How to Allocate Budget for Internet Marketing Campaign

In the last Article we discussed about how internet marketing can help your business succeed. In this edition we will discuss about budget allocation and feasible expectation from an Internet marketing campaign.

Internet Marketing is the process of promoting products and services of any business on the internet. Internet Marketing embeds in itself Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing (which is the latest buzzword). Marketing as a process involves advertising the products and services of a business to people and convince them to come to the business entity’s doorsteps. Converting the visitors to customers depends on many factors like quality of product or service, customer interaction, meeting the requirements of customers and above all convincing customers that the product or service you offer gives them the best ROI.

Social Media sites like You Tube, FaceBook and MySpace have huge traffic. But you need experts who can help take advantage of these websites to market your business. Qualified SEO service providers research the most popular sites for your type of business, and then submit content to get real people interested in your site. Website promotion through Social Media incurs a good deal of research and analysis of consumer behavior online i.e. what they like, what they are searching for, how they are searching for it, what are their expectations and many such aspects, thereby it becomes mandatory to judiciously plan the Social Media Campaign for a website.

The budget allocation for Internet Marketing is based on the financial factors that encompass the marketing module of your Product or Service. Let’s take for example:

If you deal in service based industry then your promotion strategy would be totally different from product based websites. As for service based websites the main objective is to showcase service and expertise in the domain you deal in. You need to formulate the online campaign in a way which enhances trust on your services. Visitors will view the details of your service, will go through the reviews, view your expertise and then decide on whether they want to avail your service or not.

The strategy should be totally different for product based sites. Here one would need to showcase all the features of the product, latest launches, related product comparisons, detailed pricing, comprehensive navigational structure for viewing the product models and online buying options.

The budget allocation would totally depend on how you conceive the whole Internet Marketing campaign. If you are targeting visitors interested in online purchase then your budget allocation for Internet Marketing should be at least 50% of the overall Marketing spend whereas if your aim is providing information of the services that you offer and then finally getting in the visitors as your customers then anything around 20-30% of the overall Marketing spend for the whole project would solve your purpose. Here the overall marketing spend covers all the media of promotion i.e. visual media, print media, acoustic and online media.

Here again, a feasible expectation from the Internet Marketing campaign depends on a number of factors that include:

Finalized Keywords – The finalized keywords would play a major role here. For any campaign broad keywords would take some time for the rankings to show up. Keywords that are geo-specific or product specific can be brought up into rankings earlier than broad keywords.

Competitor Sites – The rankings for keywords always depends on the Competitors Online presence. If the sites that you are competing with have been in existence for a long duration, have high number of pages indexed, have good social media presence, have a smooth technical structure, has good keyword density for the finalized keywords then your site needs to be at par with them on all these metrics to chase them down and rise up on the rankings.

To get a detailed insight on Return on Investment from any internet marketing campaign, read the next edition of this Article. For any trade queries or marketing information visit – http://www.bd360.ca/

How to Plan a Successful Internet Marketing Campaign

Internet Marketing is all about marketing your business to the online community. It comprises of Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing. The core process behind SEM is referred to as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) where as the process that governs Social Media Marketing is referred to as SMO (Social Media Optimization). Internet Marketing is a mandatory requirement in the marketing mix for any business, so it becomes all the more important to understand a couple of points before selecting an SEO or SMO service provider:

1.       What role does Internet Marketing play in the overall marketing for your business?

2.       How will Internet Marketing boost your sales or leads?

3.       How much budget to allocate for Internet Marketing?

4.       How to expect feasible results from the campaign?

5.       How to measure ROI?

Let’s try to answer the first query – What role does Internet marketing play in the overall marketing for your business?

There has been considerable increase in the number of online users across various portals, websites and social networking sites over the years. Accessing the internet has now become a part of life for people across the globe. Before hiring any services for household or industrial use people search for information, review and suggestions on search engines and social media sites before deciding on the service to finalize. The same is true while selecting or purchasing any product online, people look for feedback, references and testimonials from people who have used the products to arrive at the final purchasing decision. A recent survey conducted by leading consulting firms like McKinsey and Nielson has revealed that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Internet users across the globe in the last decade. Thereby, it becomes mandatory for all business owners to glamorize their internet presence and enhance their online credibility.

Taking on the second query – How will Internet marketing boost your sales or leads?

This is the trickiest part and there are several schools of thoughts that come up with their versions and explanations. This is a question which probably you need to ask yourself. Believe me, the best others can do is guide you (or rather sometimes mislead you) but the onus lies on you to decide on whether to go for internet marketing or not. Having said that, the writing is on the wall that your marketing strategy will stay incomplete until you include internet marketing. It is a known fact that more than 90% of the urban population spends approximately 35% of their time weekly surfing the internet for information, news, latest updates on technology, entertainment gossip, social networking, playing games, chatting and online purchasing. By far, internet has become the second most popular media platform of information dissipation second only to the television.

