Introduction to E-marketing

By on February 20th, 2012

Marketing Your Web Site: Attracting Your Target Audience
Michael Liimatta, Director of Education, AGRM

 

Introduction

  • E-marketing is not simply getting lots of visitors, it is attracting your target audience(s)
  • E-marketing is most effective when a variety of methods are used
  • E-marketing efforts must be monitored for best results.

Why users return to the their favorite web sites

  • High Quality Contest – 75%
  • Easy to Use – 66%
  • Quick Download Time 58%
  • Frequent Updates – 54%

 

Design Strategies

  • Who is the site for? What sort of content/experience do they want?
  • Why would they want to visit our web site? Why would they want to come back again?”
  • What do we expect from the site? How will we know it’s effective?

 

Content Attracts Visitors

  • Avoid “online brochures”
  • Keep links current
  • Make sure users can contact you
  • Make sure “someone is minding the store” by giving a staff person the job of updating and monitoring the   web site.

Avoid These Mistakes

  • Static “online brochures”
  • Outdated Content
  • Dead Links
  • Difficult navigation schemes
  • Unattractive design
  • Extremely long download times

 

What is a Search Engine?

  • Have automated programs (“spiders”) that follow links to index sites and score pages based on proprietary guidelines.
  • There is no human judgment involved.
  • Text of web pages is indexed so when a user enters a search query, the search engine scans its database for pages that provide the best match.
  • We can expedite the process by submitting URLs to the search engines.

 

Meta Tags

  • Proper use of HTML meta tags is the key to creating web sites that can be found by Internet users.
  • Coding that is embedded in a web page’s HTML but is not visible through a web browser.
  • Provide search engines, like AltaVista, Yahoo, and Excite, with data that is essential for effective indexing of web sites.

 

 

Most Important Meta Tags

  • TITLE of the page
  • DESCRIPTION of the page (or entire site if they are on the home page)
  • KEYWORDS are used to assist search engine to properly index the page.

 

Meta Tag Example

<html>

<head>

<title>KCPhilanthroNET | Job Source</title>

<meta name=”DESCRIPTION” content=”Online database listing career opportunities with local nonprofit organizations – sponsored by the Greater Kansas City Council on Philanthropy.”>

<meta name=”KEYWORDS” content=”Kansas, City, Missouri, nonprofit, organizations, organization, careers, jobs, job, Director, director, Executive, Development, development, manager, administrator, Coordinator”>

</head>

 

How Long to Get Listed?

  • Altavista         1 – 2 weeks
  • Excite, Lycos   4 weeks
  • HotBot   2 weeks
  • Google   4 – 6 weeks
  • Infoseek-Go 6 – 8 weeks
  • Northern Light     2 – 4 weeks
  • Webcrawler       3 months

 

What is a Directory?

  • Human editors review web pages and organize them into categories with brief descriptions. (Yahoo, LookSmart, DMOZ)
  • A keyword search will only look for matches in the descriptions, so carefully describe your site when submitting it.
  • While good content is necessary for search engines, both good content AND visual appeal are mandatory in human-edited directories.

 


Reciprocal Linking

  • Search the web for sites with topics related to your own using search engines and directories.
  • Contact the site owner personally to ask for a link to your site.
  • They are more likely to do so if you add a link to their web site from yours.
  • Follow up on linking requests

 

Effective Banner Ads

  • Paid Ads —   industry average click-through ratio around 0.4%. Compares to rate for direct 1.0% – 1.5% mail
  • Link Exchanges — Display banner ads on your site to earn displays on other web sites.
  • Targeted — find sites that match audience
  • Reach — Expose the greatest number of users to the banners
  • Creative Quality – Start out with several different banners and pull the least effective out of rotation after 1-2 weeks.
  • Creative Variety – To maximize clickthroughs, rotate banners often, since the rates goes down steadily the longer the banner is up.

 

E-mail Marketing

  • Opt-in only (with opt-out clear)
  • Collect visitors e-mail addresses on the web site.
  • Use off-line response devices to give constituents an opportunity to receive updates via e-mail

 

Evaluating E-Marketing

  • Of all media, web sites are probably the easiest to track.
  • Effective monitoring helps in decisions related to content and design.
  • Good feedback allows you to focus on the strategies that are working best.
  • Evaluation Methods
  • User Feedback
  • Search Engine Rankings
  • Web server log reports
  • “Real World” results — gifts, registrations, memberships, etc.

 

Summary – Successful Sites

  • Utilize an E-marketing strategy
  • Are designed effectively and include Meta Tags
  • Include good content that is updated regularly
  • Are E-marketed using a mix of tools
  • Are evaluated to measure success

 

Web Marketing Resources

 

written   04/21/2001

Categorized under: Nonprofit Management.
Tagged with: no tags.

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