Have you already tried to attract customers via the Internet? I think so. Did it work? I think that even if and more or less it turned out, there is still a precipitate that the result could be even better.
Who is to blame for the fact that you have not received enough customers from the Internet? Of course, those who were engaged in promoting your company on the Internet: seoshniki, contextualists, smm-schiki, targetologists, etc. They are experts, not finished, not immersed, not felt.
Are we talking right? Unfortunately, no. Now I will say a stinging thing: most likely it is your fault. It’s your fault that you gave the introduction of a separate sales channel into your business to people who do not understand anything in your business.
In this article, I want to talk about how to act correctly for a businessman or manager, so that the money invested in online advertising and promotion bring profit, not headaches. You do not need to take my article as an excuse for dishonest or unqualified contractors, there are also enough of them. This is not about them.
What is internet marketing?
To answer this question, you need to first understand what any business consists of.
For starters, business is people. Those who do the work. People need to be managed, taught, punished, encouraged, etc. Then, perhaps, the most important part of business is the production of goods or performance of works. What customers pay you money for.
But customers still need to be found, and this task has to be solved by marketing, which is also an important part of the system called “business”. It is not enough to attract customers, but they have to sell your product or service. Sales department, to work! And after the sale of the client you need to serve, provide a warranty on the product or periodically perform work for a subscription fee, not the point is important.
Thus, we can conditionally divide business dealing on kinds of works:
- Work with personnel (search, training, punishment, encouragement)
- production, execution of works
- customer search (marketing)
- sale
- After-sales service (warranty, escort)
Only qualitative performance of all these kinds of works can provide business success, that is profitability. After all, you can consider successful only the business that brings profit.
What kind of work can be attributed to Internet marketing? Of course, to marketing activities. That is, Internet marketing is one of the elements of a complex system called “marketing”.
Let’s remember what exactly marketing should be responsible for:
- Positioning a company in the market;
- Defining the target audience (TOC);
- Studying the demand and problems of Central Asia;
- Adapting the product to the needs of CA;
- Selection of ways to address CA (advertising messages and channels).
Logic suggests that Internet marketing is the part of business marketing that is implemented through the Internet.
That is, it is clear that it is not just the use of SEO, contextual advertising or SMM, it is a full-fledged element in the system of general promotion of your business, which should solve marketing problems, but with the use of appropriate promotion tools and channels on the Internet.
What tasks does internet marketing solve?
As we have already found out a successful business is a profitable business. And all types of work that are carried out within the framework of doing business should be aimed at increasing this very profit. Internet marketing is no exception.
Accordingly, the task of “run contextual advertising” can not be the right task of Internet marketing, as contextual advertising and profitability is not always the same concepts.
To determine what tasks you need to set, you need to understand what can be the result in the form of increasing business profits. Let’s find out what indicators directly affect the profitability:
- the number of clients;
- average check;
- marginality, that is, the difference between the cost of production and costs.
If you increase any of these indicators or all at once, you will increase the profitability of the business.
Which of these indicators may be affected by internet marketing? Since in most cases it is still a job related to attracting the target audience from the Internet, let’s leave the average check and marginality to regular marketing, and focus on the number of customers.
This indicator can be increased in several ways:
- To increase the coverage of the target audience. The more people see our advertising, the more they buy. Direct linear connection.
- Increase the conversion of the audience into leaders. We need to make the percentage of people who saw our ads, to leave requests.
- Increase the conversion of leads into sales. To increase the efficiency of the sales department, so that the percentage of leads closed for the transaction was higher.
- Increase the number of repeat sales. Ensure that customers contact you again after the first purchase.
Now it is possible to name it already correct problems of Internet marketing.
Reaching the target audience
This is a basic task that will allow you to grow your business. Where does the sale come from on the Internet? The user leaves an order on your site (it may be a group in a social network or a personal page on some portal, but for the sake of brevity in the article we will consider the site as a tool for receiving orders).
That is, you need to bring as many target audiences as possible to your site. This is the main task of online marketing. Increase recognition, the first place in the list of ads on some request, the number of likes per month – it does not matter if the site does not come to people who are interested in your proposal.
