In Chapter 1 of the eMarketing 101 series we told you: What eMarketing is, why it's important and the benefits of eMarketing over traditional marketing methods.



In Chapter 2, we'll be looking at the weapons an eMarketer has in their arsenal. SEO, PPCORM, WebPR - the acronyms are going to be coming thick and fast. What are they? How do they benefit you and your business? That's exactly what you're about to find out.

Search Engine Marketing - SEM

Daily search volumes run into the hundreds of millions and Search Engines drive a huge proportion of all web traffic. Search is usually the first port of call for anyone looking for anything online. Those who seek online, search.

Fundamentally, what makes SEM so effective is that you get found by potential customers looking for the service you offer. So, provided you've got your keyword strategy right, you're getting targeted traffic.

Search Engine Marketing is divided into two distinct categories:

Paid Search and Organic Search

Talk about Paid Search and you're talking Pay Per Click or PPC. Talk about Organic Search and the focus is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. They're similar enough to be classified together under SEM but they're different enough to warrant separate explanations.

PPC - Pay Per Click

It does just like it says on the tin. You Pay Per Click. Simple. Targeted. Effective. You buy sponsored adverts on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), often displayed either above the normal "organic" listings or across to the right hand side. The beauty of the system is that you're paying purely on a performance basis, that is, when the ad is clicked on.

A few points on PPC:

• Advert positioning is based on a bidding system. At its simplest, the highest bidder gets the highest ad placement.



• A PPC campaign is a dynamic strategic process. It needs to be closely monitored and managed to ensure maximum ROI.



• An appropriate keyword strategy is imperative to ensure the clicks you pay for are as targeted as possible. The more targeted your traffic, the greater your conversion rates, and the better your ROI.

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

Why pay for your clicks when you can get them for free?

SEO is PPC's roommate in the house of SEM. (I warned you the acronyms would come thick and fast.) Strictly speaking, SEO is about optimising websites to achieve high rankings on the Search Engines for certain selected key phrases.

Sometimes called "organic" or "natural" optimisation, SEO involves making changes to the HTML code, content and structure behind your website, making it more accessible for Search Engines, and by extension, easier to find by users. SEO rewards relevant, helpful websites that add value and give visitors what they're looking for.

SEO is an extremely cost effective way of generating new business to your site. Once your site ranks highly on a Search Engine Results Page, you don't pay for any traffic that arrives at your site from that listing. SEO is a continuous process though; both to maintain rankings and improve rankings for other terms that may bring in relevant traffic.

Free clicks!

Well, not quite. But you're not paying per click, so over time, ROI is excellent. Ideally PPC and SEO work synergistically to maximise Search Engine traffic.

Online Advertising

Eyeballs. They're a large part of the traditional advertising equation. For brand awareness, you need your brand to be seen.

Online Advertising is strongest on - adverts on websites, email newsletters and other electronic publications and is generally paid for on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis.

Unlike some of the other eMarketing techniques we've looked at, online advertising is not biased towards directly measurable ROI. Rather, it provides a means for combining the brand awareness bias of traditional advertising techniques with the immediacy of eMarketing.

Affiliate Marketing

What if you could combine the performance-based cost element of PPC with the brand awareness potential of Online Advertising?

In a manner of speaking, that's what Affiliate Marketing does. At its simplest, Affiliate Marketing uses affiliate partner websites to display your adverts, and pays them on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis. Advertisers earn a commission on sales generated.

So while you're increasing your brand visibility, you are only paying for results. Additionally, you create revenue making opportunities for many other online publishers, helping to grow the eMarketing industry, giving you a warm fuzzy feeling.

Viral Marketing

Word-of-mouth is probably the world's oldest form of marketing. Back when humans first started trading the things they traded, they'd likely find out about where to get what they needed from others. Collaboration and information sharing is a basic human trait and perhaps the one, which made us the dominant species.

Fast forward to the modern world.

Word of mouth in an electronic context.

Self-replicating distribution techniques.

Exponential growth in campaign reach.

Viral Marketinguses the connectedness of the Internet and the social networks characteristic of electronic communication to build brand awareness exponentially.

People pass on and share things that provide value, especially when the costs of sharing are low, as is case online. Think funny video clips, interactive flash games, competitions, images, text - in fact, viral marketing is limited only by the creativity of the eMarketer. Anything that truly entertains, informs, amuses or intrigues the recipient is likely to be further distributed. A well-orchestrated viral campaign harnesses this basic fact of human nature for the good of the brand.

ORM - Online Reputation Management

More and more, consumers turn to the Internet for information about products, services and the companies that offer them.

Buying a new car? Check out reviews online.

Thinking of getting in a new eMarketing agency?

Find out what others have said online about their experiences.

