Whilst no stranger to most of the major international markets, internet marketing (a.k.a. online marketing, digital marketing, e-marketing or web marketing) is at long last making a name for itself in South Africa, and it brings with it massive potential.
Nevertheless, many people are still uncertain as to what internet marketing actually is or how it works. In a nutshell, it builds your brand and allows people to find your website by utilising a number of different online tools. This includes Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), PPC (pay per click) ads, web PR, ORM (online reputation management), social media management, email marketing and promotions and competitions.
One of the major attractions of internet marketing is that campaigns are tailored around your specific company requirements and goals. At Lima Bean, dedicated e-marketing specialists determine (after a full website analysis) which internet marketing tools would work best for your brand, based on your current website and what you want to achieve.
Ultimately, it may not be necessary for a website to have a full 360° digital strategy, as each of the internet marketing tools mentioned above can be used as separate, independent campaigns, and you might only want to focus on certain tasks.
Another reason why internet marketing has caught on so fiercely is that it allows for highly targeted advertising. Take PPC campaigns as an example. These can be used to target literally any age group, demographic, geographic, hobby/interest, profession or income bracket. With direct marketing, you simply aren’t afforded those options.
This means that your marketing budget can be used to focus on an exact target audience, which is a lot more cost-effective than traditional marketing approaches.
If you have an online business, you’re definitely going to need internet marketing. Unfortunately, no matter how beautifully designed, functional and user friendly your website is, if people don’t know it exists, they won’t visit it. And if they don’t visit it, then you can’t expect to get business from them. Suddenly, it becomes much clearer how an effective internet marketing campaign works to drive traffic to your site and to help convert visitors into paying customers.
Added to this, internet marketing is cost-effective and extremely measurable, so you can track how each task works and performs. When you consider the fact that the vast majority of people spend time and do business online, it makes sense for you to take advantage of what this open platform can offer your business.
To give you an example of the potential of internet marketing, take a look at these ‘before and after’ metrics (taken over a period of 7 months) from South Cape Coins, one of our 360° digital strategy clients. We implemented their campaign after fully redesigning and re-developing their website.
When we started, Google Analytics showed that South Cape Coins had:
- 1,000 visits a month
- 56.5% bounce rate
- 2,800 pageviews
- 2.6 pages/visit
- An average time of 02:50 spent on the site
- 3,700 visits a month
- 40.5% bounce rate
- 14,300 pageviews
- 3,8 pages/visit
- An average time of 03:30 spent on the site