Broadcasting and marketing your services and products on the internet gives you the benefit of reaching the global audience across different geographical locations in just a click. Majority of content that you market on the internet has a larger shelf life; a broader reach and most importantly are viral in nature, triggering your overall marketing campaign to reach new heights. If you do not have online presence and offer services out of a physical location then probably it is high time you jump in the bandwagon of internet business promotion to boost your sales and enhance your market penetration.

In the next edition, we will discuss about the remaining questions. For any trade queries or marketing information visit – http://www.bd360.ca/

History and Statistical Data About FaceBook and Twitter

We are now in an age of online interactive networking and online marketing. In the digital world it is referred to as “Web 2.0”and now we are heading into the “Web 3.0” technology. You can not only target your customers using traditional forms of advertising, now you can also reached them consistently through various social media tools. These mediums are used as platforms in which to communicate a message to your target market by ensuring the relevant factors about your brand, product or service to your customer and the value it provides them with. Such mediums can also be used as a marketing measuring tool to track positive or negative feedback of the product or service that you are promoting.

By defining your goals using Social Media platforms is the first step to being successful! Here is an in-depth statistical analysis on two of the most important social media platforms you can use to successfully communicate with your Target market:

FaceBook

History of FaceBook

One of the most prominent platform for social media marketing is FaceBook. FaceBook was born in Harvard dorm room under the aegis of Mark Zukerberg and co- founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin. Since it’s launch way back in February 2004, FaceBook has come a long way and today captures a major share of social media networking site usage. FaceBook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. It facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for FaceBook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. It is one of the most-trafficked sites in the world today.

Important Statistics about FaceBook

Current statistics for FaceBook reveal that:

• More than 500 million active users
• 50% of active users log on to the site in any given day
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on FaceBook
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded on the site each month
• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month
• More than 3 million active pages
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active pages
• More than 20 million people become fans of pages each day
• More than 5.3 billion fans are created by Pages
• Average user has 130 friends
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
• Average user spends 55 minutes on FaceBook
• Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
• Average user writes 25 comments on FaceBook content each month
• Average user becomes a fan of 4 pages each month
• Average user is invited to 3 events per month
• Average user is a member of 13 groups
• More than 70 translations available on the site
• Top countries using FaceBook are US, UK, Indonesia, Turkey, France, Italy, Canada, Philippines and Mexico
• More than 100 million active users currently access FaceBook through their mobile phones

FaceBook promotion can be carried out via fan page promotions, pay per click advertising, profile promotion, contests, quizzes, giveaways, online coupons and sweepstakes. If handled by professionals, FaceBook promotion can do wonders to build your brand name and shoot up your sales. With the demographics data at your disposal, you can do a thorough trend analysis and online market survey to target age groups and locations that will give your business maximum leads and growth potential.

Twitter

History of Twitter

Initially, code named Twttr, inspired by Flickr, Twitter privately appeared in March 2006. Later, in June 2006, it was launched for public with the name Twttr.com and rebranded to Twitter.com later in October the same year. Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. It is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone/IM tool, designed to let users answer the question “What are you doing?”. Users have 140 characters for each posting (or “tweet”) to say whatever they care to say. In terms of online traffic density and visit frequency, Twitter leads the breed of social media sites.

Important Statistics about Twitter

Recent statistics for Twitter stand as follows:

• More than 175 million accounts
• Number of Twitter users increases at 300,000 everyday
• 3 Billion requests each day generated by 180 million unique visitors
• 95 million tweets per day, that gives circa 640 tweets per second
• Twitter’s search engine gets 600 million queries every day
• Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter
• 10-11pm is the most active hour on twitter
• Top languages used are english, portugese, japanese and spanish
• Top countries using twitter are US, India, Japan, Germany, UK, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Australia and Spain
• More than 70,000 applications have been created using Twitter API
• More than 67% of Twitter messages are in the form of user’s current status, private conversation and links to news and blog articles

Social media penetration with Twitter has the maximum impact. However, it is mandatory to design a proper roadmap for social media marketing using Twitter. An appealing background with dynamic images and colorful theme can help your site become cynosure of the social media frenzy online crowd. Regular tweets consisting of valuable information about business deals, product launches, special discounts, business updates, seasonal offers and other attractive plans can be marketed virally with great results via Twitter.

For more information and insight on Social media optimization using FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube and other social media sites visit – http://www.bd360.ca/web-development/digital-marketing.html