Four Steps towards a successful e-Marketing campaign... by John Frey

The world-wide web evolution has opened new opportunities and horizons for small business owners as well as entrepreneurs, to ensure success and longevity of their businesses and to leverage relations with their clients.

An entity as resourceful as Internet seems overwhelming, at first, when you decide to put together a website for your business. You "Google"... search around and, finally, decide that you want a flashy website because you are too excited to have an online presence. Then, without any planning, you hire this really expensive firm to design your dream website for you. Finally, you do have an enticing website but you realize that this website has nothing to do with your business and, unfortunately, you are out of budget as well. Your dreams are shattered. You can't launch a marketing campaign to promote your business online because you don't have an online identity and any other resources.

Everyday, history repeats itself because we don't take these four steps, which may change our business's destiny, before creating an online corporate presence:

1. Identify your Niche

First of all, you need to define your target demographics. To create a dominant brand identity, you need to know who your potential audience is. After you have defined your prospective customers, you need to classify the associations and networks they are involved in. For instance, if you are selling baby diapers, your target audience is not those babies but their parents. It is evident that the key to a successful brand is a user-centric product/service.

2. Set Realistic Goals

Now, it's the right time to set your priorities and define your business goals because you have identified your potential customers and defined your brand identity. For example, if I run a real estate agency in UAE, I will jot down all the requirements and the features I would want in my website. I want my website in both Arabic and English because after identifying my target audience; I know that my potential clients are native Arabs and most of them do not use English in their daily routines.

When you set your goals, you can easily lead yourself on the pathway to an online business success and your product/service is transitioned from "nice-to-have" to a necessity.

3. Plan a Budget for Website Design, Development and e-Marketing

The third step towards a successful e-marketing campaign is setting up a budget for operating and advertising. You need to distribute your funds, for all activities, according to your business goals. For example, if you need an e-learning website, it involves extensive development and, therefore, you need to locate more funds for the website development process. However, you need to make sure that you don't use all your funds in the prior two activities, website design and development, but leave appropriate funds for your e-marketing campaign, as well.

4. Devise an e-Marketing Strategy

Your journey to a thriving e-marketing campaign does not just end here. If you put the right amount of technological flavour into creativity; you can take your business from scratch to success and the first three steps are the building blocks for devising a successful e-marketing campaign.

Your promotional strategy should depend on your prospective customers, your business needs and your budget. For instance, if you're target audience is youth; you need to market your brand on blogs, forums and social networks. Moreover, if you have adequate budget for advertising, you should use PPC/CPC ads for your brand promotional campaign. However, if you have limited e-marketing budget, then you can SEO your website to win sales.

Therefore, when you formulate a strategy to endorse your product/service, you need to ensure that all the building blocks are in place and your campaign is relevant to your business aspirations and clients. Aaron Wall rightly said,

"A strong foundation increases the value of everything you do."