Introduction
Marketing and promotion is the key aspect that maintains the company. Many companies have struggled in coming up with different means of advertise, promoting their products and making more and more people aware of the company. The website or the online marketing refers to the use of internet capability to induce a response from a certain target group. The website marketing and promotion is often used by companies that sell goods and services direct to customers and those who operate in the business-to-business structure (Cateora & Graham 1999). This duty of advertising the company is left to the marketing and promotion department in many companies. Promotion and marketing is very sensitive aspect in the company for it to survive the strict competition that is currently in existence in the world. The market structure, which companies are facing, is the perfect competitive market structure (Bly 2009). Under perfect competitive market structure, firms are free to enter and leave the companies at will. In addition, firms produce homogenous product and hence the harsh competition among different products produced by various firms. Many companies produce a product that is the close substitute or even complementary of other products. This and many other situations necessitate the need of the proper and vigorous marketing and promotion; otherwise the company will close down. In addition, the increase in cross-border trades, globalization of many business transactions and expansion of foreign direct investments has made it hard for many businesses to run. The companies and other business enterprises are left with the option of developing innovative means and ways through which they will be able to market and promote their products and services (Bly 2009). There are many different methods of marketing and promotion, but some are more effective than others. In the search and quest for an alternative method of marketing and promotion, the companies have been dealing with conventional methods that include the use of newspapers, magazines and other methods which are quite unaware of the benefits that accrue when using the website or internet advertising. This essay will focus on the website advertising as one of marketing and promotion methods (Cateora & Graham 1999).
Significance of Website Marketing and Promotion
The website marketing or simply the e-marketing and promotion is the most current and effective way to promote products of the company and be able to make the public aware of the functioning of the company. The e-marketing and promotion is able to allow the company to be at the new and best levels of success. Many companies have raised their standards from very small businesses into thriving business enterprises. Many companies have used the internet to develop the company and be able to interact with many customers and other business enterprises that enable the company to be able to thrive. Social interaction of a company with other companies enables the managers to improve their marketing methods and strategies to produce their products in a better way (Kolb 2006).
Types of Online Promotion and their Importance
Online promotion and marketing of the business are of a different kind and different businesses will embrace different methods depending on the nature of the company and other factors. Domain name is the first method that is commonly used by many companies. The website marketing and promotion will be of great advantage to the company if it has a memorable website address (Kimmel 2005). Many business enterprises will use their name and product as their domain name, for instance, ford.com and others. Many other businesses make some terms or words that are easy to remember, for example British Gas. In addition, some companies use words as their brand name that is not related to their business in any way, for example egg.com.This website has helped the company to advertise its service so much. It is therefore of great importance for the company to come up with website that will be easy for interested or potential customers to make use of it.
Business enterprise should either come up with best website design or hire experts to do the same (Kimmel 2005). Some nations or countries have very strict measures relating to registration of domains names, while others have relaxed rules concerning the same. Another major method of online or website marketing and promotion is the search engine. This is usually used by many potential or interested parties to access the company’s website. One of the search engines is Google. Google, as one of the search engines, index websites depending on the number of other websites or persons who may decide to optimize his or her website to enable it to move up in the ranking position. When companies or business enterprises come up with their enterprises, it is easy to give these websites a particular domain name and other details, like the search engine Google (Kimmel 2005). The search engine will enable people interested in the company to be able to get the website with a lot of ease. Sometimes putting these issues in the search engine is a tall order; however, it is worth because it has no cost online or online registration which takes just a few minutes. The company will also need to keep updating the information once and again to keep their customers updated. In addition, some companies have bought particular software that enables them to promote their website via search engine on their own (Cockrum 2011).
The use of search engine is described as the fast growing and expanding method of marketing and promotion. It is estimated, that income and sales have increased from 1% in comparison to the overall income from the online advertising in 2000 to almost 50% in 2009. The method is the most effective way of marketing and promotion because it can capture a large number of both customers and potential clients. Search engine types of products’ promotion are organized into two ways (Standring 2006). These are the paid inclusion and the keyword advertising. In the keyword advertising, business people will purchase keywords via bidding process. In this situation, whenever a person opens the net to search for a certain word, the company’s advertisement appears within the page. The adverts may appear as text on the right side of display or as a list on top of the page. The third and the most important method of website marketing and promotion is the price comparison website. This kind of marketing and promotion is focused on the approach. Companies make use of the price comparison websites because they offer competitive price. The person using the internet will always be directed to the business or enterprise website and be charged for the click through that website. The fourth method of the online or website marketing and promotion is the use of viral marketing. Viral marketing involves the use of information to alert the potential customers (Kolb 2006).
