Building a Successful Web Presence
Considering the increasingly more business opportunities on the Internet and the new technologies of communication, it is essential for any company to be represented online. Any serious business man understands the Internet as a dynamic media tool. Having a website proves that your company is open towards future, that you accept the change and you are ready for any challenge, without being afraid of the competition.
Online branding involves the user’s experience in contact with the online presence of a brand. This experience is determined by three categories of activity:
ü Creating the online presence (the development strategy, choosing a domain name, the graphic appearance design, information structure, conceiving the content, functionality, errors management, etc);
ü To maintain and develop further the online presence (website’s update, public relations management, traffic reports analysis);
ü To develop online promotions (search engine optimization, banners campaign, email marketing, viral marketing).
The first question you should ask when we start a web site is: “Why do I make this website?” Many companies make the mistake of asking “How” prior to wonder “Why”. By asking “How”, you will have a good website with a wrong direction. Your site is just another communication channel. Just as in print, TV ads or outdoor, the website represents your message and image on the Internet. Consequently, it shouldn’t be perceived differently than offline communication channels. It is just a part of the company’s marketing strategy. Once you have a marketing strategy for the whole business, asking “Why” regarding your website is like asking the same question for any other environment of communication or research.
If you are not happy with the answers you have found, you should contact online marketing agency. Considering that this phase is the most important one in creating a website, you should pay more attention to the web marketing strategy planning.
Once you know why to create a website, you must establish some specific goals. If the “WHY” consists in: “To bring customers in the showroom”, then a possible goal could be “To bring 500 new clients per month in the showroom”. As you probably noticed, this goal is measured. If you don’t choose some measurable goals, you will not know if you’ve reached them or not. So a goal must necessarily be measurable.
How to achieve your goals
You know how to build a website and you have some measurable goals. How can you reach them? The main facts you have to consider is an easy navigation through the website, high-quality text, suggestive advertisements and feedback from clients.
While you are focused on developing the best possible website, don’t forget to monitor the progress. Maybe that new feature you’re implementing is very interesting and requires all your energy, but does it have the expected results? Does it really help you to achieve your goals? You can answer to these questions only if you monitories the progress.
Start by establishing some milestones along the road and check if you are able to reach them. If the campaign you have just finished has no results, don’t give up. Adjust the approach and take it from the beginning. If you do not have enough visitors to your site, try to figure it out why and do something about. Maybe you’re not promoting the website enough or maybe you’re not promoting it in the right place. In any case, you can’t really know what the problem is if you don’t monitories the progress.
Many companies don’t know what resources they need to develop a website. The required resources usually involve time, money and people. This is also available in reaching your goals. You should first decide where you want to go, how to get there and what the available resources are.
Remember that the website is just a tool that allows people and companies to be present on the internet! It is a mean, and not a purpose. But what are the benefits of developing a strategic web presence planning?
ü The business presence in a dynamic environment, with a large audience, at small fees’
ü To maintain/ improve the relation with current customers;
ü To gain new customers;
ü To ensure fast access to complete and well structured information about company and offers;
ü To increase the company’s development potential;
ü To save time;
ü To save resources and money;
ü Online promotions and advertising campaigns are less expensive than any other advertising techniques;
ü Making online transactions, which require less time and effort;
ü Improving the company’s image.
A website doesn’t inform the audience about your business, the content does it. A website doesn’t communicate with the clients of a company; the emails sent by employees do this. A website doesn’t bring increased value to customers; the online services offered by the company do it. A web site does not allow companies to benefit from the extraordinary power of the Internet; this can be achieved only when the web presence was established strategically.
The strategy
The strategy is a long term plan, developed to achieve a specific goal. What does this actually mean? The strategy is the idea, the concept that will indicate you the right direction. For example, a company’s strategy can be a niche leader. Your online strategy may provide the most complete services on the web. Or it can offer more information about products than your competition does.
Most companies that offer online marketing strategies actually offer only tactics, techniques and short-term actions.
Tactics
The tactics refer to the methods used to develop a strategy. The strategy is the general plan. In online marketing, tactics could consist in determining customers to come back, through newsletters, articles publication to provide maximum information, the use of contextual advertising, etc…
What is important to remember is that tactics depend on strategy. In this case it becomes clear how important it is to have first a clear strategy and then to move to implementation. You do this in all your projects. The online environment shouldn’t be an exception.
Marketing is the engine of today’s business. A well-done marketing strategy will bring your company in the top. Therefore, it is important that a marketing strategy to be qualitative, because it makes the difference between success and failure. Take into account the following attributes that will increase the value of your presence in the online environment:
ü Coherency. The marketing strategy should be coherent regarding the company’s values and possibilities.
ü Flexibility. Even if the strategy involves a long term plan, some flexibility is still needed. If your plan is to dominate a certain niche, and even to get there, but suddenly the niche becomes significantly smaller, you need to re-evaluate the strategy. If you will to achieve a certain goal and discover that the goal wasn’t exactly the desired one, the flexibility is required. So the best thing you can do is to make a step back sometimes and to overview the entire situation. If your purpose doesn’t meet anymore the market’s requirements, then you should change direction.
ü Sustainability. When you create a strategic web presence planning for your company, it is important to reach a certain balance. The balance between willing to achieve a top position on the market and the available resources must be moderate. A sustainable strategy can be support tactically in time. It is better to choose a strategy that you can support to an end, than a strategy that you can support only on a short term.
If you realize that you can’t reach a top position on your market, you should choose at least a niche that allows you to be leaders. It is much better to manage to sustain a top position on the niche than to give up in the middle of the trip on a general market.
These are the most important attributes of a successful strategic web presence planning. It is important to consider them when conceiving your online marketing strategy, in order to increase the changes to achieve your goals.
- By Andra Picincu | AssociatedContent
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