The emergence of the Internet has brought many new challenges and opportunities for marketers. The success of businesses is no longer completely reliant on word-of-mouth and print advertising. Instead, today's business owners understand that the Internet is here to stay and in order to be successful in today's competitive environment it is essential to have a well-thought out online marketing plan.
There are many companies who specialize in Internet marketing and assisting organizations to develop their message, devise their online marketing plans, and implement them. My company, The NPD Group, has been working with one of these companies - Prime Visibility - for a few months. Our main goal is to improve our Internet presence, and more specifically, our search engine optimization. In one of our initial meetings, Prime Visibility provided us with some statistics that I found interesting and relevant to the question at hand:
• Over 2 billion searches occur on the Internet each day
• 93% of users go to search engines
• 95% of users don't go beyond page 3 during a keyword search
In other words, if your company is not showing up on those first 3 pages, then your competitors are...and you very well could be losing customers simply because you do not have an efficient Internet marketing strategy in place. According to a study conducted by Intellisurvey, Inc., paid placement and organic search engine optimization are the advertising/marketing vehicles that provide the highest return on investment, followed by email marketing.
Many businesses are very careful when it comes to spending marketing dollars, but the truth is most businesses have neglected the most effective marketing tool that they have which is the strategic planning of their Internet presence. I have no doubt that investing in an Internet marketing strategy is worth the money and I look forward to seeing how NPD's plan pays off in the future. Has your company spent enough time thinking about its online presence?
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