By now, everyone has figured out that the Internet is important to their business. To some, the Internet is their place of business. To others, it supplements their other channels. Whichever position you're in, success on the Internet has become critical to achieving your objectives.

If you depend on the Internet for all your business then it's obvious that driving traffic to your site, converting that traffic to sales and then bringing those customers back to buy again has to be the focus of all your online marketing activities. But even if the Internet is just supplementing your other channels, you still want to ensure that you are getting qualified traffic, converting that traffic into leads and bringing back prospects and customers to your site on a regular basis.

Exclusive Concepts refers to this as Attracting, Converting and Retaining customers—otherwise known as "the most important ACRE on the Internet." Developing ACRE strategies for clients, whether e-commerce or B2B, is a primary focus of Exclusive Concepts' work.

Attraction
For most companies, just building a Website was considered a sufficient investment in Internet marketing. Most believed (and many still do) that prospects would somehow find them on their own. Making sure the URL was included in all their offline marketing activities (like advertising, PR or direct mail) was thought to be adequate.

What a waste. Companies spent tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds of thousands) to create a flashy Website that hardly anyone ever saw. That's like building an expensive store, hiding it on a side street and hoping that people will find it when they happen to get lost.

You might think that companies with an already established brand and a recognizable URL would be the exception (i.e., www.IBM.com, www.toyota.com, etc.). But even for these companies, the only traffic they received were those prospects who already knew what IBM or Toyota sold. What about all those customers that needed something they didn't know the company provided? For instance, did you know that at one time IBM made routers, switches and hubs in competition with Cisco? Probably not—and that might explain why they're no longer in that business.

If you want to have a Web presence that attracts a high volume of qualified customers, then you have to market to potential visitors where they hang out. Almost universally, prospects that are doing research on how to solve a problem or are ready to buy a solution hang out on search engines. Marketing to these prospects is called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

There are two major marketing opportunities related to SEM: pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO). (More details are available in our Search Engine Marketing Primer.

SEM helps ensure that any prospect looking for what you sell will find your site. Once the search engines have delivered traffic, it's up to your site to convert that traffic into a customer. Getting strong traffic to your website will probably enhance your brand, but unless you get that visitor to take action, you've lost an opportunity.

Conversion
Converting a visitor to a lead or sale is probably the least understood but most important aspect of online marketing.

Let's say it costs you $1 for every click to your Website through PPC. Let's also assume that for every 100 clicks, three site visitors take action. (In the case of an e-commerce site, taking action means buying something, and for a B2B site, it's generating a lead.)

So, every action costs you about $33 ($100/3). If your average sale price is $100, but the product cost is $50, then almost 70% of your gross margin (i.e. $33/$50) goes for selling. That's a big number.

How can that be reduced? Simple. Just increase your visitors taking action from three to five for every 100 that click. In other words, increase your conversion rate from 3% to 5%. That brings your selling cost down to $20—an almost 40% decrease, demonstrating the power of conversion enhancement to change the dynamics of your business.

How do you improve conversions? By applying all the expertise from consultants like Exclusive Concepts have to offer to inspire visitors to take action. It also means using advanced analytical tools to measure how visitors navigate your site, knowing which sources of clicks produce the best conversions and what content is of most interest.

This and other analysis will allow Exclusive Concepts to advise you on changes to your site that will have the greatest impact on conversions. And remember, conversions have a tremendous impact on whether your marketing achieves the your ROI goals.

Retention
Now that you have spent money to get people to visit your site and maybe spent more money to get them to buy something, how do you leverage all this investment and keep them coming back?

No matter what business you're in, you want to consider at least two tactics for retention: staying in touch and providing fresh content. The two most effective approaches to retention are: 1) Newsletters and 2) Blogs.

Newsletters let you leverage all those valuable email addresses you've been collecting. They keep you in front of your customer and prospect base. They allow you to promote your expertise and specific products or services.

Newsletters really work. The problem is that many companies don't have the time, resources or expertise to put out a newsletter on a regular basis. Good news—you can outsource this to a company like Exclusive Concepts. We'll design a newsletter, acquire content and make sure that it's published on a regular basis at a very affordable fee.

Blogs (short for Weblogs) are online journals that provide information and expertise related to the products you sell, the industries you serve or anything else that you think may be of interest to customers and prospects.

The great thing about blogs is that they are easy to create and update. And since they are part of your website they keep your site fresh and interesting. Blog content is part of your site and is seen by search engines as relevant content that deserves to be indexed. The more content your site has, the better your search engine placements.

Maybe the best way to demonstrate how a blog might look is to show you our Online Marketing blog. Here we post comments on any interesting bit of information related to online marketing. In fact, we allow you to subscribe to our blog (see the little XML and Yahoo! buttons on the lower right) so that you know the minute we post one of our pearls of wisdom. It's fun, it keeps our site fresh and makes the search engines happy. A win-win-win. Blog software is inexpensive and relatively easy to set up. Exclusive Concepts can help you get started.

Bottom line: whether you use newsletters, blogs or any other retention mechanism, it's extremely important to take full advantage of the investment you've made to acquire that customer. As we all know, it's easier to sell to an existing customer then to find a new one.

Summary
Now you know where to find the most important ACRE on the Internet. Many companies out there specialize in the acquisition of clicks through search engines, or designing Websites, or even managing newsletters. Exclusive Concepts understands that these components don't stand alone but need to work together for long term success on the Internet. Let us put together an integrated plan for you.