Marketing Budgets

The expert in this field talks about this and more... Raghuveer Singh, Sr. Manager, Natural Search Internet Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

He spent four years with India's Premier Portal 123india.com and at "Natural Search Internet Solutions" he headed operations of SEO & PPC divisions and now heads the global advertising network "TheBlindNetwork.com" which was also silver sponsor to the recently concluded Adtech New York 2007 (World's largest Digital Marketing Show). He was also responsible for high growth of TheBlindNetwork.com from 300 million impressions a month to 5 Billion impressions a month. His initiatives have made "Natural Search Internet Solutions" as one of the largest online lead generation company in UK under Finance vertical.

Excerpts from Mr. Raghuveer's Talk....

Internet marketing is one of the fastest growing media options, Internet has grown faster than any other media viz; Radio, Press and TV, and is the most cost effective option. It is also highly targeted either on the basis of behavior or on the basis of content. On observation and studying logs of a website one can understand what a visitor looks for on a website. I will cover the ways in which a company can optimise its online marketing budget.

A first time online marketer has to understand a couple of things like knowing the website audience, understanding their media habits over internet and use various internet marketing techniques accordingly. Aim should be to measure and analyze how these techniques can be used effectively? Estimate various resources required for the same and set expectation levels on what you intend to achieve. Also have contingency plans for the issues that may arise. Have clear bench marks to evaluate the progress and success, without benchmarking, you can not justify any marketing spend.

Also work on getting the basics right, for example build Information rich websites, which will keep the internet users interested, bring out the USPs clearly, ensure that the web site has customer testimonials and most importantly keep the response swift. Internet is a two way communication vehicle which means you need to even keep the right CRM in place.

After this comes understanding basic jargons of Internet Marketing which helps you in deciding your cost objectives:-

CPC (Cost Per Click) In this scheme an advertiser pays every time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website.

CPM (Cost Per Impression) is where advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. CPM costs are priced per thousand impressions.

CPA (Cost Per Action) or (Cost Per Acquisition) is based on performance, here the payment is made only for a completed transaction or sale.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) is the scheme where the payment is for a lead generated.

Also be updated on the various options available in internet marketing based on above cost objectives:-

Affiliate Marketing which is like setting a secondary distribution network where you just appoint affiliates to generate leads, sales etc.,

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) covers - Search Engine Optimization, which involves ‘On page optimization' & ‘Off page optimization' like Link building, Paid Listing, Blogging and other PR related activities, Social book marking etc. Another aspect of SEM is Pay-Per-Click where you can advertise over Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and tier II search engines like ABCsearch, Search123 etc. other advertising options are traditional banner, pops advertising and email marketing. Some emerging options are viral marketing, social media optimization and desktop application advertising, widget marketing etc.

After planning media vehicles next is to analyze traffic on above cost metrics which will be based on RoI goals in terms of measuring cost per impressions or clicks or conversions or leads or sales, analyse each creative performance, channel performance, unique visitors etc. define your RoI goals for each media vehicle and build your spend over it. Aim of online marketing should be to engage target audience by way of effective CRM strategy, post data acquisition both B2B and B2C companies need to look at it. Thus grow your opt-in email list and increase the engagement life-cycle with customers.

He was speaking at a Panel Discussion organized by Businessgyan and TASMAC on the topic ‘Internet Marketing'. 

Compiled by Ms.Mangal D Karnad for Businessgyan