Website Design & Optimization Service

One of the most important things to a businesses success is a successful marketing campaign. It is no different for online businesses. Online marketing is sometimes overlooked or not paid enough attention to. Below is some information we have put together to make sure you have a marketing plan in place to see to it that your business grows and prospers.

Think about marketing as “inbound” and “outbound” marketing.

Inbound marketing includes researching to find out:

1. What specific groups of potential customers (markets) might have which specific needs
2. How those needs might be met for each group (or target market), which suggests how your product might be designed to meet the need
3. How each of the target markets might choose to access the product, etc. (”packaging”)
4. How much customers might be willing to pay and how (pricing analysis)
5. Who your competitors are (competitor analysis)
6. How to design and describe the product so that customers buy from your organization, rather than from your competitors (its unique value proposition)
7. How the product should be identified – its personality – to be most identifiable (naming and branding)

Outbound marketing includes:

1. Advertising and promotions (focused on the product)
2. Sales
3. Public and media relations (focused on your organization)
4. Customer service
5. Customer satisfaction

Too often, people jump right to the outbound marketing. As a result, they often end up trying to push products onto people who really don’t want them. Effective inbound marketing research often results in much more effective outbound marketing and sales.

Finding Your Competitors

Successfull marketing research means finding out who your competitors are. Getting a good idea of what the market is like before entering it is essential. You need to know who you will be competing with for business. All this information is at your fingertips online.

How to start and where to look:

You should have an idea of keywords to use when you search online for your competitors. Try every possible keyword that is related to the business you want to start. If you want to enter the hosting market then search for keywords such as hosting and go from there.

Do a search on the general category or top category then work your way down. You can use (Google Keyword Tool) to find keywords as well has how many times monthly they have been searched for. Finding related keywords will broaden your search and even open up new niche markets you can target. For an example if want to start a web hosting company you can focus your marketing on smaller keywords such as Affordable Web Hosting, Cheap Web Hosting etc. You will find there are less competitors when you broaden your search terms.

Use Google to search for your keywords. Once you find a competitors site browse through it and note all the features of the site as well as their product offerings. Check out their About Us page or Company Info page to get an idea of who’s behind the business. It’s good to either write this information down in a notepad or store it on your computer in a research folder you keep to organize this info.

If you are entering a large industry then search for industry specific business directories. For hosting you would search for “hosting directory”. Directories have become very popular online and you are bound to find one on your industry.

If you want to find more detailed information about your competitors and are willing to pay a fee look them up on Dun and Bradstreet. You can get access to a companies credit reports to see where they stand financially. You can also search Hoovers to get revenue, employee and general information regarding companies.