5 Free Internet Marketing Tools

Posted in: Internet Marketing Buzz Words, Market Research, Search Engine Optimization by Fran on December 29, 2009 | No Comments

In a previous post “Effective Online Market Research – But Are You Listening?” we dealt with the need for effective market research in order to execute internet marketing online.  The challenge, we maintain, is not in doing the research but in implementing the marketing strategy after the demographic is understood.

Many small companies or fledgling businesses will balk at spending their resources on tailoring their marketing strategies, assuming that they know the mind set of their customers. Fortunately, there are some very good free internet marketing tools out there.  Some of these tools are very popular – and yet underutilized.

The following are 5 internet marketing tools that most websites can benefit from.  Even if you are already familiar with these tools, we recommend taking a deeper look and becoming proficient with some of the lesser known functionality in order to help you achieve your marketing and strategic goals – without paying a fortune.

The last tool in our list (it should be introduced with “last but not least”) should get your special attention, especially in light of our premise that most online businesses think they know what their users want.  By using online surveys and polls, even budget-conscious companies can now get to the pulse of the people without spending a bundle on a market research firm.

Perhaps, the money saved can be better used for PPC – to be addressed in a future post.

5 Free Internet Marketing Tools

1. Web traffic metric sites like Alexa http://www.alexa.com/ provide “free web traffic metrics, top site lists, site demographics, hot urls and more”. Simply type in the URL of your biggest competitors to learn about who their visitors are and get insight into their online behavior.
2. Google Insights For Search allows you to “compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties” http://www.google.com/insights/search/ .  Here too, add the URL of your biggest competitors to get a cartload of relevant information.
3. Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends “provides insights into broad search patterns” and shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. Popularity is broken down by region, city and language and time period.
4. Google Adword Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal allows you to find out the hottest key words and phrases in your industry and later will be the most effective tool  to construct a website marketing campaign.
5. Create free online surveys and polls.  Here are two easy and free applications: http://polldaddy.com/ and http://www.surveymonkey.com/ to find out first-hand what your users are thinking.  Include your polls on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and get quick results.

Effective Online Market Research – But Are You Listening?

Posted in: Internet Marketing Buzz Words, Market Research by Fran on December 22, 2009 | No Comments

I’m fairly stunned when otherwise savvy business individuals who want to improve their online marketing, turn to me for advice about their latest internet marketing tools and branding strategies, yet let me know unabashedly upon inquiry that they’ve done zero market research.  Rather, the vital process of choosing their marketing strategy and design elements is based on what they themselves like.

One experience in particular still leaves me laughing.  A few years ago a client was tackling the college market (18-24 year olds) and invited me to lead his online marketing efforts.  Even before I stepped into his office I began formulating his online campaign. As college students are the single most connected demographic group, I recognized the need for a strong online presence with a very aggressive social media marketing campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social media sites.

During our very first round of meetings, in order to connect to our young consumer base, the question of “what’s considered cool” by this demographic became the hot topic at our round table discussion. As half-a-dozen forty year olds and a couple of thirty year olds sat around the boardroom laughing and brainstorming about all the crazy but cool things they did in college using terms like “nerd”, “dweeb” and “rockin”, I knew we had better kick-start our marketing strategy –  and fast – because as much as we thought that we were still “with it”, we were truly estranged by at least a decade to Generation Y and  even more so to Generation Z and did not understand what motivated them. Even worse than not understanding our target demographic, was the fact that if we had proceeded with what we thought was our cool, hip and with-it lingo, we would have created a clearly erroneous marketing strategy.

Many small companies hesitate to invest in market research due to financial limitations – a simple market report can cost several hundreds dollars and still not provide strategic market research information.  I’m always happy to allay concerns as there are several ways to gain the necessary information to make intelligent decisions about your online marketing campaign that don’t require a big expenditure.

The first step in the process is asking the questions.  Even though the actual market analysis questions themselves are obvious, you would be surprised at how often companies need to be reminded to go through the process of asking the questions – and more importantly, listening to the answers!  The marketing strategies that are implemented must be attuned to your market demographics and their habits – not what you think are their habits.

The first step in the process is to define your demographic.

10 Essential Market Research Questions:

• Age?
• Gender?
• What is their level of education?
• What are their annual earnings?
• Where do they live?
• Do they have children?
• Where is their browsing location? What time of day are they most frequently online?
• What sites do they visit (competitive sites/social media sites/news sites)?
• What’s important to them?
• How much money are they spending online? What are they buying?

Only after knowing who your target market is, and having them clearly defined, can you now begin the next step of creatively marketing to them – based on their terms.  In the next post, “5 Free Internet Marketing Tools” we will explore some internet marketing tools to help you do this.