Generate business from your e-marketing plan

This page is part of our Resources section. The aim of this section is to provide useful information to support clients interested in our ecommerce order fulfilment services.

Introduction

The overall objective of any marketing initiative is to help sell your goods or services. Used successfully, e-marketing can enhance customer relationships and increase your business' profitability.

Your e-marketing plan needs to consider which techniques to adopt in order to attract potential customers to your e-commerce website and keep them coming back.

There are a variety of different approaches that you can take, and your e-marketing plan will usually include a mix of different strategies that are best suited to help you meet your overall objectives. Some of these will be innovative, while others will be automated versions of traditional marketing techniques.

This guide provides an introduction to the e-marketing techniques most commonly used by small businesses.

Email marketing

More and more people have an email address that allows them to receive documents or other files electronically. It is a fast, flexible and effective way of getting marketing messages through - such as newsletters or special offers - without the time lag and costs associated with printing and postage.

It's essential not to overuse email marketing. What makes it so effective - the personal, time-sensitive interaction - can also irritate people if it is irrelevant or unwanted.

You should also consider compatibility since different programs will display email differently. You should be careful in your use of images since these will increase download times and may be blocked by email filters. Create plain text versions as well as HTML versions to ensure cross-platform compatibility. See our guide on email marketing.

The solution is to profile your customers and understand what the best format is for them. Some may like high-tech e-marketing, others might prefer a plain text email.

Email marketing rules

In December 2003, new rules came into force covering marketing emails to individuals. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations introduced an opt-in consent procedure for commercial emails - which means you can only target people who have agreed to be contacted.

See our guide on e-commerce and the law.

Advantages of email marketing

• Flexible - you can send plain text, graphics or attach files - whichever suits your message best.
• Easy for people to forward on to others, building your reputation by word of mouth or viral marketing.
• People can click on links and follow your call to action immediately.
• Less intrusive than telephone marketing.

Potential problems with email marketing

• Files need to be small enough to download quickly.
• Unsolicited commercial email or 'spam' irritates consumers. You need to make sure that your email marketing complies with privacy and data protection rules, and that it is properly targeted at people who want to receive it. The 'click through rate' for untargeted or cold emails is likely to be very low ie between 1 to 3 per cent.
• Poorly designed emails may not get delivered to the customer. Emails that use certain spam keywords in the subject heading or content of the email, are likely to be filtered out by email software and internet service providers.

SMS marketing

Text messages or short messaging service (SMS) messages are the messages that people send from their mobile phones.

Text messaging is growing at an enormous rate. One of the primary reasons behind this growth is that text messaging has become increasingly used as a business tool.

Text messaging enables information to be sent to groups of people quickly and conveniently in much the same way as email, making it an increasing popular e-marketing channel.

Advantages of SMS marketing

• The personal nature of mobile phones make SMS marketing a very powerful tool.
• Most people take their mobile phones everywhere - meaning they can be effective for time sensitive messages.
• People tend to read virtually every text they get - unlike junk mail, spam or adverts which can be ignored.

Potential disadvantages of SMS marketing

• Your message has to be short - you do not have much space to get your message across.
• People respond negatively to unwanted texts. Make sure you have their permission to send them texts and that your SMS marketing complies with privacy and data protection rules.
• People are wary of responding to SMS messages due to an increase in fraudulent messages. Under the E-commerce Regulations, you are required to make it clear who the message is from and commercial communications must be clearly recognisable as such. For more information on the E-commerce Regulations, see our guide on e-commerce and the law.

Costs

You will need to employ a mobile phone agency to send out the texts for you. These work out at about ten pence per text. The development of 3G (third generation) and smartphones, which have larger screens and can play music and video clips, has also made multimedia messaging service (MMS) possible.

Promoting your website

There are three main ways that people arrive at websites - direct navigation, web referrals and search engines.

Direct navigation

A good way of generating web traffic is to make sure you include your web address on all printed material - business cards, letters, flyers, etc.

