NETWORK AND CYBER MARKETING
8.8 STEPS TO MAKE BETTER CYBER MARKETING
1. Analyze your business: As with any marketing venture, you have to nail down your objective: What are you selling and how are you selling it? We ask ourselves, what's our business? What do we do here? How do we do this? What do our customers ask for and what do we do for them on a daily basis? Once the self-analysis was complete; further, look into with two key questions. How can we use the Internet to do, in a more cost- effective way, something we are already doing? And what are we not doing that the Internet might help accomplish? The great danger for someone starting down this road is in thinking that by leveraging the
Internet, they're going to become a dot com. Instead, the attitude should be that the Web is just one channel among many that can help a firm do what it does better.
2. Hire a professional: The default thinking on launching a new business seems to be: start small and work up. But when it comes to the Web, that thinking will yield approximately the same result as setting up an office in a trailer in Citibank's parking lot. When you get on the Web, your competitors are the big guys. If you have a skimpy, amateurish website, you don’t just suffer by comparison; you’re aced out by comparison.
Therefore you have hire professional to upto date you information on your website.
3. Avoid brochure-ware and cheap, non-interactive designs: Web designers come in may shapes and price ranges. It is advised that hiring can be done as much sophistication as you can afford. All the financial service expertise in the world won’t make up for a substandard site.
4. Keep it simple: Once your website is up, test its usability early and often.
This doesn’t require a high-tech eye-scan lab to see where surfers rest their gaze first. It doesn’t even require a focus group. Simply parade people into your office, watch them surf your site and ask them what they think. Are they satisfied with the site’s speed and order? Is the layering logical, or do they have to click through 10 levels of sediment to find gold? Are the types of data on your site the kinds they’d hoped to find? Monitoring usability can help ensure your site doesn’t become a digital ghost town.
5. Focus on service: Each of above aspects must be considered. Customer service became a big focus for us. Before launching a website you must be consider host of features it calls “view and do”, e.g. in insurance business,
“View” features include enabling clients to check the status of their own products-account balances, policy designations and the like. “Do” features are transactional, such as changing an address, changing investments in an annuity and changing fund allocation, have not only improved customer service, but have also made the firm’s advisors more efficient. “Since we’re leaving our low emotion/high transaction services to the Internet, our advisors are no longer functioning as data providers, instead, they are becoming a client’s point of contact for more emotional decisions including buying additional services insurance. Therefore, we have to focus on service.
6. Keep it fresh: Before you leap into digital marketing, remember that today’s Internet isn’t the Internet of the mid-1990s. Surfers will not put up with static sites or those that change only once in a while. Access to an ever- changing content mix is critical. What people don’t appreciate is that putting up a website is simple.” But keeping it populated with interesting content is a nightmare. It is advised that partnership with other firms and services that can keep content fresh. Ready allies come in many shapes and sizes, but look first at those companies whose products you sell.
Mutual fund companies and insurers often publish Web content they’re willing to share in the form of how-to articles, advice and analysis. In
addition, news and information services add snap and currency to a site.
The more information a site offers, the more choices are available to the customer, but another reason for varying and cycling through fresh content: diversity of opinion. As an advisor, you have to make available various opinions from various sources, “that way, clients can be assured you’ve had the advantage of comparing opinions, as opposed to just promoting your own agenda.
7. Integrate your message: Once you’ve launched a website, you should mention it in all your marketing material, from business cards to brochures to stationary. But you also need to view your site as an extension of your marketing message. Are you running year-end print or broadcast ads?
Update your Web content to match. Have you added a new fund or insurance product to your offerings? Add them to your site. As you fine- tune your marketing message, make sure you update your website.
These steps will helps you launch or fine-tune your cyber-marketing efforts.
Generally it is observed that “the best sites are not those that are the most complicated, but those that deliver what the customer needs.”