Emarketing

E-Marketing, E-Commerce, or what ever E-word you want to use needs the same business plan and set of strategies as every other business. "E" is not a magic way of doing business. "E" is not just a website with or without an Internet merchant account and electronic shopping cart. "E" is every successful business practice + the Internet. If you already have a business and are thinking of going online, the online portion of your business will need as much work and strategic thinking as your physical business. The important advantage for an Alberta business going online is the technological advantage of being in Alberta. Regarding age, (Canada wide, not Alberta specific) "Age remained an important factor. In 2007, 96% of persons aged 16 to 24 went online, more than three times the 29% among seniors aged 65 and older. However, Internet use increased among all age groups since 2005." - Stats Canada Taking advantage of this data is what brought about the website LethbridgeMarketplace.com. Data provided by Stats Canada, Google, and Facebook told me that Lethbridge has about 56,000 Internet users of whom 4,000 are over 65-years of age. There there were over 200,000 Google searches each year for Lethbridge-related shopping activities, and that over 50 percent of Lethbridge was using Facebook. The following three images are from LethbridgeMarketplace.com LethbridgeMarketplace.com currently hosts 25 local businesses and it is the only Lethbridge-based website where the listed businesses are the only content on the website. Since the site's March 25, 2009 launch to August 15, 2009, 7,634 people have visited and 19,162 pages have been viewed. Below is the site visitor map as provided by Google Analytics. The large orange circle is Lethbridge. From a business perspective it was important to add as much value as possible - beyond attracting people to visit the site. Strategically, it is important for a business to stand out from its competition. Therefore, the site is capped at 100 businesses and, within that cap, there are caps on subcategories such as the number of restaurants or beauty salons that can be on the site. These numbers alone won't justify any business operating an online store that relies on local customers. The psychographic component, mentioned on the Marketing in Lethbridge and Southern Alberta page, plays an important role as does trust and awareness. In work that I have done for 12 local businesses, the likelihood that a customer is willing to give you their email address ranged from a low of 20% to a high of 80%. These numbers were based on contest entry forms that requested an email address. Even at the low end of 20%, a year's worth of collecting this information will allow you to use e-mail for advertising and other marketing activities. Though, to simply say that you can do e-mail advertising and expect more business would be misleading. Sending too many e-mails or sending e-mails that don't offer any thing special will result in a lot of people requesting to be taken off of your list. When people give you their e-mail address it is a sign of trust - you can't abuse that. Not only is it a sign of trust, you are now in the realm of what marketing guru Seth Godin wrote in his book of the same name - Permission Marketing. Permission marketing is the Holy Grail of marketing because it is customer driven; it's the equivalent of a customer asking you, "What's on special today?" E-mail marketing has some very good advantages: * the cost doesn't change whether you send 100 or 10,000 e-mails * by having the e-mail address you have permission to send relevant marketing information * it's very fast * if it is a really good offer, a customer can forward the offer to a friend * that fact that you have the e-mail address means that they are already a customer so your marketing message can skip much of the 'who you are/ what you do' bit. There are some disadvantages, primarily SPAM. Spamming is sending e-mail to people that never asked you to e-mail them and it is illegal. Ultimately, e-mail based marketing should be used in combination with everything that you do and not as a substitute. Building a database of addresses can take a year or two but is very much worth the effort. CLIENT CASE (client lists and email database usage - coming soon) Call me if you would like more information.