Online Business Strategies

The media and consumers are moving into the digital world at a dizzying pace.

For the media, this means offering their content in digital form, whether that content originally was in print, on TV or on the radio. All media outlets, especially local media, need to get better at monetizing the digital expressions of their core properties. (Translation: They need to make money online.) Marketers who depend on those local media need to grasp this concept.

The media’s expansion of effort – and the resulting ad dollars – beyond their traditional business models is not a short-term fix for currently declining revenues. Instead, it’s a long-term strategy that could be required for survival.

Why? Because the trend toward online has reached a tipping point. Consumers are moving away from traditional advertising-supported media.

“In 2008 consumers will spend more on media than advertisers,” according to James Rutherford, managing director of private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson.

What are they spending it on? Consider your own outlays for cable or satellite television and radio, music downloads and entertainment media such as video games. Projections say the average American consumer will spend more than $1,000 a year on media by 2012.

In this sea of digital change, there is good news for local media companies. Consider a study of U.S. online consumers done by the Online Publishers Association.

The OPA study gauged consumer activities and attitudes toward local-content Web sites. The type of sites tracked included city guides such as City Search; classified advertising sites like Cars.com and Craigslist; local newspaper, radio, television and magazine sites; local channels of national portals; yellow pages directories and user-review sites such as Angie’s List.

Consumers were very satisfied with the local coverage provided overall.

Portals, local newspaper and local TV station sites led the list. Ads placed on local newspaper and TV sites were rated most trustworthy. In fact, local newspaper sites outranked user-review sites by 19 percent in trust for local advertisers.

Visitors to local media sites do more than look; they take action. When asked whether they buy, research or visit a store as a result of Web surfing, they ranked local newspaper, television station and magazine sites as their top motivators. Almost half of all local newspaper site visitors are taking further action after viewing online ads.

Local site users like to buy
Local media sites also perform strongest with the heaviest spenders. Almost half of local magazine site visitors spent more than $500 online in the past 12 months.

So what types of businesses are consumers looking for when going to local sites? Restaurants and bars lead the list. Grocery stores, banks and financial services, department stores and physicians and health facilities round out the top five.

Consumer electronics stores, auto dealers and auto service, real estate, furniture and appliance stores and legal services complete the top 10 sites.

Marketers and agencies must accept the new media reality and understand the options available to communicate with their customers. It may sound ironic, but while the World Wide Web helps us think globally, it allows us to act locally.

Jeff Cornwall is director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship and the Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship. He writes a column exclusively for The Tennessean every other Sunday on issues facing new business owners and would-be owners.

By JEFF CORNWALL

If you are a business owner, operator or manager in the 21^st century, you likely have come to realize the necessity of the Internet and World Wide Web as part of your overall marketing and promotions campaign for your business enterprise.  To this end, it is important for your business to adapt and adopt only the best Internet marketing strategies.  With that said, you may now know exactly where to turn when it comes to finding and implementing the best Internet marketing strategies.  Through this article, you will be provided with some basic information about how to find and implement the best Internet marketing strategies. 

In developing the best Internet marketing strategies, there are some facts and factors that you need to keep in mind.  Through this article, you are presented with some of the facts and factors relating to the best Internet marketing strategies that are important for you to keep in mind.

First of all, when it comes to developing the best Internet marketing strategies, you may want to seek professional assistance.  When it comes to developing what truly are the best Internet marketing strategies, you likely cannot do this on your own.  You really do need to find an Internet marketing consultant that can assist you and your business in creating a marketing program that includes the very best Internet marketing strategies available today.

Second, when it comes to developing and implementing the best Internet marketing strategies, you will want to make certain that you budget accordingly.  Unfortunately, many business enterprises end up skimping when it comes to their marketing and promotional budgets.  There are business owners, operators or managers that simply consider marketing issues as something of a budgetary afterthought.  But, if you want to implement the best Internet marketing strategies, you will want to make sure that marketing, promotions and advertising are and remain budgetary priorities.

Finally, in search for the best Internet marketing strategies, take the time to consider what your competitors are doing in the way of advertising.  Because you will be meeting these enterprises head on in the marketing war, you will want to determine what they are doing.  When it comes to the best Internet marketing strategies, these strategies oftentimes and necessarily takes into consideration what competitors are doing in the way of marketing, advertising and promotions at this point in time.

When conducting SEO on your sites there are two main methods to
classify:
· On-Page SEO
· Off-Page SEO
On-Page can be described as anything you do to your own site in order to
try and improve your SE rankings.
Off-Page is anything you do external of your own site (e.g. building links,
submitting articles) to improve your rankings.
Truth be told 80% of all your SEO results will come through Off-Page
SEO, so likewise, 80% of your time should be spent doing Off-Page
SEO.

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

8. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles. 

The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the  information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.

Understanding Your Target Customer

If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

Does your website give enough contact information?

When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.