E-Marketing the Internet Has Not

E-Marketing

The Internet has not just changed but revolutionized the design and implementation of marketing strategies. This dynamic Internet technology provides marketers with efficient and powerful methods of designing, promoting, and distributing products, conducting research, and gathering market information. Internet marketing has resulted in strategies that promote a product or service over the Internet. These strategies also include web site design and content, search engine optimization, directory submissions, reciprocal linking strategies, online advertising techniques, and email marketing etc. "Successful marketing executives will have to take an entirely new approach to business in the 21st century as consumers become more connected to the Information Age, predicts the Robicheaux, professor of retailing and director of the Hess Institute for Retailing Development, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Simply, all the stuff that used to be important may become relatively meaningless" ('Successful Marketing', 2000).

An organization willing to use ecommerce models for implementation of their own business must also look at the examples of other businesses in the same category as well as other relevant categories. The good example for a whole mortgage industry would be Loancity.com. "An organization can, learn much from the tools and techniques others have used to "get there" quickly. These can include, strategies, processes, marketing and sales programs, Web sites, branding, acquisitions, and hiring programs. In doing so, a business also must recognize the difference between deliverables that occur because someone transported the organization there, and those that an organization brought directly upon itself. There is always something to be learned from studying the winners" (Cunningham, 2001).

Advertising Model

Email, chat, forums, auctions etc. are ways in which advertising model of e-marketing works. Businesses are marketing their products and services online using these Internet tools like websites, search engine optimization, banner advertising and email marketing proving to be a time and cost saving supplement to the overall marketing processes.

Organizations now can imagine reaching a wider audience with their product or service, quickly measuring the results of their marketing efforts, and having the ability to readily and cost-effectively adapt to changes in the marketplace, all with the click of a mouse. The power of the Internet on the business of marketing is growing appreciably with each passing year, as more businesses go online, and Internet sales revenues augment. No other communication medium would allow operating a business out of the basement, yet appearing to the world as though it were a much larger operation, with a number of employees. Print marketing materials and advertising strategies can be expensive to produce and traditionally have a short shelf-life. Internet marketing techniques can be produced at a reasonable cost, can contain more timely information than print brochures can hold, and can be immediately and cost-effectively updated as business changes. "On the Internet, companies can test advertising banners on a variety of sites at relatively little cost and continue with the most-effective ones. It is possible for companies to manage this feedback process themselves, but a number of entrepreneurial firms have sprung up to provide this and related services, including complete automation of the backroom sales process" (Mack, 2000).

Designing and building a website is only one feature of bringing one's business online. With billions of websites on the Internet, it's just as important to ensure that people can find the website of a particular company which in this case would be wholesale mortgage company. And, since most website traffic still comes from search engines and directories 98% of Internet users claim they use search engines regularly. Hence, mortgage companies should start with search engine optimization as a first step to Internet marketing. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo index billions of web pages and rank them for Internet users according to complex algorithms which relate to a page's accessibility, how relevant a page appears in relation to topical search terms or keywords, and how many other sites on the Internet deem a page important by linking to it. In addition to optimizing the website and driving traffic through search engines, wholesale mortgage consider advertising on third party websites and in search engines using a combination of banner advertisements and text links.

Graphical banner advertisements, pop-ups and text based ads are online ads that are placed on third party websites, linking back to a website is another way of using emarketing. The ads are designed to encourage users to click through to a site to learn more and ultimately, to buy. These ads can be set up for a fee pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or they can be part of a reciprocal ad exchange with an online 'partner', where one can place a partner's ad on one's website in exchange for the partner doing the same.

Another, often overlooked, but cost-saving method of marketing the business online is by publishing editorial in third party ezines, enewsletters and on information-based websites or much better starting one's own newsletter. Just as editorial in offline media can help position you in a field as an expert, and drive readers online to a website, providing articles written to targeted online media can also drive traffic to a website, often with no out of pocket expense specially when the matter is related to wholesale mortgage.

Permission-based email marketing can be a low-cost and very effective supplement to a website marketing strategy. It can help to build a relationship between the business and the target market, and can drive traffic back to the website. Email marketing can consist of direct email blasts and sales letters, personalized auto-responders and/or email newsletters.

Another new and important method is that of bolg. A blog or weblog is simply a web page that scrolls chronologically like a journal and contains links to other Web sites of interest. Blogs, as creative online journals, have been used by technical specialists for a number of years, but business blogs or b-blogs are just now making inroads into the mainstream. As an alternative, very low-cost (or even free) means of electronic communication, blogs can make up a significant part of an overall marketing strategy. Though b-blogs carry an inherent marketing focus not found in creative weblogs, their casual structure provides the opportunity to connect on a more immediate and personal level than traditional websites and newsletters allow and hence could prove worthwhile for a mortgage business.