Online Marketing Fundamentals

By Sharon Swendner, the President of .Com Marketing

Today, many people believe that marketers have one of two personalities - analytical or creative. This is true and actually rarely is a marketer ever both. With traditional advertising and marketing, launching a creative campaign can be just as successful as launching an analytical campaign. However, with today's digital online marketing, creatively approaching advertising and marketing can sometimes adversely influence the profit and return on investment.

New online marketing techniques are the most measurable and accountable forms in history. Marketing online provides real-time tracking that can give online marketing companies the edge to react fast when sales begin to flatten. In today's economic environment, it is more essential than ever to insure you are executing against the fundamental, proven off and online marketing tactics that deliver results. Find out what those fundamentals are and how to prioritize your scarce resources so you insure you obtain the highest return possible based on your product lifecycle and marketing communication needs.

The measurability and accountability of online marketing also offers a strong framework for calculating the overall effectiveness of dollars spent marketing online and for aligning the spending with tactics that are in alignment with the product or campaign goals be they awareness and reach, decision support and influence or relationship building. In any case, online marketing allows for measurements that help determine the effectiveness of individual online marketing tactics, ultimately maximizing profit and return on investment.

Let's take a look at some fundamental tactics that online marketing services companies use and how to evaluate their effectiveness:

Four Types of Online Marketing:

• Banner Advertising which can be further broken down to:
1. General
2. Contextual
3. Behavioral
4. Segmented
• Search Engine Marketing, also known as Pay Per Click (SEM/PPC)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Email marketing

Core Measures For Understanding Performance:

• Impressions
• Click through rates or open rates for email
• Conversions - actions taken after the initial click be it filling out a form, linking to additional content or conducting an actual transaction
• Costs per:
1. Impression
2. Click Through
3. Conversion

Benchmarking these metrics and understanding the likely costs is key. These statistics, however, are often tough to obtain without an online marketing services company -- especially if you have not done any of this yourself. These measurements can vary significantly across business types (Business to Business or Business to Consumer), industry, time of year, etc. In addition, vendors are hesitant to put numbers on the table for all these same reasons.

The following diagram helps illustrate this phenomenon and how to assess each tactic and how to align them with your overall goals.

Based on our tracking and experiences across many clients and industries, we see general benchmarks as follows:

Online Budget Allocations

As you evaluate your marketing spending on line, the first consideration is what are your goals and where your product or service is in the product lifecycle? While communication at the bottom of the pyramid delivers better targeting and conversions, if you are in the early stages of a product lifecycle and need reach and awareness, a broader approach might be appropriate. Ask yourself, which metric is most important for where you are and what you are trying to achieve.

But regardless of where you are, it is clear that in a performance based world where CMOs are held accountable for the return on the marketing dollars being invested, an analytical, strategic based approach would necessitate spending scarce marketing budgets in alignment with the returns above that are in alignment with their product lifecycle goals. How are you allocating your on line marketing dollars?

Look for Our Next Article

Are you doing segmentation marketing? Learn what this is and how to apply it on line to deliver a new slice in the on line marketing pyramid that compliments and adds to behavioral and contextual banner advertising.

About the Author:

Sharon Swedner the President of .Com Marketing. Founded in 1997 by Hillary Bressler, .Com Marketing is a top 100 interactive marketing and advertising agency that specializes in online marketing in Orlando and worldwide, professional web design, increasing click-through rates, and driving return on investment from online marketing services.