Choose a simple web address (URL) which avoids hyphens or other punctuation as it will be easier for people to remember. If you operate exclusively in the UK, choose a .co.uk address. If you trade abroad, consider a .com or .eu address as well.

For more information on choosing a domain name, see our guide on website hosting options.

Web referrals

Web referrals are an important means of attracting visitors to your site. There are a number of ways you can generate these.

• Include your web address in all email footers.
• Email marketing - targeted electronic newsletters and offers to customers can be very effective. If the offer is interesting, it is easy for people to pass the email on.
• Online advertising - the use of banner adverts on other websites to drive people to your website or the use of pay per click advertising on search engines. See the page in this guide on advertising and sponsorship.
• Social media sites - the use of social media such as blogs, social networking sites, video and photo sharing sites, etc can help you build a community around your brand. You can set up your own communities or join in the discussions on other sites, referring people to your website when appropriate. See the page in this guide on community building and social media.
• Reciprocal marketing - finding sites with complementary content and agreeing to have links or banners to each other's sites.

Search engines

Increasingly, visitors to your website are coming through search engine referrals rather than direct navigation. Search engines combine natural listings, ie a free listing, with pay per click (PPC) or sponsored advertising. See the page in this guide on getting the most out of search engines.

The vast majority of those using search engines will not go beyond the first page of results. If you are expecting your website to generate significant commercial returns, it will be well worth spending the time and effort to ensure you get the most out of your search engine placement. The major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing offer search engine optimisation tips, as well as their own PPC schemes to help you improve your website's search engine placement. Read our guides on pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation.

Getting the most out of search engines

When working on your search marketing strategy, look at how you can improve your ranking in the natural listings and whether paid advertising, eg pay per click, is a cost-effective way of increasing search engine referrals to your website.

Search engine optimisation

Few web users will look past the first page of results on a search engine. This means that if your website isn't rated as one of the ten best matches for someone's search, you are unlikely to pick up passing trade. While this can sound daunting, there are lots of things you can do to improve your ranking.

• Include the right keywords in your content or metadata (information that describes a webpage, but isn't visible on the pages) when you build your website. Use the most relevant keywords from your website and the words that people are likely to use when searching for your products or services. Your website designer can help you include the key phrases when designing and building your website. Update your keywords regularly using the tools provided by search engines to help you identify the words that are generating the most hits and those which are not performing. Use web analytics software such as Google Analytics to help understand what keywords visitors are using to find your website and help inform your future keyword strategy. See our guide on search engine optimisation.
• Register with online directories, both general (eg Applegate and Kelly) and those specific to your industry and the markets you serve. This will generate links to your site from highly ranked sites which will boost your page rank. Many directories are free but it is also worth considering paying for highly relevant directories.
• Social media such as blogs, social networking sites, video and photo sharing sites, etc can also help you improve your search engine ranking, as well as build interest around your brand. Search engines like new content, and the user-generated nature of social media will ensure that your website remains visible to the search engines. See our guide on Web 2.0: a guide for business.
• Exchange reciprocal links with related trade associations, consumer forums and sites selling related (but not competing) goods or services.
• Use the webmaster tools provided by the search engines to help you improve your website's ranking. Many of the main search engines - such as Google, Ask, Yahoo and Bing - provide tips, advice and tools to help you improve your website's usability. Access the Google Webmaster tools on the Google website - Opens in a new window.

Pay per click advertising

Paid advertising or pay per click involves paying search engines to include your website as a sponsored link. Sponsored links appear at the top or on the right-hand side of the search results. To become a sponsored link you bid for particular keywords or phrases. Webmaster resources such as Google's Adwords Keyword Tool, will help you identify relevant keywords for your campaign and the levels of search activity that they are generating.

Your ranking is determined by how much you pay each time your link is clicked - known as 'cost-per-click' pricing. You can set your own daily budget to help you control costs and once your daily budget is spent your ad is turned off until the next day. Find out about sponsored search pricing on the Yahoo website - Opens in a new window. For any campaign that you run you will need to look at what your campaign objectives are, what budget you have, the keywords that are most relevant to the campaign and the creation of an effective advert and campaign landing page.

