Internet marketing, SEO, SEM & Web Analytics

Internet marketing is a new discipline which seeks to take advantage the Internet to achieve the goals of an organisation's marketing plan by using a web based platform. With the modern age people are increasingly using the Internet to communicate, socialise and find information. Because of the ubiquity of the Internet it is absolutely necessary that companies include some form of Internet marketing in their marketing mix.

Internet marketing is a complex combination of technical processes and marketing processes. Marketing processes are well defined; and in opposition, Internet marketing processes are still being defined. However, it is important to view Internet marketing as a part of the overall marketing process. The goals of your Internet marketing initiative needs to be aligned with the overall marketing goals. This provides us with guidance as to what needs to be achieved by processes such as “Search Engine Optimisation”, “Web site optimisation” and “Search Engine Marketing”.

A note on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Consultancies:

Because of the complex nature and technical depth of Internet marketing these processes are often outsourced to Internet marketing consultancies. Without thorough knowledge of the the processes involved, companies place their trust in these consultancies. Consultancies may have extensive knowledge of the topic or very little knowledge. Unfortunately customers are at the mercy of such consultants because they have little knowledge on which they can judge the performance of these consultants.

The organisation's Marketing Plan

The marketing process can be summarised by the picture on the right. In large organisations these processes may be defined in great detail and may differ from this model. However, in Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) these processes are not so well defined.

Within SMEs these processes often occur more organically. The owner manager may have an instinctive feel for what products will be successful within a market and how the products need be positioned. These SMEs may even have great success with this method. Unfortunately the effect of this method when dealing with Internet marketing consultants is a poorly communicated marketing plan.

Target market, Marketing strategy and Marketing Mix

A company's marketing strategy require that the company make best use of limited resources to achieve the most significant results. Whether the company is focusing on cost leadership, product differentiation or focusing on a niche market (Porter's generic strategies) needs to be communicated through an Internet marketing campaign. For this reason it is important that an Internet marketing campaign is focused and is continually optimised to achieve the desired results.

The target market, marketing strategy and marketing mix needs to be clearly defined in order to achieve optimal results from an Internet marketing campaign. This will guide strategies used during the Internet marketing campaign. The target market may be defined by asking questions such as:

• Will the product be targeted at Companies, Government bodies or Individuals?
• What is the profile of the person or company the marketing campaign should target (age, culture, sex, marital status, location)?

Defining the target market may ensure that the correct location targeting is selected when running Google Adwords campaigns or when selecting settings on Google Webmaster tools. Knowing what the profile of prospective customers are will also help with the definition of Adwords advertisements and copywriting of the web site.

Model for using the Internet as a marketing tool

In order to achieve results with an Internet marketing campaign it is useful to define a model for organising, controlling and planning activities and measuring the performance of these activities.

The following diagram shows the main categories of visits with some examples for each category. Some of these categories have direct costs associated with it (indicated in dark red), the other categories do not have these direct costs associated with it (indicated in orange).

Web Analytics

The recorded visits start with a page called the landing page. The objective is guide visitors to pages where a sale or enquiry can be made (goal pages). Some of the important measurable aspects which indicate to the success of the web site are: bounce rate, average time on the site, pages per visit and percentage new visits. Tracking these measurements are generally referred to as Web site analytics (one product which provides one with such statistics is Google Analytics).

A tool such as Google Analytics can be used with together with Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adwords to measure the following aspects:

• Sources of visits
• Top landing pages
• Top keywords
• Number of conversions

Seach Engine Optimisation
(increase organic web site visits)

Search engine optimisation is the organised effort to increase the rankings of a web site in organic search results and to increase the number of visits to the web site. Activities which include increasing the relevance of content on the web site and removing indexing barriers for search engines is part of the process of Search engine optimisation.

Search engine optimization is often misunderstood, it is surrounded by a cloud of mystery because search engines such as Google and Yahoo do not make their methods of ranking pages known. SEO methods should be based on general best practices which are encouraged by search engines such as Google.

Advertising Optimisation
(increase paid web site visits, decrease cost of visits)

Advertising optimisation refers to the activities which increases the effectiveness and number of visits due to advertising efforts of pay per click campaigns (search engine advertising). The old adage is: “if you through enough money at a problem it will go away”. Unfortunately everybody do not have unlimited resourses; so this approach will not be possible in all cases.

The objective of advertising optimisation is to increase the number of visits, but at the same time the to obtain these visits at the lowest cost as possible. These optmisation efforts includes measuring the effectiveness of each phrase or keyword and determining the which keywords provides the best results.

Web site Optimisation
(increase the number of conversions of web site visits)

Tools such Web Site Optimizer can be used to test the effectiveness of different versions of the same page to achieve the desired results. By optimising the a web site it is possible to achieve lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates (the main measurements applying to web site optimisation).

An effective copywriting and corporate identity effort could have a significant impact on the effectiveness of a web page; this will directly on impact the number of conversions. Because of the interdependent nature of all these optimisation activities, it is important to be mindful of the fact that web site optimisation may be impacted by the quality of advertising visits and organic search result visits.