To get the best results from your efforts, marketing your business should include both random and Targeted Online Marketing techniques. There is no one method that will guarantee an increase in traffic and conversions, but it is always best to take an approach that integrates several different online marketing strategies.
Take a look at this overview of the methods and benefits you can gain from each.
Targeted Online Marketing
When you market to a targeted group, you are seeking customers who have already shown in an interest in your products or services. These might be people who belong to particular organisations, who have asked for further information, or who are searching for a specific item.
The benefit to this type of marketing is that when the customer reaches your site, they are there for a reason. All you have to do is convince your target market to buy from your company instead of your competitor’s. Obviously this requires less time and effort as half the battle is already won. And targeted traffic is more likely to result in a conversion.
There are many ways to use Targeted Online Marketing. A pay per click campaign is one; it allows you to bid on the most important keywords for your enterprise and place an ad that appears when someone enters those words in a search engine. You can increase your click-through rate by offering a free trial, or some other freebie such as a report or e-book. Optimise your landing pages so that they are directly correlated with the keywords.
Joint ventures are another very effective form of targeted marketing. It is easy to find a number of related websites whose owners may be interested in a joint campaign. Sharing efforts and traffic cuts down on personal time and effort.
Try posting articles on relevant topics not only on your site or blog, but at others. There are lots of free places where you can post your content. You can also contact blog owners and ask them to be featured as a guest poster. Either way, you are placing links where your target market is likely to be visiting.
Random Online Marketing
Marketing randomly can be less effective, but it does provide additional ways for potential customers to find you and your products. With random marketing, you are basically taking your online advertising and throwing it out to a large population of internet users, hoping that a few of them will be interested in your offerings.
Anything you do to promote your business outside of a venue your target market is known to frequent can be considered random marketing. Blog commenting on posts of unrelated content, links in your email signature line, business cards you hand out to new acquaintances – all of these are good marketing ideas that may or may not reach a targeted audience.
Posting a video on YouTube is a random online marketing effort that could gain some good results. Because the site is so popular, you increase your chances of the content being viewed by someone who becomes interested in your company. Don’t forget to categorise and tag your video appropriately so you’ll be found in the search engines.
Social networking is another form of random marketing but tagging does make it a bit more targeted if you try to SEOize your social networking. Use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others to post messages about your products or services. Again, it will be viewed by lots of people – not necessarily your target market, but it increases exposure and could go viral with SEO attributes.
A well-rounded marketing campaign will include both random and Targeted Online Marketing techniques (obviously more targeted ones than random ones, though). This will gain your business the greatest degree of exposure and ensure both traffic and the conversion rate increase.
About Sean Rasmussen
I can see how both forms of marketing can be beneficial. It is all about having a well rounded marketing plan
Hi Sean,
I’ve spent most of my time trying to do targeted online marketing. I have done some of the random online marketing. Obviously the targeted marketing brings me more of the visitors who are naturally interested in what I do.
Still, I kind of like the surprises that you get with random marketing. When you use these techniques you never know who will show up at your site. I find that some of these visitors will like my site and become repeat visitors. I think sometimes it’s good to cast a wide net and see what you catch.
I don’t think you lose those lovely surprises when you use targeted marketing. People still surf and come up with sites at random. My gardening site gets natural traffic daily and it is nothing to do with my articles and other marketing etc.
I can see the benefits of doing both targeted and random online marketing.
I feel that I would prefer targeted marketing as a beginner as I am concentrating on creating a niche market.
There is good information here if I want to try random marketing at a later stage. Thank you.
A side benefit of targeted marketing is that as the site gets more traffic and higher page ranking through your SEO, the natural traffic also rises. Such searchers are not as ready to buy, but some will be open minded as they be looking for a specific solution, rather than just doing random checking.