Of the hundreds or possibly thousands of marketing messages consumers are bombarded with each day, e-marketing is still one of the most effective marketing methods available, in both the online and offline worlds. In fact, a study from Forbes Media last year found that e-marketing generated the most conversions, second only to search engine optimization. Offline, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reported that e-marketing outperformed all other forms of direct marketing last year as well. So the data clearly shows that e-marketing works for reaching (and converting) customers today. But why?

A Broad Reach

One of the reasons e-marketing works so well could be that it has a very broad reach, since almost everyone today has an email address, and many have more than one. Spam-compliant e-marketing services (such as Constant Contact or Vertical Response) are readily available and very affordable, meaning you can easily reach your entire customer base using email. If you are not regularly e-marketing to your customers, you’re missing out on an excellent opportunity to keep your name and products/services in front of customers and remind them of the value you provide.

Taking Action

Also, e-marketing makes it easy to enable recipients to take some type of action. Whether it’s clicking through to an optimized landing page or printing out a coupon, your special offers can be delivered directly to your customers’ inboxes where they can interact with your message and take the desired action. Just be sure to use a clear call-to-action and provide recipients multiple ways to engage with you (including links to your website, email links, phone numbers, social networking links, etc.).

Targeting, Tracking, and Measuring

Targeting your messages is also easy with e-marketing, since you are sending directly to people who have opted-in or given you permission to contact them with your information. You can even segment your e-marketing list into specific groups based on interests, gender, time of year, or any other criteria that may be useful to your business. However, you cannot segment your list effectively if you are not keeping accurate stats and tracking your results. Most listserv services provide very detailed data on who opened your message, what links they clicked on, if they forwarded it to another person, etc. This level of results measurement is simply not possible with other more traditional marketing methods.

No Interruptions

E-marketing is also less intrusive than other types of advertising (like TV or radio commercials or the dreaded telemarketing call at dinnertime). Recipients will see your message when they are checking their email, and if you have done a good job of providing valuable content, they will look forward to what you have to say when they see your email in their inboxes. If you send too often or send only self-serving promotions, however, they may simply delete your message without reading it, or possibly unsubscribe or block you altogether, so be smart about the types of content you send and how often you send it.

Because It Works!

The bottom line is that e-marketing works, and is an easy, affordable way to market to your customers and reach them directly with valuable content and special offers they may be interested in. E-marketing also averages a return on investment (ROI) of $43.62 for every dollar you spend, which is a convincing reason to add it to your marketing mix in the first place.

By using e-marketing regularly, your business becomes more visible to your customers and regularly reminds them about your products, services, and value, and can trigger a flurry of renewed interest every time you send.

Social marketing offers plenty of benefits for small businesses, but there are a number of common misconceptions that may be holding you back from embracing this new form of marketing. Here are three common excuses used to avoid using social networking as a business marketing strategy, and the reasons these excuses are really nothing more than myths.

1. “Our customers don’t use social networks.”
   Really? Facebook has 500 million users, with half of active users logging in every single day. In addition to that, each Facebook user has an average of 130 “friends” in their own personal networks. Combine that with Twitter’s more than 100 million users and LinkedIn’s 60 million users, and it would be difficult to imagine your customers not among these millions of users!

   
   

   The reality is that consumers today are online using social networks, and you need to meet your customers where they are.

2. “I (or my staff) don’t have time to update a bunch of social networking profiles.”
   Adding new marketing tasks to your already full to-do list may seem impossible, but there are ways to make it fast and easy to add social to your regular marketing mix. By integrating your social networking profiles together with each other and with your website, you can create a system that lets you “write once, publish to many” automatically, saving you time while extending your marketing reach online.

   
   

   For instance, you can use Facebook widgets to pull information from your Wall and display it on your web site automatically. Or, you can use an RSS feed to display your Twitter “tweets” on your Facebook page. By integrating your profiles, you can share new information automatically, saving you the time and effort of posting and maintaining the same information to multiple separate profiles.

3. “I don’t know what to write about.”
   Well the good news is that you probably already have lots of material just waiting to be “recycled” as social content, you just need to know where to look. Your monthly newsletter is an excellent source of social marketing material – you can divide it up over the course of a month and post a different article or tip each week. Or, why not share the latest news you just read in a professional journal or from an industry website?

   
   

   The truth is that you don’t need to write original content to share with your followers, you just need to share useful, interesting information to keep them engaged.

