What makes an internet marketing campaign successful?
Written by Penelope Hesletine Saturday, 16 April 2011 07:23
A good internet marketing campaign needs to cover a comprehensive range of issues. You need to draw people in, keep their attention, and maintain the profile of the site once it is established. There are also ethical codes that govern what it is acceptable to do in order to make the chosen site a success, and pitfalls such as being out of date with competitor's sites or using cheap devices to get peoples' attention, which will see internet users feeling alienated. But what are the components of a marketing campaign?
Social media can be brilliantly influencial when it comes to consumer spending, so making sure that your product or business is visible can be about finding good social hubs and spreading the word there. This might sound simple, but selecting where to target and how to get the message across can determine its success or failure as a device - people tend to be turned off by plugs that are to obvious, or if they feel harassed by too much unsubtle guidance. Using blogs, twitter and facebook is all part of this, but a marketing company also has to be up to date with the peripheries of social culture, as well as what the next big thing will be.
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the process of making sure a site maintains a high profile on the internet. This is a complex business and involves creating a network of links to the site in order that it shows up as more useful to the Googlerank algorithm. More straightforward ways include paying for a sponsored link, and having good html code is a basic standard that will improve a website's appearance too.
The campaign should also be about spending the client's money as effectively as possible, and pay per click adverts are a great way of doing this. Websites make their money by hosting adverts, and having a PPC system means that everyone gets paid fairly, and the websites themselves get help to maintain their popularity.
All of this needs to be done without it being obtrusive or manipulative too. There is a code of ethics that governs SEO practises for example, but it's not just about what's morally right - the internet is a complex of the people that use it, and if they feel they're being treated unfairly it will reflect badly on the product and the marketing company.