Your company's reputation is out there on the web for all to see. Existing and potential customers care about that reputation. And so should you.

People are talking. Good things and bad things. Praise and scorn.

Are you listening?

ORM means monitoring what's being said about you. Listening to what customers are saying.

It also means responding. Let your customers know that you hear them. Earn their trust with honesty and openness. Most importantly, engage them. Make them feel included and important and considered.

By being aware of what's being said about you online, you are able to react and put the necessary damage control strategy in place as soon as bad publicity pops up its fat, stupid, ugly head.

WebPR

Business has moved online and Public Relations (PR), that indispensable tool of brand awareness, has followed.

Now that most business is conducted on the Internet; the playground of PR has moved online. WebPR allows PR to reach its fullest expression because the potential for getting your brand 'out there' is limitless.

There is an assortment of ways to market your business globally through WebPR. Various online channels like, Article Banks/Directory Sites, industry related sites, as well as local and international News sites are used to distribute content containing some element of your brand.

Online press releases must drive traffic to your site (your website is not a fancy brochure; it is a marketing tool that needs visitors to become customers). To achieve this, press releases need to be optimised with the appropriate key phrases and links.

The link posted at the end of a press release or feature article is a valuable source of driving internet traffic to your website. Writing interesting, high-quality articles on relevant topics and submitting them to content distribution sites is a great way to effectively promote your website or brand.

Email Marketing

Direct marketing via electronic means - email marketing is very powerful. It's also extremely cost effective, highly targeted, customisable, measurable and best of all, takes advantage of the consumer's most prolific touch point with the Internet, their inbox.

Email marketing is about building virtual relationships with existing and potential clients and maximising the retention and value of these customers. Push your message out to your audience and let it pull them into contact with your company.

With a correctly built mailing list, you have direct access to a targeted audience.

Customise and tweak your message, then measure and test to see what techniques are most effective for your particular market.

Email marketing is about creating, building up, and capitalising on the relationships you build with your clients.

Conversion Optimisation

You've built a fantastic site. You're bringing in lots of traffic thanks to the highly effective SEO, Email, PPC and WebPR techniques we've discussed.

Job done? Not quite. To maximise ROI, we need to make sure we turn traffic into customers. This is where Conversion Optimisation comes into play.

A Two Phase Process - Before we can optimise, we need to analyse.

Analyse

First we need analyse the collaborative effect of our entire eMarketing effort, looking at the combined effectiveness of all our tactics.

We need to analyse:

Web usability

Site analytics

The relative ROI of each eMarketing technique used

Split and multivariate testing

Any other available measurable

This kind of analysis allows us to get a better idea for where the inefficiencies are. We've scoped things out. Now we need to...

Optimise

Simply put, this optimisation process is all about minimising the drop-off rate, and making the most of the traffic we're getting. Conversion is the whole reason the website exists.

Based on what we found with our analysis, we make incremental changes to the most inefficient factors. Then we analyse again. And we keep doing so for each of the factors we've identified.

By doing this, we're improving the conversion rate of traffic into customers. That means a lower CPA, and a better ROI.

Testing

If you want to know if something works, test it. Constant tweaking and testing means we can streamline our eMarketing techniques, fine-tuning them for our specific market.

In the long run, we're maximising efficiency by jettisoning the least effective practises and focussing on those that bring the most benefit. Darwin would be proud. It's evolutionary marketing - survival of only the fittest techniques.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

So there you have it. These are the weapons that you, as the aspiring eMarketer, have available in your arsenal. Of course, it's about more than just the tools. It's also about how they are put to use, and how they work together as part of a "big-picture" campaign vision.

Coming soon: Chapter 3. What should you expect?

OK, so now you know what's in the toolbox, it's time to learn how to put them to use.

The most common form of citizen media is the weblog or blog as it's more commonly known. In the next chapter, "Blogging - everyone else is doing it, so why can't I?", we look exclusively at blogs.

With more than 80 000 new blogs created each day, that's more than the number of books published in the US each year!

But what is a blog and how can it be used as part of a highly effective eMarketing strategy? - we'll tell you everything you need to know next fortnight...

Other Articles in the eMarketing 101 series:

• What is eMarketing and how is it better than traditional marketing?



• The Arrows in the eMarketer's quiver



• Blogging - everyone else is doing it, so why can't I?



• A focus on natural search (beginner's guide to SEO)



• Case Study



• PPC - you gets what you pays for



• Case Study



• Email marketing - no, not SPAM



• Affiliate marketing - because we all need friends



• WebPR and ORM - blah blah blah conversations



• Case Study



• Viral marketing - linkerbation is a normal, natural thing. Perfectly natural.



• Online advertising - throwing a banner into the works



• Conversion optimisation. Are you closing the deal?



• Case Study