Pages on website

Aside from pages - home, about, contact , your website can have a wide variety of other pages –

again, depending on your type of business and what you need from your website.

Here are some suggested additions.

1. Products. It is useful to have a dedicated page that explains your products or

services in more elaborate terms. A restaurant can display its menu, a service

provider can outline its services and additional features, while a product seller

can list the types, variations and features of their products. If your product

or service is very complex, or if you have many products, consider creating

one page that lists all your offerings and a separate page for each individual product

 

2. Blog. If you have the time and energy to run a blog (see module 7 for more

 

on this), this is a good addition to any website. A blog is an online journal

where you can post short, regular articles on your topic of expertise. This is

a great way to demonstrate your knowledge, provide useful content for your

customers and improve your search engine ranking (you will learn all about SEO

in module 6) – not to mention a way of opening a channel of communication

with your target market to interact with you. A blog is also a good place

to announce the latest news and press releases for your organisation. Be

aware that a blog requires a lot of work and maintenance, and that a poorly

maintained blog can do more harm than good. Ensure that you have the

time and resources to create at least one post every two weeks, and more if possible.

3. Custom error page. If somebody types in the incorrect web address for one of

 

your pages, they will get a “404” error message.

 

If you have a sitemap, you can include a link to it. The most important thing

is that your customer should not leave your website just because of a small

mistake or typo. Your web developer will be able to create a custom error

page for you.

 

 

Visual aspects of your website

Once you have planned out the overall holistic aspects of your website, you can

begin thinking about the way that it actually looks and behaves. Be careful not to

get too carried away by the potential of what you can include on your page – start

simply, and you can always grow the content from there. In addition, remember

that your website is for your customers and visitors, not for you – don’t add

elements just because you like them; your primary consideration should be if they

add any value to your target market. The “keep it simple” rule applies here.

Design considerations

 

Your website is a public face for your business and its design should therefore be

treated with considerable care and consideration. One of the first steps you should

take is to research your competitors’ pages to get a general feel for what your

industry’s standards and expectations are. Also have a look at pages of companies

in related industries for ideas. Be sure that any design you choose is appropriate

for your type of business. For example, here are four websites for legal practices.

All four pages have a very conservative design and favour black, white and shades

of grey over bright colours. This is in line with the professional and serious image

that legal professionals aim to portray to their customers.

This also speaks to the target market, which is a related and important point. While

it may seem like a good idea to create a website that is radically different from

your competitors’, so that you stand out, this tactic is likely to backfire unless

you have done some extensive research. This is because your target market has

already defined the standards for your industry and has certain set expectations. A

lawyer’s website filled with brightly coloured animations and an unusual layout will

be dismissed as untrustworthy, regardless of the actual content and reputation.

However, you can still come across as professional and trustworthy by doing

something different, within these parameters.

Another important consideration is that your website must fit in with your overall

corporate identity (your company’s logo, colours and print designs). Creating a

holistic and uniform brand image is vital and your website – as an integral part

of your strategy – must fit in with your other marketing communications. Your

designer will be able to advise you on adapting your corporate identity for the

web, since this involves considerations like using web-safe colours and fonts

Web design

Web design is the process of planning and creating the way your website will look

and feel. It is the first part of creating your website and is the stage where you

can implement your creative ideas, branding and visual appeal.

4.1 Planning

As with any marketing strategy or project, thorough initial planning is essential.

Planning a website involves considering its role in your business plan and allocating

sufficient resources to the development and upkeep of the page. At the planning

stage, answer the following important questions.

1. What is the purpose of your website? Try to summarise your goals and

objectives in two sentences, and let this definition inform every stage of the development process.

Our website should be easy to find for people looking for gardening services

in the Cape Town area. Visitors should request a quote and contact us by email.

We want our website to rank high in search results and draw traffic to our

active Facebook Page. We also want to generate prospective leads with
our email newsletter subscription.

Our website must provide useful content for people in the book publishing

field. We want to entrench our position as the leading book publishers in our genre.

2. What do you need on your website? Make a list of all the tools and functions

that are essential for your website, and be strict with yourself not to include

unnecessary extras. This list is important because if your project goes over

budget, you will know which elements are not negotiable, and which can

safely be cut. In strictest terms, the only essential aspects of a website are

the home, about and contact pages, a navigation bar and your corporate

branding; however, this would make for a bland site. Let your website’s purpose guide you.

3. What do you want on your website? Once you have noted the essentials,

think of the other useful elements that it would be good to have on your

website. Again, be careful not to add frivolous and excessive details. Some useful additions include:

 

• A contact form that your customers can fill out, so that you can get their

contact details along with their permission to send them emails.

• One-click sharing on your content so that readers can instantly post your

content to their Facebook, Twitter and other profiles.

• An automated feedback form for complaints and queries.