No More Excuses

If you’re still finding excuses to avoid social marketing for your business, you are missing an important opportunity to promote your business and reach countless new consumers online. When properly integrated, a social marketing system can be easy to use and takes very little time and effort to maintain, but you have to commit to incorporating it into your regular marketing routine. Your customers are already using social networking as part of their daily routines, and if your competitors are not already there, they will be soon.

Don’t let social marketing myths hold you back from implementing a strategy that helps you connect with customers, brings in new leads and prospects, and drives additional traffic to your website and your business.

NOTE: If you are looking for an integrated social marketing solution for your business, check out Five Sparrows’ ConnectPLUS Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)® services.

Once you are able to get visitors (web traffic) to come to your site on a regular basis, the real challenge can be in keeping them there long enough to explore your site, see your value proposition, and find what they are looking for. Better yet – if you can get them to do something; like sign up for your newsletter, call your toll free number, or make a purchase, then you have a site that converts and contributes to your bottom line!

But what happens if visitors can’t accomplish their goals once they get to your site?

Your website’s usability is critical to your online success. If the home page does not clearly communicate what you offer, visitors will click the “back” button and move on. If the site is unattractive and not well organized, visitors will disappear and probably never return. If the website is too hard to use, they will simply leave in frustration. After all, if visitors cannot find your products and services, they cannot buy them, either.

So what should you do to make sure your site is easy to use, conveys the right message, and helps turn visitors into loyal customers? Here are some tips:

• Have a solid design – make sure the graphics relate to your business, the layout helps visitors accomplish tasks and/or find specific information, and the home page clearly states who you are and what you offer.
• Use a CSS-based navigation system with drop-down menus to organize topics and present information effectively.
• Include a call-to-action on each page of your site.
• Avoid writing about “you” and write your content so that it focuses on “them”. People don’t care about your company, they care about your company’s ability to solve their problems.
• Have a clear value proposition that shows visitors the benefits of doing business with you – make sure they know what’s “in it” for them.
• Limit the number of levels that users have to click through to find information. Nothing should be more that 2 or 3 clicks away.
• Make sure the site downloads quickly; users today expect the site to download instantly, and they won’t wait for a big, graphics-intensive, slow-loading website to display (in addition – Google now uses page download times as a ranking factor in its search algorithm).

Designing your website according to good usability practices means you become an advocate for your visitors, making sure that they can easily learn about your products and services or find the information they need. The easier it is for them to find what they are looking for, the more likely it is that they will place an order, make a purchase, give you a call, or act upon whatever other conversion goals you have for your site.

Creating a successful e-campaign is very different from other forms of online marketing, and requires specific knowledge in order to create emails that will be delivered, opened, and acted-upon by recipients. With our inboxes overflowing everyday with junk email and unwanted “spam,” you need to know how to make your email stand out in the long list of messages waiting to be read, and also how to create an email that will motivate recipients to take the action you want them to take. Of course, you must always use a professional listserv service when sending out an e-campaign to ensure can-spam compliance, deliverability, and results tracking and monitoring. Here are five tips that can help you create effective, successful e-campaigns that will get opened and get results for your business:

1. Use a Recognizable “From” Label
   The “From” label is typically the first line of information that displays in your recipients’ inbox list (followed by the subject line). It’s important that your recipients are able to immediately recognize who the email is from – so use your company’s name. Otherwise, they may simply hit the “delete” button or worse – report it as spam!

2. Create an Attention-Getting Subject Line
   The subject line is typically displayed directly beneath the “From” label, and should give the recipient some idea of what the email is about. The trick, however, is to write a subject line that is eye-catching and interesting, yet short enough to be viewed without being cut off in the recipients’ email window. Try to keep the subject line to about 30 to 40 characters, and most email programs will be able to display it accurately. Never use all-caps in your email subject line – it looks like you’re “shouting”, which is annoying and also more likely to be flagged by a spam filter.

3. Design for the Preview Pane
   Design your email with the Preview Pane in mind, since many recipients will read your message right from there (rather than clicking to open the entire email). Make sure that your most important information is near the top of the email and not buried at the bottom, since you readers may not take the time to scroll down to the end. Make sure the information is interesting enough for readers to take action or scroll down to continue reading the rest of your message. Use sub-headers and short paragraphs to break up your text, and make use of bulleted lists that contain important points without taking up a lot of space.

