Integrated Marketing Strategies – Building and Maintaining Brand Awareness Pt 4

Your website should still be the center of your marketing efforts; however, to make this happen you now have to have a marketing plan that drives traffic to your website. How do you do this? Through a variety of tools that include some variations of the following:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Press Releases
• Social Networking
• Blogging
• Article Marketing (to include possible syndication)
• Newsletters
• Internet Advertising
• Video or Podcasting
• Viral Campaigns
• Pay per clicks
• E Books
• White papers

The key to marketing success is learning what people are looking for and where they are looking. The internet has become ubiquitous in our world. A smart marketer will build a keyword-rich webpages and websites based on those words.

The future of information marketing is in the social networks that are popping up all over the internet. Facebook, Biznik, and other networks are growing in popularity. Engaging prospects and customers on social sites has now become a critical part of a focused marketing plan.

Just because you launch an awesome site and announce it in social websites does that mean you will get the traffic you are looking for? Of course not! If only it were that simple! Planning and creating an amalgam of methods that reaches out to the world at large and begins to create an audience. Your marketing plan must:

• Catch the audience’s attention
• Generates interest
• Provides useful or helpful information that solves a specific customer problem
• Create and opportunity for your target audience to take action

One inexpensive way to do this is to create newsletters, eBooks, and white papers. But how do you get those to your audience? How do you create the audience? Through opt-in methods that are permission driven. Give them something of perceived value to get their name and email address in order to build a database of contacts. A good newsletter contains relevant information that benefits your audience. It also helps that audience to learn more about you and your company so they can build the trust required to potentially make a purchase in the future. Newsletters and eBooks help personalize your business and create a positive perception of you and your business when done well.