In-house or agency?

You can engage the services of a professional search marketing agency, though if you are a small business with a limited budget, and your website is just one of several channels to market, you may be better off saving resources. Most of the search engines provide advice on how you can improve your rankings if you are doing the work yourself.

If you do decide to go for an agency, ask for:

• proof of its success with previous customers
• the cost-per-click of the extra traffic it can generate
• an analysis of your website's search engine optimisation, including suggestions for improvements

Advertising and sponsorship

In addition to the paid search as part of your search marketing strategy, there are various techniques that can be used for advertising on websites, and most involve the use of multimedia content, including graphics, sound and animation. These are all intended to grab your attention and then guide you through to the relevant website.

Banner adverts

Banner adverts occupy designated space for rent on web pages. They are similar to the print advertising model used by newspapers and magazines, except they can include video, audio and interactive capabilities in just a few square inches of space.

Most banners work on the basis of click-throughs, the user clicks on the banner and is linked through to the website that is paying for the advert.

Banners can be useful for brand awareness, but response rates tend to be very low.

Interstitials

Interstitials are Java-based adverts that appear when content is loading to a webpage. A variation is the pop-up, where adverts appear in a separate window that overlays the current browser window.

A later development is known as a superstitial. Here, the advert comes in the form of a mini video that uses Flash technology and Java. Such videos load behind the scenes and do not appear on the user screen until they are fully loaded.

Done well, superstitials can create very high levels of click-through. E-Marketing, published by Prentice Hall, reports that a British Airways advert using this approach achieved a 20 per cent click-through rate.

Sponsorship

Many businesses are developing partnerships with website owners to combine useful content with advertising. This content may contain references to their own products or services. Alternatively the webpage itself can include advertising links through to their own website.

The sponsorship approach can work particularly well where the quality of the editorial content is high, or where the website is recognised as a good independent source of information. As with traditional magazines, the advertorial approach of blatantly plugging your own business can quickly put readers off.

Sales promotions

Sales promotion activities are widely used on the web. E-Marketing, published by Prentice Hall, indicates that marketers have found online promotions achieve three to five times higher response rates than direct mail.

Most online sales promotions are targeted at consumers and are used in combination with advertising.

E-coupons

E-coupons offer your online business the opportunity to increase sales in much the same way as conventional coupons do for traditional businesses. They can be used creatively in a number of different ways:

• frequent shoppers can be rewarded when they reach a certain level of value or purchases
• shoppers can be encouraged to return with an e-coupon towards future purchases
• incentives can be used to encourage customers to purchase immediately rather than waiting for a better deal or shopping elsewhere
• first time customers can be offered special deals in order to help turn them from browsers into purchasers
• subscriber-only e-coupons can be used to encourage customers to sign up for e-newsletters, with the newsletter helping to increase sales and build your customer database

Coupons usually include a code that the customer is required to enter before they finalise their order to receive the discount.

Sampling

Some e-commerce sites allow users to sample digital products prior to purchase. Many software companies, for example, provide free downloads of demo software that normally expire after 30 to 60 days. At that time, the user can then choose to purchase the full product if they wish.

Contests and sweepstakes

Some websites hold contests and sweepstakes to attract visitors and keep them returning. Contests generally require some level of skill, while sweepstakes involve a pure chance draw for the winner.

Such sales promotions can be a useful way of creating excitement about your brand and enticing customers to return to your site.

Community building and social media

Online content has become richer, more collaborative and social. Increasingly, customers expect to engage with a business online in a variety of ways. The term 'Web 2.0' is commonly used to describe this 'second generation' of the internet. Whereas the 'old' internet was about static content and online information, the 'new' internet is about dynamic, user-generated content or 'social media'. This change is altering the way that businesses build customer relationships online.