4. Use Web-Ready Images
   Images should be web-ready; meaning the file size should be as small as possible so it downloads quickly, and it should be a commonly recognized file type like .jpg, .gif, .png, etc. File sizes for e-campaign images should be 25K or smaller, and you should always provide a text description (alt-text) for images for recipients who have images turned off. Always test your emails before actually sending campaigns, since the image paths (where the images are stored on the web) must be correct in order for the images to display.

5. Include a Call to Action
   Often, the reason you send an e-campaign in the first place is to get recipients to do something; call your toll-free number, make a purchase, click to a landing page for more information, redeem a coupon or special offer, etc. So it’s important to include a crystal clear call to action in your message that tells recipients exactly what to do. Provide links in several places throughout the email message, and consider using both buttons and text links to encourage clicks. You should also include links to any other high-value content on your website that is related to the campaign, since that can help drive additional traffic to your website as well.

By using these five e-campaign tips, you can improve the chances that your emails will be successfully delivered, opened by recipients, and produce the intended results of your campaigns. E-campaigns are still one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers and prospects, and also one of the most affordable. In fact, for 2010 the Direct Marketing Association says that on average, every dollar that you spend on e-campaigns will produce $42 for your business – what other marketing initiative can give you that kind of ROI?

Today, there are new websites, social networking sites, online directories, and mobile device applications popping up all the time on the internet, giving small businesses many choices and opportunities to build a solid online presence. The flip side, however, is that if you have been neglecting your website, ignoring your current search engine rankings, or procrastinating about social networking, it’s likely that your small business will be left behind all the other companies (including competitors) that are taking advantage of these technologies and reaching their customers using these effective online channels.

So what can you do to create a strong online presence, become visible to customers looking for your products and services, and stand out at the top of the search engine rankings?

The key is an integrated online marketing strategy that combines your website, social platforms, search engine optimization (SEO), and ongoing online marketing initiatives. For small businesses that are willing to commit to this integrated approach, the results can boost revenue, increase leads, retain customers, strengthen sales, and create the kind of overall online visibility that continues to build on itself over time. Here are the four key areas to include in a successful integrated online strategy:

1. Your Website. Studies have shown many times over that a professional, well-organized, up-to-date website has a direct, positive effect on customer loyalty, lead conversions, business credibility, and sales/revenue. Conversely, a sub-standard website can reflect poorly on your business and have a negative effect on consumers. Your website is the face of your business to the rest of the world; make sure it is an accurate reflection of your quality and capability as a company.
2. Social Platforms. Not only does a social networking strategy make your business more visible online, recent research reveals that consumers are more likely to buy from the businesses they “follow” socially, and sharing information on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can create a significant number of referrals being spread through the social networks, resulting in recommendations and publicity for your business. Another valuable aspect of a social strategy is that the content you regularly post (that also gets shared among your followers and their networks) is also indexed by the search engines, providing you with an ongoing source of inbound links that help boost your search engine rankings.
3. Search Engine Optimization. More than 80% of internet users turn to the search engines first to look for products and services, with Google being the most popular search engine today. So if you want to be found by customers and capture traffic from the billions of searches performed each day, your website must be accurately optimized and coded to show up in the search results for the keywords that matter most to your business. Optimizing a website is a multi-faceted process that involves both behind-the-scenes and on-the-page techniques, as well as other criteria ranging from valid W3C web code to inbound link counts to geo-targeted GPS coordinates and more. If you’re not comfortable doing your own search engine optimization work, hire a firm to help you – it’s that important.
4. Ongoing Initiatives. Of course, these marketing initiatives are not like a one-time print ad or a direct mail piece. They are ongoing marketing efforts that require continued attention to make sure that your business continues to make progress and improve upon (or at least maintain) the gains made in web conversions, search engine rankings, inbound link creation, online visibility, and so forth. If you do not maintain your efforts going forward, you give your competitors a perfect opportunity to overtake you while you sit on the sidelines and watch your online visibility (and hard-earned results) slip away.

An integrated online marketing strategy is also highly measurable; you can monitor your results and make adjustments along the way to improve your outcomes every single month. For instance, if your web conversions start to fall, a quick e-campaign with an optimized landing page can help turn things around. Or a slip in search engine rankings can be reversed by adjusting your web page content or tweaking the behind-the-scenes data. If you are paying attention and tracking results, it can help your business stay visible online and a step ahead of your competitors.

Being invisible online is bad news for your business. But the good news is that with an integrated online marketing strategy and a commitment to follow it, your business can be more visible online and enjoy the benefits of more leads, more loyalty, and a boost to your bottom line.