A Complete Checklist for Evaluating

Online Marketing Companies

This checklist shares some of the key factors you should take into

consideration when comparing online marketing companies.

An Overview of Online Marketing

Online marketing is a broad subject, but

it's beneficial to have an overview of the range of

online marketing techniques before choosing those

that make the most sense for your business. This

whitepaper and checklist will provide you with brief

descriptions of the major online marketing

techniques, along with the information you need to

evaluate the offers of different Internet marketing

providers. Common types of online marketing

include:

• Website Marketing

• Search Engine Marketing

• Email Marketing

• Social Media Marketing

• Content Marketing

• Multimedia Marketing

Online marketing, also referred to as digital

marketing, is an area for increased spending for

businesses of all sizes. A 2013 study found that

66% of small businesses are maintaining or

increasing spend on digital marketing in the

upcoming months.

Online marketing provides businesses with the

opportunity to connect with a larger audience than

they could through more traditional tactics, and

often at a lower cost. With so many online

marketing options, it can be difficult to decide which

tactic is the best for your business. This brief guide

and comprehensive checklist will help.

Businesses and organizations spend

billions of dollars every year designing, building,

and managing websites, blogs, newsletters, and

social networking profiles. Reduced marketing costs

and improved results are the final product for almost

all who've used them. These include techniques that

were cutting-edge 20 years ago and are

commonplace now: email, online newsletters,

websites, search advertising, webinars, etc. On top

of those staples of online marketing, whole new

layers have been added in the form of social

networks such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and

Twitter. Not only has the way people use the Internet

changed, but the content that's being consumed is

also changing.

1. “2013 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll,” AT&T, 2013.

Social Media Marketing

Social networks are relatively new and have taken

the world by storm. These new kinds of websites

sprang up that were built on crowdsourcing search

results-that is, what your family, friends, and

colleagues say about which products and services

work best is more important than what a marketer

tells you. But, marketers started “listening in” on

conversations people were having about their

services or products. Social networks are now a

place for people to connect with others AND a

place for businesses to connect with customers.

Common social networks used by businesses

include:

Facebook has 1.5 billion monthly active users1.

Twitter has over 550 million users2 and more

than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each

month3.

Many companies have stumbled in social

marketing by pushing too hard, violating terms of

service, or annoying potential followers. Because

social marketing is all about building a positive

reputation online, it's something that should be

approached carefully to avoid a very public

misstep.

Social networking providers can help you build or

improve your social networking profiles – with better

graphics, content, and tracking. They can also help

you build a following. That involves posting intelligent

messages-or status updates-and responding to

others by thanking, following, and friending others;

and commenting on their posts, etc.

Good content plus good interaction leads to a

growing base of followers. The third way in which a

social marketing provider can help you is by

designing and managing advertising campaigns on

social networks. That includes producing online

events and/or designing online promotions

49%

37%

9% 1% 4%

Social Media is Important for My Business4

Strongly Agree Agree

Uncertain Disagree

Strongly Disagree

• Facebook

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

• Google+

• Pinterest

• Instagram

• Vine

• Quora

• Blogs

• YouTube

1. “Key Facts,” Facebook, June 2013.

2. “Twitter Statistics,” Statistic Brain, May 2013.

3. “Statistics,” YouTube, Aug. 2013.

4. “2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report,” Michael Stelzner with Social Media Examiner, May 2013.

Email Marketing

Email is one of the most basic methods

of online marketing. For an email marketing

campaign to be successful, three basic things are

needed: a list of email addresses, a message, and

a delivery machine. When email first began being

used for marketing, it was easier to grab the

attention of subscribers. With so many businesses

now using this medium, it can be hard to stand out.

An email marketing company can help.

The advantages of email marketing are low cost

(no per-message fees like direct mail or fax, no

printing charges, no extra charges for images

or color); immediate delivery; ease of bulk-

mailing; the ability to embed hyperlinks in

messages; as well as the ability to respond

immediately to a call to action.

There are some disadvantages to email marketing,

though. First, the CAN-SPAM Act requires that

receivers opt-in to receive commercial email.

Companies that use direct mail can be fined if they

fail to follow the rules in the CAN-SPAM Act. The

fines can be quite steep (up to $500 per individual

message), and enforcement by those receiving

spam can be immediate.

Outsourcing your email marketing to a company

with a good reputation for facilitating email

communications with subscribers can help you stay

compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act and help with

mailing list management, email message creation,

message delivery and tracking.

For managing mailing lists with more than a few

hundred contacts, you're better off paying a fee of

$10 to $100 per month for Web-based services that

allow you to manage lists up to 10,000 contacts. For

lists with more than 10,000 contacts, you might

prefer to run your own mail-server software without

any limits on the number of message recipients or

messages per day.

While some advocate the death of email marketing,

71% of small businesses find the most value in email

marketing as a distribution channel and 64% of

marketers overall feel the same way5.

5. “Defining the Modern Marketer: SMBs Driving Results,”

BtoB Online, Aug. 2013.

Content and Multimedia Marketing

Content marketing is a fairly new tactic

that has gained popularity thanks to changes in

how search engines and social networks operate.

In early 2012, Google announced a change in the

way it would rank sites in search-engine results.

Google basically said it would no longer reward

sites that lacked quality, original content. Many

popular tricks that websites used to rank high for a

term were suddenly banished. This included ploys

such as buying links to make Google believe that a

particular site is popular, or using content "scraped"

from other sources to make Google think that a site

is bigger than it really is.

Content marketing is a form of inbound

marketing, where marketers look to earn their

audience’s attention organically instead of

through interruption.

Content marketing firms often generate content

designed to be used on other people's blogs,

websites, and social networks. This is sometimes

called shareable content, or viral content. The

content might comprise blog posts written for other

people's blogs, or guest articles for other websites.

The inbound links resulting from content on other

people's sites is valued very highly by Google. The

process of placing content on other people's sites

is often referred to as a link-building campaign.

The idea is to quickly build up a "link profile" that

Google rewards with a high search-engine rank.

There are number of content forms that can be

produced through an online marketing firm or, if you

have the available resources, in-house.

• Infographics or Images

• White papers and Case Studies

• Reports and Surveys

• Apps and/or Games

• Slideshows and Presentations

• Blog Posts and Social Media Content

Multimedia marketing is just one side of

content marketing-the visual side. In addition to

infographics, listed above, all kinds of files that

merge text, images, music, and video can be used to

create powerful online marketing campaigns. One of

the most common uses for multimedia marketing is

creating display ads for search marketing and online

advertising campaigns. Other forms of multimedia

marketing are audio files, podcasts, videos, live

streams and web-based seminars.

Marketers use podcasts to give timely audio reports

that people can listen to online, on their phones, or in

their cars. It's possible to attach one's brand to a

video that's already popular, or to create your own

videos and syndicate them yourself. Videos can be

inexpensively produced using almost any

smartphone or computer with a camera. Many

business offer webinars: live or canned Web-based

seminars that can be produced as audio or video

conference calls, and often feature interaction with a

live audience.

http://www.business.com/sales-and-marketing/online-marketing/

Summary Online marketing provides businesses with the

opportunity to connect with a larger audience than

they could through more traditional tactics, and

often at a lower cost. This brief guide and

comprehensive checklist has provided you with the

information you need to evaluate the offers of

different Internet marketing providers. Having an

online presence is no longer an option; it’s a must

and an online marketing firm can get you on the

right track.

For more information about online marketing,

visit Business.com