4. How much control do you want over managing the website? Do you want to

be able to do everything yourself, or would you prefer for your developer or

IT department to manage your page and update your content? In addition,

consider how often the content will change: if you post a blog article every

day, it is easier and quicker to manage the website in-house, but if the content

is relatively static, you can safely leave your developer to manage it.

 

 

 

Your website is the centre of your strategy

 

What makes a website so important for marketing? Why is it the central element

of any online marketing strategy? Here are a few reasons:

You control the page. A website is a place where you can express your brand

and marketing message fully, in whatever way you want. You are generally

not constrained by anything except your imagination and budget. It is also

the definitive source for accurate facts and information about your business

and products.

• It is a powerful tool. A website is not just an information page: it can be a

powerful marketing and business tool. For example, if you analyse the data

on who visits your page, you can get a good idea of who is interested in your

offering (you will learn about web analytics in chapter 8). You can include an

online store, a community and other features too. You can also customise

your website to reflect exactly what your target market is looking for.

• All roads lead to your website. As you will see in the mind map below, your

website is the hub that all your other marketing strategies lead to. In effect,

it is the final destination for every aspect of your online campaign.

• You are expected to have one. If a customer can’t find you at www.yourbrand.

co.za, they are unlikely to expend any more effort to find you. Today’s

connected audience takes it for granted that your have a slick website with

all the requisite information. Gone are the days of leafing through the Yellow

Pages (unless it’s online); you need a website that is easy to find and even

easier to navigate

It is your brand’s online home. Your website is the one part of the web that

is completely devoted to your brand and marketing message. It serves as a

reference point for customers, fellow businesses and even your own staff.

Not only do you provide content, you can also use it as a point of sale, a

social community and a message board.

• It is stable. While your social networking pages, advertising campaigns, email

newsletters and so on will change, your website will always remain in the

same place (at the same web address). This is extremely important on the

ever-changing web, especially for links that lead to your content.

Think of your website as the online equivalent of your physical office. When clients

visit your office, they expect certain services and features to be in place. The

same principles can be applied to your website.

  

Marketing tactics in unison

 

 

Imagine the following marketing journey online:

You are a book publisher and you are releasing a book by a new author. A potential

customer searches Google for her favourite genre and sees the sponsored advert

announcing the book launch. She clicks it to access the information, which takes

her to a microsite created especially for the launch, primed with keywords. The

page displays a link to your Twitter feed and another link that allows her to read

a sample chapter if she fills in her name and email address.

Curious about the book, she submits her details and immediately likes the material.

She writes about it in her own Twitter feed, cross-posting it on her Facebook

profile, including your UR L and Twitter username. Her friends immediately follow

the link, and some enter their details. One of them says he will attend the book

launch, and another pre-orders the book on Kalahari.net. Using your web analytics

tools, you are able to track how many people respond to her posting, and where

– and how – they engage.

She isn’t sure about the book herself and sends a question to your Twitter profile.

You and the author both respond within ten minutes, sparking a conversation

between you and another of her friends. Because she is engaging with you,

you decide to offer her 20% off the ebook version that she can read on her

smartphone. A few weeks later, you email her and her friends some bonus video

content that relates to the book, and let them know about another author whose

writing they may enjoy.

Does this sound like the kind of engagement you would like to have with your

customers? When you integrate all of the strategies in this course into a holistic

marketing plan, results like these are not only possible, they’re easy.

Online equivalents of traditional techniques

 

Physical office > website. Think of your website as the public face of your

company. Where before customers would visit or phone your office to find out

about your products or to make business arrangements, this can now all be

done on the official website. A website can offer additional features, like useful

resources, online shopping and customer support.

 

• Direct postal mail > email. Email is the targeted, personalised equivalent of

traditional posted direct mail. It has several advantages. Firstly, it is much

easier for the client to act on the information if you include a link or a fill-in

form for a competition. Secondly, it is easy for the customer to opt out of

the advertising, making it less intrusive – or they can share it further if they

find the content useful. Thirdly, it is much easier to construct a specifically

targeted list online, due to the wide availability of demographic information.

And finally, email marketing is cheaper and quicker, since there is no printing

or posting involved – which also makes following up and answering questions

easy.

 

 • Traditional advertising > online advertising. Print, radio and television

advertising usually requires a large investment upfront for creation, and a

second large sum for placement. Online advertising carries a much lower risk,

since it can be fully controlled, changed, retracted and modified at any time.

The more targeted the advert, the more likely you are to generate qualified

leads and higher returns.

 

 

• Surveys, polls and market research > web analytics. The traditional way of

measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign was to take survey and

polls of consumers and to measure the effect on the company’s income; both

quite blunt and subjective measures. Web analytics are very different – they

allow absolute and precise measurement of every activity that your marketing

material is involved in, giving you the best picture of what works.

 

Traditional PR > web PR. Traditional PR usually happens behind closed doors,

as individual problems and complaints can be dealt with in private, or on the

large scale, through impersonal broadcast media. On the web, PR takes on an

entirely different dimension, because anyone can read what others are saying

about your company. If the message is bad, a substantial crisis can occur.