Social media such as blogs and social networking sites will help you engage with your customers and create a community around your brand. Some website owners try to build up a community through the development of blogs, online chat rooms, discussion groups and online events. Such groups encourage users to feel part of the site by posting their own information and responding to other users.

Alternatively, you may look at setting up a group on a social networking site such as Facebook or LinkedIn. With all social media, it is important to maintain brand honesty with your customers, while also protecting your business' reputation. See our guide on Web 2.0: a guide for business.

From an e-marketing perspective, such communities will provide you with a highly targeted group of customers to which you can market your product or service. Customers will feel more involved with your brand and will be more likely to return to your site. Social media content will also keep your site fresh with new content and impact positively on your website's search engine optimisation. See our guide on search engine optimisation.

Marketing opportunities

There are different ways in which you can seek to utilise online communities for your own marketing purposes.

• If you operate in a specialist field, then you could consider setting up your own blog, user forum or online community for other people with similar interests. Users generally value both the information and the social bonding they receive from such a community. The business that builds the community can present products and messages that are customised to the group's interests, forging relationships with the individual members in the process.
• If there is already a well established user community in your area of business, then you might wish to consider joining it and using it as a means of making other users aware of the products or services that you offer. For example, you may wish to contribute to an existing blog or join a group on Facebook or LinkedIn rather than creating your own online communities. See our guide on online networking.

However marketing on the social web should be handled with care. Avoid simply placing the same messages you use in other marketing channels into a social web context. Instead, tailor your campaign so that it will sit comfortably with both the site and its users. See our page on legal implications and best practice when using social media in our guide Web 2.0: a guide for business.

While consumer communities are the most visible, you should note that business professionals also subscribe to discussion forums and online networking sites with groups that focus upon their own particular field. Communities can, therefore, be used to enhance relationships with customers and prospects in both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketplaces

Here's how I marketed my products and services on the web

Brown and Forrest has been producing its traditional range of hand-smoked fish and meats for over 20 years near Langport, Somerset. Owners Michael and Utta Brown started their website and online shop, www.smokedeel.co.uk, four years ago to complement their existing shop, restaurant and mail order service. Michael explains how they set about it.

What I did

Get professional help

"I knew a website could raise our profile, reach more customers and open up a new sales channel, so I went on a Business Link course to learn more about it. The course made me realise that building and maintaining a good e-commerce website needed more time than I had to spare. I began looking for a designer and an IT specialist to work with us.

"The people we chose not only had the technical expertise, they were also in tune with our business. We wanted the website to reflect our company culture and values. Some web developers were more concerned with trying to sell us expensive extras."

Make content customer-focused

"Once we'd decided on the basic look and feel and sorted out online ordering and payment systems, we developed the website content. Our typical customer has a natural interest in traditionally produced food so we included sections on the origins of smoked food, the methods used and our company history.

"The site is interactive and we encourage customers to develop a relationship with us. As well as email requests for information and catalogues, we invite visitors to contribute recipes and send us suggestions. We store all customer data we collect, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. Managing the database is a key responsibility for our IT manager - she spends as much time on it as she does maintaining the website itself.

"We also use the website to market other aspects of the business that customers might not be aware of, such as our weekly market stall."

Promote the website and keep it fresh

"When the website went live, all existing customers were notified via our regular newsletter. The website address was included in all our merchandising and marketing material too.

"To keep customers coming back the website has to be kept fresh. Changing photos and text design are simple ways to update the look. We also post the latest version of our newsletter on the site so there's something new to read.

"The website complements rather than replaces existing marketing activities, but it's becoming more important every year. Out of our six sales channels, the website has risen from sixth to third in terms of orders generated. It's boosted overall sales as well."

What I'd do differently

Segment the marketing

"The database we've built up is invaluable but I wish we'd segmented it sooner by product sales, location of customers, and value of purchases. We're now looking at software to help us refine our online marketing to different sets of customers."

Redesign sooner

"In retrospect the site was ready for a complete redesign after two years, whereas we left it for three. In future, we'll review it more often."