 | | | |  | April 15, 2005 | | By: Louise Rijk - Bio - Blog |
|
| | | | |
| | | | | Search Engine Marketing & Email Marketing | |
The Dynamic Duo That Helps You Meet Your Acquisition and Retention Goals
 No one can question the success and growth of Search Engine Marketing, but you might want to think twice before relying on it 100%. Just as in the world of stocks, diversification is critical to successfully marketing your business. Search Engine Marketing is proven as an effective acquisition tool. Yet relying solely on Search Engine Marketing neglects the all-important customer retention piece of a business' strategy. Email marketing can strike a balance between two all-important business builders - customer acquisition and customer retention.
Using Search Engine Marketing to Get More Customers
When you need to get more customers, Search Engine Marketing delivers. Not only has a complete new industry grown up around search engine optimization and paid search engine management, but online marketing research firms Forester Research and Piper Jaffray continue to report ever-growing revenue forecasts for search engine marketing services. The forecasts don't lie, as proven by plenty of customer ROI success stories.
The success formula is a simple one: Top Web site page rankings in the search listings at major search engines are directing highly qualified traffic to Web site landing pages. A consumer who lands on a Web site page has a need for a product or service related to the keyword they performed a search for - it's a marketer's dream. The flipside is, once a business gets these new customers, what is it doing to keep them?
Any Marketing 101 class will tell you that it costs much more time, money, and effort to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Rather than continue to pay for that same customer finding you through the search engines, you have an easy, inexpensive tool in at your disposal - email. Much maligned Email Marketing can help you keep - and even cross-sell and up-sell - the customers that you attract via Search Engine Marketing.
Email Is a Low-Cost Customer Retention Tool
Ironically, as Search Engine Marketing has exploded, Email Marketing has lost much of its appeal as a customer acquisition tool largely because of spam concerns. Dismissing Email Marketing as an important piece of your marketing strategy is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Without Email Marketing to support your acquisition efforts, you're turning your back on a big opportunity. Once online consumers have found a Web site and made a purchase, you don't want them to search for your product or services again - it's too costly for you.
Building A Relationship With Your Customer Leads to Repeat Business
This can be avoided by getting permission to capture a customer's email address while he/she is going through your site and ultimately making a transaction so that you can use it in the future. This is relatively simple to do - prompt your customers to give you their email addresses by offering information about value-added services and future money-saving offers in return. If that's inappropriate for your business, simply add an extension to the purchase confirmation message expressing your hope that they are enjoying the new product and mention that there is no need to search for your product/service any longer, as you have everything they need to support a new purchase.
After paying to get that customer to your site and make a purchase, stay in touch with him/her via email. Building a relationship with your customers via email can encourage repeat visits, repeat purchases, and repeat referrals. A customer with whom you have a relationship is likely to remain a loyal customer.
Combining Search Engine Marketing with Email Marketing is a cost-effective one-two punch that'll have your business thriving. Search Engine Marketing provides you with efficient, cost-effective customer acquisition while Email Marketing can help you hold onto those customers and get more business from them. Not only does this save you a lot of money in the short term, but it'll grow your customer base to profitable proportions in the long run.
| | | | |  | | If you would like more information about Search Engine Marketing & Email Marketing, please fill out the form below: |  |
| |
|
 |
|
| | Copyright © 1999-2005. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
251 West Central St., Natick, MA 01760, USA
Tel: 508-647-5151 Fax: 508-647-5150
E-mail: info@advmediaproductions.com | | | | |
|
|