Brand management and PR are incredibly important on the web, because even

one dissident voice can have a marked effect.

• Word of mouth > viral. Traditional marketing relies heavily on word of mouth

to spread slogans, brand names and recommendations, and the web is no

different. However, online word of mouth has the tendency to spread virally,

as each agent is linked to exponentially increasing numbers of people down the

line. If every Facebook user has an average of 100 friends, then every profile

is just two steps away from 1 million others. Figures of this scale indicate just

why ideas can spread virally on the web.

 
 

Online Presence

Why you need to be online

1. Your market and competitors are already there. If you market and sell products

or services to a middle-class clientele, you need to extend your strategy to

include the internet.

2. Web users expect the highest convenience and information at their fingertips.

All companies need a website as their central point of contact. If your details

don’t come up in a web search, you will be ignored.

3. Customers are fickle. They will not expend a lot of energy to find you online.

Even worse, if your competitor is easy to find online, your potential customers

will happily turn to them.

4. Since South Africans are using, socialising and buying on the web – and

especially because current advertising spend is still very low – now is an

excellent time to move your marketing into the online sphere and capitalise

on a new and connected audience.

5. Audiences want to interact with and converse about your brand and products.

Give them the opportunity to do it in a mediated space, and become part of

the discussion.

6. Online marketing is almost always cheaper and more targeted than traditional.

You can reach the best customers at the lowest price.

When done smartly, your online marketing plan will integrate seamlessly with your

traditional tactics, won’t cost a fortune and will expose you to a market that you

had previously been invisible to.

Why you need to educate yourself

 

Despite its seeming ease and accessibility, internet marketing is not something

that just anyone can do without formal training. The online space is full of cultural,

legal and financial pitfalls. Traditional strategies don’t translate directly onto the

web. Customers have different and challenging expectations. The way that you

spend money and schedule your campaigns works very differently. And with the

plethora of new developments, tools, protocols, strategies and approaches, it is

impossible to keep up with everything on one’s own. Keeping yourself educated

and informed is the only way to ensure that you stay relevant and innovative.

There are two parts to this: first, learning the basics and the principles of the field,

and second, keeping up with new developments.  

Internet marketing today

 

Throughout its history, the internet has reinvented itself many times – and

the changes are far from over. The current web is dominated by socialising,

cooperation, sharing and personal entertainment. It is a space both for work and

play – an essential tool for virtually every business and the go-to repository for

all forms of media culture products. People of all ages are spending more and

more time online, and are turning to the internet for better services, convenience

and life-enhancing tools: just consider how people use online shopping, online

banking, web communities that cross all boundaries, instant news and updates,

social networks and chat, self-expression and any of the dozens of other things

that the web makes possible. 2010 was the first year where online advertising

spend overtook the amount of money spent on newspaper advertising in the

USA. It was the same year that online readership overtook traditional newspaper

readership, which illustrates just how large an impact the internet has had on the

marketing and advertising industry

Global trends

The internet marketing field hasn’t stood still. Here are some of the current trends:

 

• Social media marketing. Whether it is a fad or here to stay, social media has

made an indelible mark on the web landscape and, concurrently, on marketing

tactics. Social media marketing involves using peer recommendations, sharing,

building brand personality and addressing the market as a heterogeneous

group of individuals. It also uniquely encourages customers to create content

and buzz around a product themselves.

 

• Viral marketing. This form of marketing involves the exponential spread of a

marketing message by online word of mouth (sometimes referred to a “word

of mouse”). A major component of viral communication is the meme – a

message that spreads virally and embeds itself in the collective consciousness

(“Don’t touch me on my studio” is a recent South African example). Viral

marketing is closely tied to social media, since social media platforms and

their sharing functionality are the main way that a message is able to “go

viral” online. Keep in mind, however, that viral marketing does not make a

holistic online marketing campaign and should be just one of many tools used

to create awareness and encourage interaction.

 

• Brand as product. More than ever before, brands are creating personas and

identities around themselves rather than the products they sell. The online

space allows customers to interact and converse with the brand personally

and directly.

• Ad fatigue. Web users have become very familiar with online advertising and

have learned to tune it out – or have even installed programs like AdBlock

Plus to block it altogether. Marketers today have to think of very innovative

and eye-catching strategies to entice wary viewers.

 

• Targeting. Virtually all online advertising is targeted to reach specific readers.

Unlike the broad-strokes targeting done in traditional marketing (placing an

advert in a relevant magazine, for example), web targeting can be extremely

precise. With the immense amount of personal and usage data currently

available, targeting can be done automatically and extremely successfully.

 

• Golden oldies. Despite all the exciting new strategies, email and website

marketing remain among the most useful and effective techniques. These

strategies do, of course, use new tools and tactics (like advanced tracking,

integration with social networks and customer-generated content), but their

essence stays the same.