24 Jun Over 50 of my Reasons to Invest in Your Interactive Marketing Strategy

Interactive Marketing General Reasons

1.  Invest in online meeting software to further your  business’ interactive marketing strategy.  Check out www.pgi.com for web conferencing ideas..

2.  Reliable hosting and shopping cart technology has decreased in price over the years.  Invest in good hosting for high server uptimes for your site visitors and customers.

3.  Mobile phone access has had a major impact with accessibility and ability to send & receive marketing messages.  Invest in mobile versions of your site to increase your site and message reach.

4.  Affordability in Design and Development is at an all time high.  Now, it is a very affordable online experience with many designers and developers competing to get the job done.  Shop hard.

5.  Ability to Use Technology and Market ANYWHERE.  You can work on your marketing strategy anywhere & deliver on its tasks when you take your business online.

6.  Videos, Photos, Blogs, and MP3s can all be valid online marketing tools for your business while providing a fun experience for site updates.

7.  Integrating & improving support content into your web sites may reduce live support, thus freeing up full time employees in your company for other tasks.  Invest in keeping fresh FAQs and How To Content.

8.  Widely accepted and used software packages such as WordPress, Joomla, and other GNU packages allow for low cost implementations and are used by major corporations.  (As of this writing, Delta.com uses WordPress and several well known plugins)

9.  Your competitors are revamping their digital strategy.  Don’t believe me?  Wait too long and you will see.

10.  Help is readily available and affordable. We already mentioned development and design.  But how about virtual assistants to help you watch your analytics, respond to trends, keep content fresh and more.  Virtual assistants and freelancers have very affordable rates.

Social Media

1. Social media marketing can be a viral component of your interactive strategy and can add a word of mouth component to your marketing.  Done correctly, and social networks can promote visits to your interactive experience.

2. A dedicated social media experience and resource ensures coverage among the most common networks.  Invest in unifying an approach over the top ones.

3. Utilization of  “Like” modules can drive traffic back to your web site, increasing chance for conversion.

4.  RSS Feeds syndicate your content and allows your products and services to be distributed among site visitors and customers.

5.  Custom development and applications can be created via API’s to take advantage of social network data and to add marketing messages from your site back to social networks.

Online Presence

1.  Your CUSTOMERS are looking to see if you have an online presence and lots of times, if you keep a fresh marketing edge.  Don’t disappoint them.

2.  Shoppers will browse and study product availability and features before committing.  Become an expert in your field of opportunity and INFORM before asking for the sale.

3.  Geotargeting and regional access of your site opens your market.  Invest in researching the targeting and segmentation opportunities.  Consider language translations for offers as needed.

Lead Generation

1.  Online forms and allow a great information collection channel for future customers.

2.  Whitepaper downloads and other incentives can provide your lead with the information they seek, while allowing you to understand their needs.   It also allows you to capture their information for later followup.

3.  Investing in Customer Relation Management software tools allows online leads to be worked offline for sales and conversions.

Ecommerce

1. Shopping cart improvements can ease your customer’s check out experience

2.  Properly optimized experiences allow checkout and upsell opportunities.  Invest in optimized cart experiences.

3.  Widely accepted payment portals such as Paypal and Merchant accounts give more and more online buyers confidence to buy from you and your competitors.

4.  Virtual Existence online lets you sell anywhere your site is accessible.

5.  Strategies such as drop shipping and affiliate marketing programs allow you to make money in ecommerce without full product stocking and storage.  Invest in research into opportunities like this.

6.  Full color images and videos allow a customer to peruse product offerings before purchase with a highly aesthetic experience.  Invest in good design.

7.  Adding electronic or downloadable products to your shopping suite may increase your ROI on product development.  Invest in creation of these products which may include ebooks and actual software.

8.  Strategies and support tactics such as user chat, email functions, and social networking during shopping cart experience may improve conversion experience.

9.  Post sale support and upsells can be offered in multiple ways, including email usage stimulation and sales confirmation pages.  Invest in messaging and upsell opportunities.

Analytics

1. Interactive marketing metrics can provide great information for ad spend vs. Kpi conversion decisions.

2. Analytics implementation allow for baselines to be set for key performance indicators to show improvement (hopefully) in response to marketing efforts.

3.  Pricing for Analytics packages start at FREE with robust packages like Google Analytics.

4.  Analytics allows strategic content optimization of key areas of your site.

5.  Analytics and metrics inform you of your bounce rate, time on site, number of pages viewed, referring sites, entry and exit pages, and funnel metrics important for conversions. (among other great metrics and key performance indicators)

6.  Analytics can often be combined with pre-click advertising campaigns and conversion pages in order to determine all points of improvement in a funnel’s analytics.

7.  Dashboards can be created to share with your company partners and stakeholders.

8.  Legacy statistics can be saved.  This can be helpful in case you ever decided to sell your online business.

9.  Stats can be exported to different formats for distribution, offering multiple ways to improve your online experience.

SEM/SEO/MVT & A/B Testing

1. Allows for nearly instant changes in offer, ad spend, ad positioning, and landing page experience.

2. Strategically allows A/B testing for head to head ad and landing page success.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows strategic search results for your web pages which may offer targeted and inexpensive traffic.

4.  Investing in SEO keeps your web site and ecommerce pages compliant with latest trends and helps to avoid penalties.

5.  Content.  Good content creates stickiness which keeps readers coming back to site and improves Search Engine rankings.

6.  Inbound linking opportunities drive your search engine rankings.  Investing in content increases chances that site visitors will blog and link to your content which establishes your authority.

7.  MVT & A/B testing allows live data to the success of your marketing and conversions.  Make live decisions and maximize your spend and results.

8.  Investing in Keyword Research allows you to merge search engine marketing and optimization efforts for the best experience.

Offline Integration

1. Interactive marketing allows coupling of offline actions and online experiences in measurable ways.  Offline phone calls, for example, can be tracked via 800 numbers and associated with success events.

Email Marketing

1.  Allows strategic interactive email segmentation marketing to specific demographics.

2.  Email helps to present coupons, announcements, and get site visitors back to your website or offer.

3.  Email is available on most computers and many mobile phones. MARKET MARKET MARKET.

4.  Live email marketing allows your business to offer deals based on volume and or deadlines for quantity reductions with a direct dependency on timeliness to get offer to waiting buyers.

Reputation Management

1. Advanced tools and search functions allow for Business Reputation management.  What are they saying about you?