If you build it, will they come? The answer is maybe, if they know where it's at. It is marketing's job to tell whoever might be interested that yes, indeed, it has been built, and it's right over there! Y'all come. Well, something like that.
Search sites and vertical portals are the engines of the Internet. While most traffic is generated from bookmarks or the locator bar in web browsers, and the second most traffic is generated within the site itself, search engines and portals are where it all starts. The top ten search sites generate 85 percent of all search traffic. And after you get in, then you need to fight your way to the top of the results page of keywords you have chosen. It's a war that involves revising site content, registering and reregistering your url, and doing the other things listed below, all in an effort to keep your head above water. It's a never ending battle.
Remember that old aphorism about great minds thinking alike? Well, that's sort of the idea behind linking online. You try to find non-competing web sites with the same customers that you have and get them to exchange links with you. You want their customers, and they want yours. Links help you in the search engine rankings, too.
Affiliate marketing means paying a commission to another site to sell your stuff online. It's a little complicated to administer, so most people use a third-party service. But it has been used very effectively by amazon.com, for example, which pioneered its use.
Just because you're online now doesn't mean you can forget the other media. Print, radio and TV advertising, public relations and trade shows all have a synergistic effect on each other.
Finally there is the inhouse stuff. You want to put your web site address on your invoices, your cash register receipts, your letterhead, business cards, over the entrance to your store, on your forehead, anywhere a customer or potential customer might look. Impressions count, and they accumulate.
Okay, we're not an advertising agency. We don't do public relations, conduct seminars, or design brochures. And we don't do the search engine thing. But we know who does. And we know how everything fits together in this battle for online traffic. We coordinate this part of it for you as part of what we do.
As in the real world, online marketing is key to making everything else work like it should. We don't leave you up in the air on this one. It's too important. We manage it for you as one component of the overall project, and as long as you want us to thereafter.
