Corporate Internet Marketing Strategies

“Branding, branding, branding.”

Nowadays, it’s all about branding and how organizations are perceived in the minds of the consumers. True, we may not have direct retail customers, but the perception of your friend at your next social gathering when they mention your company’s name could be “Geez, they hired you?!” or “Right, whatever.”

Enter the internet. The Dot Bomb bubble crash was a classic example of a badly executed good plan. If your organization has a website, nobody ever questions ROI on that anymore. It’s like a sunk cost – nobody bothers to know whether it is going to increase goodwill or anything else of that sort.

The truth of the matter is this: if you want to generate bigger returns on the internet, you better pay closer attention to the tools that are literally at your fingertips. The main reason why many websites don’t help the marketing department is because they have never been considered “real” methods of driving traffic.

Let’s demolish some of those myths…

Your website holds the key to whether or not you get ranked on major search engines in the world, and therefore your branding hangs in the balance!

A corporate website is nothing unless it is placed within the first page in a keyword category on the search engines. Known as search engine results pages or SERPS, these rankings determine your branding capabilities online. Imagine if Pepsi came in ranked #1 above Coca-Cola for the keyword “best aerated drink”, what might happen? Or what could go wrong if you had a strategy to improve rankings to a higher level than your next competitor. What could that do for your sales?

The process of increasing website traffic to corporate websites is this: you need a functional website with more than just a page talking about yourself. It needs interactivity, tools and capabilities that users benefit from. That way, you get bookmarked and mentioned in other people’s blogs or websites. When that happens, a peculiar thing to most corporate marketers, known as link popularity, increases. The more links from other people to your site ends up improving your search engine rankings, thereby driving people to find you more easily on places like Yahoo or Google.

In addition, the research done on keywords will determine what is of strategic importance for an organization. Just because you have a handful keywords does not mean translate into immediate results. You need to be able to determine if the keywords are viable or not. This takes some professional input.

For instance, the keyword “internet marketing Singapore” is dominated by me. For a more competitive keyword, “internet marketing strategy”, I am still listed on page one, but it fluctuates, based on the level of search engine optimization work that I do. The aim is to increase search engine traffic so that I get more visitors to my site.

In addition, you might wonder why I don’t just focus on a much broader keyword “internet marketing”. That’s because this term is even more competitive, and will take a far longer (anything between 2-3 years and a lot more expense) period of time to optimize. I’d rather spend just a few days optimizing a key phrase that gives me 100 targeted customers (who will return) than a few months optimizing one that gives me 1000 non-targeted visitors (who will NOT return).

More visitors, more profiling, more statistics and much more useful information to cater to my next marketing move.

The costs of search engine optimization will depend on your objectives, and needs sustenance just like any marketing initiative. Keeping this over time will then give you an edge over other competitors who have no concept of internet marketing and online branding.

For more information about how your organization can benefit from online branding efforts and for a customized plan, please contact us for a more detailed discussion at 62740105.