The StyleSheet - For businesses that use the internet

E-Marketing: What Is It & How Can It Benefit Your Company?

Posted December 5, 2007 By Jean Conover |

According to Wikipedia, e-marketing is simply the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Since the inception of the Internet, marketing professionals and Web-savvy companies have been finding more and more effective ways to reach their customers and clients online.

The benefits of e-marketing include instant delivery of information, distribution of media at a much lower cost than traditional print methods, and the ability to reach global audiences. To clarify the term a bit more, I have reviewed three popular ways of e-marketing that our clients are using today:

E-mail Marketing

 Here at TradeMark Media, we have noticed that email marketing is gaining increasing popularity among our clients. The StyleSheet is our own email marketing piece for our customers and colleagues, and it’s a great way for us to stay connected with clients. I recently heard Joshua Baer speak about effective email campaigns in a “Web 2.0 World.” Here are a few of the old “Web 1.0” and new “Web 2.0” techniques for email marketing he compared:

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
Sending an email campaign at the same time each month.	Sending an email campaign on a client’s birthday or milestone event.
Sending the same exact campaign to all of your clients.	Surveying clients to determine their needs or interest and then sending targeted campaigns with tailored, relevant information or offers.
Emailing leads once or twice before writing them off as a dead lead if there is no reply.	Emailing leads, then checking the reports on campaigns to see who is clicking on and reading them. A lead you might have written off as not interested might be more engaged than you think. If someone is reading all of your email marketing efforts, it might be time to give them another call!

Affiliate Marketing

Many of our clients and colleagues participate in affiliate marketing. This type of e-marketing occurs when businesses link to each other’s Web sites or feature each other in some way on their sites. Many of our clients list their sponsors, donors and affiliates on their sites as a way to give them recognition. By placing a company’s logo that links to its home page on your Web site, it gives that company visibility and credibility as a trusted business in the community.

At TradeMark, we often add a small link to our site at the bottom Web site pages we develop. This is a great way to promote the work we do, and we have had many calls from people who have seen our name attached to a site they like and therefore want work with us to develop their sites too.

Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is beginning to intrigue more and more businesses each year. We at TradeMark Media have talked a lot about starting our own blog and how that would work. Blogs differ from a Web site because they feature daily or weekly posts and usually focus on one topic. Typically, companies use blogs to create a dialogue with customers and explain features of their products and services.

While blogs can be a fantastic resource for building credibility as an expert in your field, they can also be a dangerous tool if not used properly. The Whole Foods blogging scandal is a recent example of blog marketing gone wrong. Because blogging encourages open dialogue, you should be ready to receive positive and negative comments about your company from readers. There should always be a real reason for the blogs that you post, and the writer should be clearly identified. He or she needs to understand that both clients and critics may be reading the content.

If your business is considering blogging as a new e-marketing practice, I recommend extensive research first and seeking some expert advice. A great (local) resource on the topic is John Moore of BrandAutopsy.

These three e-marketing tools are by no means the only ones out there. Every day, marketing professionals and executives are discovering new ways to use the Internet to promote their businesses, build their brands and sell their products. I might be biased, but I believe the first step in successfully marketing your business online is to begin with a professional, easy-to-navigate, well-designed Web site.

What e-marketing tools will you use to help build your business online?

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5 Responses to “E-Marketing: What Is It & How Can It Benefit Your Company?”

1. Posted December 6th, 2007 at 2:41 pm, by Bill Leake

   Hi Jean:

   Thanks for your piece. We think highly of you folks, and are in your broader “partner ecosystem” I think.

   Anyway, what I didn’t see there that I expected were what are often the two most powerful e-marketing tools, the world of Paid Search (aka pay per click or Google Adwords) and Natural Search (aka Organic Search or SEO).

   Definitely blog marketing is needed, and the house list (email marketing/ecrm) is key, but for initial customer / traffic acquisition, oftentimes search can’t be beat.

   Keep up the postings — it’s great to get this content out there.

   Bill Leake
   Apogee Search Engine Marketing services

2. Posted December 6th, 2007 at 5:02 pm, by Jean Conover

   Hi Bill,

   Thanks for your comments and the work you do in this field! I would agree with you that both Paid and Organic Search are definitely powerful e-marketing tools. I thought about including those in this article too, but I feel like they might deserve an article of their own!

   We have definitely seen a continual increase in the amount of our clients who are interested in Search Engine Optimization. Stay tuned for more on this topic in upcoming StyleSheets!

   Best Regards, Jean.

3. Posted June 23rd, 2009 at 7:55 am, by Small Business Forum

   This blog is a great resource for small business who want to actively market their business. Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

4. Posted July 24th, 2009 at 5:24 am, by Small Business Forum

   Thanks for the marketing information, it was very helpful!

5. Posted July 25th, 2009 at 5:09 am, by Small Business Forum

   Thanks for the post I enjoyed it

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