Internet Marketing – Direct Response vs. Branding
When Internet marketing specialists try to put together an online advertising plan for promoting their businesses (let it be B2B or B2C business), they usually take into consideration two Internet marketing strategies: direct response marketing and brand awareness.
Internet marketing can be used and benefited by any businesses to fulfill their direct response or branding objectives. For example,
- An e-tailer with an e-commerce site and no brick and mortar business
- A small mom and pop business with a low budget
- An enterprise level company that plans to build brand awareness online
In the direct response world, a marketers goals is that the website visitors perform an action such as purchasing an item online, request a quote, fill in a contact us form, make a donation or sign up for a newsletter. To measure the success of targeted Internet marketing plans, direct marketers need to measure, monitor and optimize various KPIs around conversion rate, cost per conversion (or cost-per-acquisition).
If the online advertising goal is branding, the strategy is usually built around raising awareness and increasing the visibility of products, services or causes. To achieve the branding objectives, Internet Marketing agencies and consultants try to place their promotions and ads in front of as many people as possible within their target audience.
As I mentioned in my previous post, web marketers now can take advantage of Google Remarketing to retarget their audience to increase awareness around new product launches and sell new products and services online.
As I mentioned in my “to brand or to measure” post, regardless of what your internet marketing & advertising objectives are, you need to measure the success of your campaigns and keep optimizing them on an ongoing basis.
Filed Under: Internet Marketing
