Marketing the new dot-coms

Internet advertising is the best option for an online business to attract people to the website, but offline or traditional advertising is essential for building and sustaining credibility. People need to see you in the physical world in order to trust your brand, understand your value proposition and know that you will deliver. By "pushing" your online business to the right target audience and remaining top-of-mind, you will be successful in "pulling" them back to your Web site.

For dot coms to be successful online they need a valid business case and must intimately know the market that they are selling their products or services to. It's not a matter of simply having a web presence and "being out there"; it's a question of adopting an aggressive go-to-market strategy that remains competitive. The challenge for dot coms is to ensure that their website address is associated to a product or service offering of choice.

It's important that dot coms measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and the online medium makes reporting possible. The best way to measure the success of a particular campaign is to report on the number of unique visitors or sales on your website, as opposed to page impressions, page hits and other metrics. There are many tools available on the Net for you to develop your own reporting capability.

Here are a few useful guidelines to help dot coms become more successful online:

-- Use the full name of your business in your Web site address, for example www.digitalplanet.co.za and not www.dp.co.za. This is part of building your online brand.

-- Include your Web site address in all marketing collateral and communications.
Pay attention to the look and feel of your website as first impressions and ease-of-navigation will determine whether a visitor converts to a customer. For what "not" to do on your Web site, visit www.webpagesthatsuck.com.

-- Cater to some extent for the individual. One-to-one marketing is often limited by factors such as privacy. Try to address these and push relevant information to the right people who have given their permission to receive your communications.

-- Be ready to interact with your customers online and offline. A telephone number for customer queries is essential. Follow up on all queries within 24 hours.

Should you go the DIY route? This is a key question you need to address as it forms part of the "working smart" equation. In my opinion, if your website is your business, that is, if you manage a virtual business and your homepage is the door to your value proposition, then keep your web development and hosting in-house as constant innovation will be key. If your website is an additional business channel to your existing infrastructure and web development is not your core focus, then I suggest you outsource to a reputable supplier who understands your business and the objectives of having a website.

Having a website is an ongoing challenge and it will never be 100 percent complete. Invest in the right people to manage your online business and be prepared to upskill and change your Web site look and feel on a regular basis.

Internet business in South Africa is still relatively young compared to the rest of the world, but there is huge potential for dot coms. Some companies are currently doing significant online transactions and with the increased adoption of online banking and consumer confidence levels rising, we can only look forward to driving those product volumes!