If your website was designed and developed by Louisville Web Group, you have a great website! Now you are presented with another challenge: marketing it.
Not very long ago, if you wanted to market your business or products, you either put up a billboard, ran a radio or television schedule, bought a mailing list or ran an ad in the newspaper. One of these could be counted on to generate some action. And while those mediums are stil alive, they certainly are not "well" thanks to the massive impact of the Internet. But some of these mediums represent good solutions, but only in a supporting role.
According to the International News Media Association (INMA), your website is the star of your show, but there is a powerful synergy when you use broadcast to help direct customers to your website. According to Joan Fitzgerald, vice president of television sales / business development at comScore, new media and devices mean more opportunities but how do we measure impact across TV, Internet and mobile? Fitzgerald said comScore used several sources of data, including TV, set-top-box data, site visitation data, online exposures and a multi-screen test panel.
Researchers began with four hypotheses:
- Combined impact of TV and Internet advertising exposure is greater than either one alone.
- Impact of exposure would be greater in a target-specific consumer group than in the general consumer pool.
- The closer the timing of the exposure, the greater the impact.
- An equivalency measure should be possible. In other words, an equivalent number of Internet ads that equals the impact of a 30-second TV ad.
Among their conclusions:
- There was a synergistic interaction between TV and Internet, and the overall impact was indeed more than the sum of its parts.
- The target-specific group responded better than the general pool
So what that tells us is that a media mix, with your website as the anchor point, will produce more and better results than with either medium alone. But television isnt the only tool website owners can employ to strengthen the overall return on investment.
Options include:
- Display Advertising – The use of banner ads and other graphical advertisements to market products online.
- Search Engine Marketing – Using search engines to help connect users with the products and services they are most interested in. Companies can pay to receive preferential ranking in a list of search results.
- Search Engine Optimization – A free and organic way for companies to improve their visibility on search engines.
- Social Media Marketing – Using sites like Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers.
- Email Marketing – Communicating with customers through the use of carefully designed emails.
- Referral Marketing – Using internet channels to encourage consumers to recommend products to their friends and families.
- Affiliate Marketing – Working with other businesses to make it easier for consumers to shop for products online.
- Inbound Marketing – Boosting the value of a company's web presence by adding unique content like blogs, games, and tutorial videos.
- Video Marketing – Using web videos for promotional purposes.
LWEBG works with clients to determine how best to employ other mediums in order to generate additional web traffic, online sales and actual store traffic.
