Web Marketing Terms

Marketing - Marketing is the effort put forth to promote and sell a product or service to targeted customers. Marketing can take the form of product promotion by means of email, postal mail, radio or TV advertising, affiliate marketing, direct face to face communication, partnering, infomercial, and many other methods. The key thing to remember is that no product will sell without proper promotion & marketing. Which method works best is a matter of skill set, available marketing funds and characteristics particular to the product. I.E (selling coal to the energy industry would require different marketing techniques than what would be used for selling iPods to teenagers).

Landing Page - A landing page is an internet web page of which potential customers are directed to from paid advertising, email marketing or print advertising. Landing pages are carefully designed and developed to convert a visitor into a paying customer. As an example of where a landing page might be used is in the case where a customer is looking for a specific product. If your site sells 10 products you don't want to direct the customer to the home page, rather it would be most beneficial to send the customer to the page that promotes the product they are looking for.

Organic Search - Organic search is a term used to describe the natural search results of a keyword when using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo or any of the others. This also implies the search was a non-fee based search and the results of the search are natural to the order of fair search engine placement.

Organic Link - An organic link is a link to a website that is established without having any association to the linked website. What this means is that a webmaster thought the content or subject matter of a given website us so important that an unsolicited, unreciprocated link to that website is made. (I.E. I find a website that I like so much that I am inspired to create a link from my site to the other of my own free will).

Traffic - Traffic refers to the flow of human visitors to a website. Just like any brick and mortar retail store, traffic is essential to the success of the business. The higher the traffic level of human visitors to a website, the better the chance of making a sell of a product or service.

Page Rank - Page Rank is a numeric value ( 0 - 10) assigned to a web page that represents how important that page is on the web. Google figures when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's rank from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is taken into account when a page's Page Rank is calculated.

Affiliates - Affiliates are those internet based businesses that promote and market another internet businesses product or service. This is done by direct referral and or providing a link from the affiliate website to the original product or service website. Usually the affiliate is rewarded with a percentage share of the sale price.

Blog - A blog is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, personal opinion, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. Readers can leave comments or additional commentary in an interactive format.

PPC - Pay per click (PPC) advertising refers to advertising on Internet search engines. You pay a PPC service to have your ad appear when a chosen keyword or phrase is searched. Typically you are charged a fixed amount each time a shopper clicks your ad. The price of a PPC ad is usually determined by the competitiveness of the keywords you choose and importance of the search engine on which it appears. The ads normally appear under a heading such as “Sponsored Links” and in many cases are those ads you see lined up on the right side of search result pages.

Customer List - A customer list is as you might expect, a list of all your customers and potential customers. This list contains at a minimum the name and email address of a person (customers past, present and future) but can contain any and all normal contact or demographic information that is available. This list of persons becomes an active group of which you target with email marketing campaigns. You should actively pursue building a customer list on a daily basis.

One of the accepted methods of obtaining names and email addresses is by Opt-In requests made on your site. Always ask visitors to Opt-In to your mailing list. There are many tactics when it comes to using Otp-In functions and of course you must be aware of spamming laws. Here's a hint to improve your Opt-In success rate, offer for free something of real value relevant to your sites subject matter.

Spam - Spam is unsolicited email sent from businesses or individuals to promote products, services or personal agendas. Spam email often gets confused with mass emailing sent by legitimate businesses to advertise their products or sales to people who have given permission to use their email address. A Web site owner or business person needs to understand how to abide by spam laws when sending mass emails. If you are going to engage in sending emails to promote your business, sell services or products then you need to make yourself knowledgeable of existing spam laws. Yes there are laws and people have gone to jail for violating these laws.

Email Marketing - (Thought to be spam by many) Is the permission based promotion of products or services via email.

As much as we all dislike receiving marketing email, unfortunately, (fortunately for the internet business person) it is here to stay. When done properly by following established spam laws and proper marketing techniques, email marketing will lead to increased sales, greater profits and will be a service rather than a bother to the recipient.

There are many applications available for operating Email Marketing including Express Email Marketing provided by the Web Hosting Goods Store. Others worth checking out are:

XMailPro - Feature packed low cost Email Marketing application.

AWeber - Great features and service for the price.