Internet and Businesses Online

Merely having an online presence is not enough for even strictly bricks and mortar companies.?With the Internet having proliferated into the medium that provides the most impressions, a good digital media strategy is crucial to online and offline business success.?A good digital media plan will be comprehensive, including not only one but several of the important components of online marketing mentioned below.?Without further ado, we'll move on to reviewing the top trends in digital media strategy.

Search Engine Optimization???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Can this really be considered a trend??Most businesses that have Web sites already know that without being optimized for search engines, their sites are unlikely to ever be found by their target customer.?Since target keywords are always changing and SEO is relatively inexpensive to implement, a constant refinement of SEO is the order of the day.

Social Digital Strategy

Social networking and social commerce features are components of this important trend.?Representing your products and services and promoting them through social networking sites (and yes, even blogs) is crucial to maintaining open communication with your customers.?Social commerce features that allow customers to rate you are rated as being very important to today's Web savvy consumer.

Smartphone Applications

Investing in the creation of a customized application for the Blackberry or iPhone that allows customers access to your products and services is relatively inexpensive and puts you literally at the touch of their fingers.

Cross-sell, Cross-sell, Cross-sell

Once target customers have arrived at your site, you must engage them and ultimately close the sale (or make the conversion).?Increasing the amount of touch points throughout various portions of a site and via links and "recommended products" sidebars is an easy and effective way to expose the customer to more of what you have to offer.

Value-Added Email Strategies

Email campaigns are becoming increasingly difficult to maximize due to spam filters, opt-outs and customer desensitization in general.?In spite of these challenges, businesses can keep their products and services in front of potential customers by adding value to their message.

Rich Media Advertising

In the past, online marketers have been reluctant to engage in rich media advertising due to fears of alienating dial-up or slow bandwidth users.?Consumers themselves, however, are showing more interest in rich media messages such as those contained in animation, audio, video and gaming.

A Multi-pronged Approach

Now that you're a bit more familiar with some of the trends in digital marketing strategy, your head might be swimming with ideas on how to implement one or more of the ideas contained herein.?Before jumping into anything, make sure to check out how others are putting these strategies to use.?Note successes and mistakes so you can have a good idea of what works and what does it.?Don't forget that a good online marketing program is a comprehensive one that employs not only one but several of the techniques mentioned above.?Most importantly, remember to measure your results.