Business to Consumer E-Commerce…..

E-Marketing

Marketing is the effort of promoting goods and services and trying to sell them. It’s about trying to draw attention to your company’s products and services, to convince people to purchase them, and to turn first time purchasers into repeat purchasers.
The tools and techniques available to promote your website and products include:

- Online marketing tools;
- Search engine;
- Email promotion;
- Offline marketing activities.
All of these have a role to play and the optimum solution will probably employ a mix of them.

Domain names

Domain names are an enormous help in the branding of a company. Your domain name should be easy to remember, easy to spell, and should represent what your company is all about. If it is not found or remembered quickly, then potential customers will surf elsewhere and possibly find your competition. So it is essential to spend some time choosing the domain name that really reflects the business.

Getting the right domain name is also important in terms of branding the company. Research has shown that Internet users are busy and prefer to use a known brand as a short cut to obtain the goods and services they want as quickly as possible. Good brand names suggest something about the product and should help differentiate the product from competitors. The domain name should help to reinforce the brand and should, ideally, be short, memorable and easy to spell.


Online Marketing

There are a range of different tools and techniques available to enable you to undertake online marketing campaigns. Some of the most common that we will review in this section are:

- Banner adverts;
- Affiliate programs;
- Viral marketing;
- Exploiting newsgroups.


Search Engines

A search engine indexes pages automatically by using software known as spiders that explore the web and collect keyword information, which they store in huge databases. They potentially give a higher ranking to websites which have taken into consideration the needs of search engines in their structure and content;

Email Marketing

Email is the online equivalent of direct mail advertising. However email has at least three significant advantages over direct mail:
- There are no postal charges;
- It can easily provide more detailed information by directing recipients to the corporate website;
- It can be automatically individualized for specific users.


Marketing Overseas

The Internet offers companies large and small the opportunity to trade and compete in a global marketplace. However, before considering how to promote your offerings in other countries you need to have considered a variety of issues including logistics, trade laws, customs requirements, taxes, accepting payments etc.

Offline Marketing

Just as with online marketing, the goal of offline marketing is to attract visitors to your website. However, in this instance, there is not the scope for providing automatic hyperlinks that will direct visitors seamlessly to the site.
So, the focus of offline marketing has to be very firmly on promoting your web address. By highlighting the products and services you offer or the quality of the content, you are seeking to encourage the web user to log-on and type in your URL.
A major element of your offline marketing activity, therefore, is to incorporate your URL in all of your customer-facing literature. The URL should appear with just the same frequency as your company address and telephone number. Examples include:

- Letterheads;
- Business cards;
- Company brochures;
- Sales proposals;
- Details on the side of your company vehicles.