Companies make use of emails and send messages to the customers or to specific target groups. Assumption of the business enterprise or company is that the customers, once they get the message, will be able to forward the information to their friends (Bly 2009). The same assumption is held when sending the message to the target group. In many instances the company will ensure that those emails are accompanied by some information about offer, animation or any other things that will make the potential customer get interested. Another marketing and promotion method is the use of banners, spotlights, pop-ups and sponsored links (Onkvisit & Shaw 2004). This is simply done by promoting website via another website. These, in most cases, are the advertisements that once the internet user clicks on them open a new browser to target the website for instance the Google is able to advertise some companies’ websites, once the Google user clicks on it, it may open another website for the company This kind of advertising is often interactive by nature and more often it is connected to some kind of incentive to click the site. Mainly the reward for this kind of advertisement is linked to the page impression. This means that the payment is made based on the number of customers who see the advert on the website. The payments are sometimes also made on the basis of the clicks through. This means the reward is lined on the number of internet users who click the link (Charles 2007). In fact, much of the revenue of the search engine Google normally earns their income via these methods.
Many companies make use of website marketing and promotion to be able to market the company as well as the products of the company. More often than not, sales of the company increase and cost of the production goes down. In addition, the business enterprise becomes well known by many customers and hence develops mass support. The use of the website marketing and promotion brings along many advantages that companies cannot be willing to miss out (Cockrum 2011). The method in most cases is cost effective and is able to endure marketing strategies. The use of the website in promotion has become the largest method in buying the products to most of the customers. In most cases the customers will hate the business situation where they queue to be served or where they will have too much of a hassle to get the products or services they want. They prefer hassle free transactions and internet is able to offer such kind of service (Onkvisit & Shaw 2004). Therefore, website marketing has become the best selling point to most business enterprises. The use of website marketing is the cost effective way for many companies. For instance, the use of website promotion and marketing allows a company to create marketing channels or even provide better and faster means to access the products and other services by customers (Barrow 2008).This is clear from the banking sector, for example Barclays banks advertise its products via their website, the bank has been able to maintain its customers despite the harsh competition in the banking sector. The use of website marketing and promotion, unlike other forms of marketing and promotion, presents the benefit of cutting down the budget and also reduce the storage cost. This is so clear, especially when compared with other methods that involve printing of brochures, publicizing through television or even manning a call centre. Another major advantage of using website marketing and promotion is the market penetration aspect (Plumley 2011).
Many people visit the internet in search of a certain product or service or sometimes even in just a search of information concerning certain product or service. Business enterprise may enter the market at a fraction of cost of other methods of marketing and promotion. The use of website for marketing enables the company to work 24/7. In addition, the use of website marketing creates more visible situation for business enabling the company to increase the number of customers at very low cost. In earlier situations, it was not so easy for upcoming business to be able to interact with many potential customers all over the world and compete favourably with other companies without aspects of incurring the cost of infrastructure and other marketing costs (Kotler 2002). The company using the website marketing strategy is able to save on cost and enjoy instant communication, for example Toyota company uses its website to advertise new models of Toyota vehicles, a good case is the introduction of the new model of the Toyota premio.This model was advertised via the website and many of the website visitor got attracted and the sale of the model is very high. Through the use of emails, the company is able to communicate instantly to the customers regardless of the place of the customer, whether he just across the street or from another country of the globe. This simply means that any small business is able to gain competitive advantage over other companies through the use of website marketing and promotion method (Holden 2008). Many companies have resulted into the use of blogs and pop-ups in conjunction with other internet or website to get in touch with customers and other potential targets groups concerning the new product or service introduced. The advantage of this aspect can be analyzed in two ways. One is that marketers are able to increase their awareness for new products and also strengthen relationship the company has with its customers. Furthermore, the website has an advantage that its content is timeless (Charles 2007). The use of internet to market and promote the product and service for the company gives benefits of enduring. It is important to note that without taking into consideration the dates and also prices, the content of websites of online marketing and promotion will remain very valid (Plumley 2011).
The use of website in marketing and promotion of the company products and services has also the advantage in that it is possible to have the real time statistics for measuring success of promotion campaigns. Success of the company by virtues of the website use in the marketing and promotion of the company’s products and services, it is important to note that it is possible to measure success. The marketers are able to apply tools that will enable them to have real time statistics and hence they will be able to evaluate efficiency of the promotion campaign. More so, the company is able to work out the best thing that will work for the company’s product and hence enable the changes on time (Hackley 2010). The use of the website for promotion and marketing of the company’s products and services enables the company to save in time. This is because the company is able to cut short the expenses for promotion of the products and services like counselling on the product use and benefits and also service information and sales administration (Galvin & O'Connor 2001). Another advantage of the website marketing and promotion is the possibility to get faster response to the marketers and also the end user. The users of the products are able to communicate their findings about products. The use of website for marketing and promotion enables the company to be able to increase possibilities of the market through personalization (Holden 2008). After the continued buying of the company’s commodities, the user may end becoming loyal to the products and brand of the company. Furthermore, the use of the website to market and promote the company’s product increases interaction of the customers with the company’s sales personnel (Hackley 2010).