The world is full of people who like to give great advice on how to run a business but have no idea what they are talking about. One is bound to hear from living room ‘philosophers’ and ‘gurus’ things like ‘ you have just got to get your name out there and run some ads’ or ‘you’ve  just got to get in front of more people’ and a lot of other obsolete and time wasting techniques when it comes to marketing.

The truth is, just making an attention grabbing TV commercial is not going to cut it anymore. It’s the age of YouTube, Facebook, cable TV and internet smartphones. If a company needs to make its presence known it would have to adhere to more aggressive but efficient methods of marketing and advertising.

The way to a profitable marketing campaign is to know WHERE, TO WHOM and HOW to market the product or service. The days of cold calling are long gone. This article will give answers to all these questions in the context of e-marketing.

The first step is to identify the Target Market as accurately and realistically as possible. Globalization and technology has opened doors for any entrepreneur in any part of the world to market to wherever and whoever he/she feels appropriate. To do this effectively, dividing the market into different segments (segmentation) is put into practice.

One can segment a market on the bases of;

Demographic (age, sex, ethnicity, education, occupation, income and family status)
Geographic (Location, population and climate)
Behavioral (usage rate and pattern of a certain product, price sensitivity, benefits sought from a product and brand loyalty) Psychographic (values and norms, attitudes and lifestyle)

Once the segmentation is done, triangulating the target market from a population becomes easier and the targets become much more realistic and achievable.
Now comes the easy part. If the commodity is being sold over the internet, WEB PRESENCE is essential. Whenever a potential customer shops online, he/she types the name of the product on Google and in most instances does not go more than two pages of ‘hits’.

To capture this audience, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. A website needs to be compatible with search engines with the right title, content and keywords. This is very important if you want your website to be in the top 10 links at Google or alike.
To determine the most effective keywords, try the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool.
To support this technique,

web presence should be huge, meaning creating presence on social, blog and forum portals in such a manner that Google shows the company’s hits in the first two of its pages even if the search query is not related to the company’s name.

Remember; DO NOT underestimate your target market. If they even get the slightest feeling that your pitch is ‘to good to be true’, you will loose them, then and there. Try to be honest, upfront, show off your competitive edge but also throw in a few minor weaknesses as well. It makes the offer look more real and reliable.

You can market to various online channels to reach your Potential Customers, some of the channels are.
Social networking – Facebook, Hi5, MySpace.com, Twitter, LinkedIn.

– Social Bookmarking
– Delicious, Propellor,
– Classifieds
– CraigsList.
– Kijiji, OLX,
– Backpages,

E-magazines – cnet.com, ezinearticles, goarticles,
News – Cnn.com, Foxnews.com, Nytime.com

Again, try to be more specific. If the product of sale is computer equipment, then advertising will be targeted to specialized websites like Cnet.com or PCWorld .com, whose main focus is computers and peripherals.

To conclude, there are three main guidelines one needs to adhere to;

– Identify your target market
– Increase web presence
– Be specific