Marketing Methods
Whether you’re looking to outsource your marketing functionality or you’d like take a shot at self-marketing, first you need to learn a bit about the different types of advertising methods that business owners are currently practicing. There are two major areas in which we will focus: Online Marketing and Print Marketing. There is obviously some overlap between these two areas of marketing, which we will note where appropriate. The areas for each style we will cover here are:
Online Marketing Methods
- Pay-Per Click Marketing
- Organic Search Engine Optimization
- Banner Ads
- Affiliate Marketing
- Newsletters
Print Marketing Methods
- Direct Mail
- Magazine Ads
- Brochures/Flyers
- Billboards
General Marketing Methods
- Branding
- Permission Marketing
- Positioning
- Lead Generation
Online Marketing Methods
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is a popular form of online advertising that is easy to setup, and can gain you quick results. The results gained from PPC marketing are increased traffic to your web site, and potential increase of brand awareness. Both of these ideally will result in higher sales, whether the action taken by the user is to actually purchase something on your web site, or to pick up the phone and call you.
Both Google and Yahoo have very popular PPC programs. Pay-Per-Click advertisements are basically text ads that you write, that appear next to the normal search results on a search engine. The more competitive the industry, the more it will cost to get your ad on the front page of search results. Contrary to popular belief, money is not the only deciding factor in how your ad gets placed.
Read more about setting up your own PPC account, and how you can easily maximize your profits through PPC marketing in our pay-per-click marketing method overview.
Organic Search Engine Optimization
Organic search engine optimization is the art of catering your web site for the search engines. You pick the search terms, and then sprinkle them throughout your site. Optimization occurs mainly on the page level, that is, you pick a search term, and then assess one individual page for how best to pepper that page with the give term or phrase.
The idea is, the quantity and quality of your web pages will directly reflect, in a search engine’s eyes, your relevance to that subject. There are some constantly changing aspects of search engine optimization, but there is absolutely a core set of tweaks and adjustments you can make to your web site today, that will set you on the path to higher search engine rankings. The good news is that it’s not rocket science, and you can get started today on your goal of reaching a much larger audience online.
While organic search engine optimization (SEO) is not traditionally a marketing channel, the long-term optimization of a site over time can turn into a very valuable asset, have influence from a branding perspective, and compete with the best of your PPC competitors. Organic SEO involves making natural tweaks and changes to your web site, which leads to a healthy web site from a content perspective, and a healthy natural listing in the search engines.
The process of optimizing your web site to show a strong performance in the search engines is an ongoing process, but as you will see in our guide to organic search engine optimization, it is a process that anyone with a little HTML knowledge can accomplish.
Learn more about organic search engine optimization with SEO Book, the most valuable resource of organic search engine optimization knowledge on the Internet.
Banner Ads
Banner ads are typically images or motion graphics that highlight your web site, that are placed on a web site you know receives a lot of traffic that would be interested in your product or service. If you’d like to get your name in front of a very targeted audience, on a specific web site or niche, banner ads are the way to go. If you’ve got a great web site, or even already receive large volumes of traffic but feel the traffic isn’t necessarily the targeted audience you need, banner ads are the right choice. Better yet, you’ve got a few web sites in mind that you know receive the type of traffic that you need. These are the factors to consider when deciding if you’d like to go the route of creating banner ads to place on other web sites to drive traffic to your web site.
Banner ads do have a bit of a creative requirement, and it’s up to you to determine whether you have this ability in-house, or whether to use a firm to create a few banner ads for you. As always, you should get a few second opinions, as it is very easy to fall into the category of thinking you’ve got what it takes to create engaging, captivating banner ads, only to spend a lot of time frustrated learning a new applications to communicate a message that says you didn’t put enough time into your creative. Luckily, there are many online agencies that will create banner ads for you for a minimal cost.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the process of setting up a relationship with many different advertisers, and publishing their ads on your own web site. You share revenue from an action that a user takes, typically starting on your web site, but concluding on the advertisers’ web site. You essentially provide traffic to different advertisers, and for this they cut you in on a portion of the sale.
Affiliate marketing is like a super-charged version of pay-per-click marketing. Instead of working with only one advertiser (like Google or Yahoo! for PPC marketing), you work with many varied advertisers. Setting up an affiliate marketing account is more advanced that setting up a PPC program, but the rewards are potentially much higher for you. Affiliate marketing makes sense for individuals or small businesses because it’s like having an entire sales team for yourself, except you get to cut out the middle man (the entire sales team). Bad news for those in the sales business, because as overall revenue from online marketing increases, the need for the large sales team of the past will be on its way out.
Newsletters
Online newsletters are a marketing tool that users of your web site can subscribe to, and enable you to feed to them on a recurring basis any content of your choice. Typical content includes recent product or service updates that you’d like to spotlight, industry news, or just helpful links to resources that you feel may benefit your users. The first item, highlighting your products or services, has obvious benefit. You place your new services or products, or even old ones with a new twist, directly in front of an audience who you know has asked to be fed this information. Quite powerful indeed. Secondly, you can feature industry news and additional links to other relevant articles that potentially support your products. This lends to the credibility of your business twofold, by showing that you’re actively involved in your industry, and supporting the sense of security that your client receives from strong the strong supplementary links contained within your newsletter.
One of the most popular and user-friendly newsletter tools in the market right now is Constant Contact.
Print Marketing Methods
Direct Mail
Direct mail involves creating an offer or call to action that you will present to a potential customer via traditional mail. A direct mail piece can be a one-off, or a small piece of a much larger campaign. With direct mail, as with most print marketing methods, you will want to have a tracking mechanism in place, like a specially designed phone number or web site by which you can directly track results. If the results justify the initial spend, reinvest and up the ante.
Magazine ads involve a one time or recurring ad spend in a publication that contains a target audience for your product or service. Magazine ads can be coupled with newspaper ads, to really target a local audience.
Brochures/Flyers
Brochures and flyers are mainly used to drive traffic on a local level. Their real value is in the immediacy of the customer contact, and the strategy of their distribution.
Billboards
Billboards are a great way to get recurring traffic, and really pound your message into the brains of the consumer. Similar to a banner ad, a billboard is placed in a targeted location, and will get noticed on a repeat basis by frequent drivers. Unfortunately, billboards are much more expensive than banner ads, so unless you’ve got a hefty budget, they may be too expensive.
General Marketing Methods
Branding
Branding is the process of gaining recognition in the mind of an individual, with the end goal being complete transparency. Transparency is reached when an individual or future client sees your logo, and there is an instant association to your company, what you do and what you stand for. Values and trust are also communicated through branding. In almost every scenario, branding has some impact, and in some can be the entire basis for the sale. We get into this and much more in our guide on branding.
Permission Marketing
Positioning
Positioning is a topic for larger businesses. Positioning refers to relative placement of your business with regard to other businesses in your industry, and more specifically how they compare in the eye of the consumer.
Lead Generation
Lead generation describes the process by which you discover potential new customers, and convert those potential customers to actual customers. This may seem like a really old and boring subject, but there is an entire new world of potential currently being unveiled on the web, and the process doesn’t have to be formal at all. Potential clients can start building a relationship from the moment they hit your web site, and if you invest in that relationship, the line between consumer and client can blur dramatically. That being said, it doesn’t mean that the marketing methods of old are completely dead. Interruption marketing is what we as consumers are used to, and as direct mailers are transitioning to e-mail, the same methods apply.