and spamming is irritating many e-mail users and may totally disregard the email (Forrest, 1999).
Ø Different display standards for email software can impact of the message view.
Ø EasyRider must have an update database and license permission.
Conclusions
Pay Per Click (PPC) is an on line marketing strategies techniques where the marketers can place the advertising through relevant search result via search engine. In addition, PPC is essential to promote products or service to customers directly who are interested. Furthermore, using pay per click via search engine enable to EasyRiders to promote their products and identify the competitors is essential to effective online marketing. In addition, it is useful to customers to know the exact web address and products. In addition, the other concern is needed to pay to attracting customers to the site who have searched for the relevant key word.
Moreover, search directories and search engines are Internet databases which are designed to allow visitors to search, find and view sites which are interested. Directories organise Internet sites into subject areas, as well as search engines allow you to find sites by searching for words and phrases.
Finally, email is an extremely useful and important business as a communications tool. Sending an e-mail on a regular basis will help increase drive traffic to company’s website, and build brand loyalty of the customers. Furthermore, e-mail allows the company to foster long lasting relation-ships among customers.
References
Wright, J. (2006). Blog Marketing. The Revolutionary New Way to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Get Exceptional Results.McGraw – Hill, New York.
Janal, D. S. (1997). Online Marketing Handbook. How to promote, Advertise, and Sell Your Products and Services on the Internet. Van Nostrand ReinHold, New York.
Harris, L. and Dennis, C. (2008). Marketing the e- Business 2nd edition. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. New York and London.
Forrest, E. (1999). Internet Marketing Research. Resources and Techniques. The McGraw – Hill Companies, Australia.
Dahl, A. and Lesnick, L. (1996). Internet Commerce. Successfully manage financial transaction on the internet. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Janal, D,S. (2000). Guide to Marketing on the Internet. Getting People to Visit, Buy, and Become Customers for Life. Jhon Wiley and Sons, Inc, New York.
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