Background In today's rapidly changing environment it is cumbersome to find the right technology or software platform that can take of all your web marketing needs.
You need to somehow build a website and a mobile web site as well.
And you need to engage in social media and word of mouth through social media.
Building it is one thing, maintaining and updating it another thing, monitoring activity and respond interactively to it the last and most important step.
Key drivers of a solid web marketing platform First and foremost, the platform needs the ability to build, manage and Push content to the web, the mobile web and all sorts of social media with one single click.
Second you need to attract people on your web site or social media sites through Likes.
In today's world people will start liking you if you have appealing content and if you are willing to give them a perk or even a reward if they like you or share your content with their friends.
Third you need to Engage your audience through Newsletters, E-mail marketing and eventually mobile SMS marketing.
Fourth you need to Share your content through E-mail and SMS in order to convert potential customers in to new business And the ultimate goal is to Sell more, to more people more often This will drive your organization to online Marketing excellence and ultimately can and should replace all your current and future off-line marketing exercises and save you an enormous amount of time and money.
It will also enable you to look much bigger as an organization then you are in reality, as you can spread your brand and brand entity throughout the Internet with little or no effort and at a minimal cost as well.
And you can monitor your brand, see what people have to say about you, work on your brand reputation and respond to comments from customers and new potential customers in real time.
Key things to look for when you invest in a web marketing platform Adopting a software service model for building up web or social media content, is choosing a fast deployment model, a low cost deployment model, a fast adoption cycle within the organization, a fast proof of concept.
Updates and upgrades are a continuous process, as you will always be running on the latest available release of the software without additional costs.
By using a service model, organizations can cut down on their own risks, and choose different functionality as they grow their digital presence.
Also the vendors are scrutinized and evaluated on a permanent basis, because one can shift to another competing vendor almost overnight.
Vendors are billing monthly, quarterly or annually, but the costs are spread over the lifetime of the usage of the service.
In a traditional product model, the entire cost is paid upfront and the risk of product implementation, adoption and continuity is on the shoulders of the customer.
Go for platforms that do it all for you and that are focused on the size and the nature of your business.
The essentials are a solid web and web building platform, combined with all the tools you need to engage and monitor all your social media activities.
And a platform where you can engage existing and new customers through all digital communication available in the market.
In-source or outsource The technology is by definition outsourced.
If you buy in to a service model though that is available to you and the organization 24X7 from any computer connected to the Internet it feels that you have in-sourced this solution and it becomes yours.
It's your digital window to the outside world as much as your Yellow page was before.
The more crucial question to answer is do you outsource the updates, the content updates, the monitoring and the brand monitoring or do you keep those functions in-house.
There is no value of buying in to a web marketing platform if you are not dedicated to maintaining, updating and monitoring activity on it on a pretty constant basis.
And it is a matter of will my organization have the discipline to do these activities or am I better off outsourcing this function to specialists that fully understand the impact of digital communication.
In case you have a marketing/sales individual in the company, in-sourcing seems the right way to go.
The technology will provide you all the tools to manage this from inside the company, with little training and a basic support on how to operate the software platform.
The more you will use it, the better you will get at it and the better your communication will be with your customers.
If as a business owner this burden will be on your shoulders, you are better off outsourcing this to what we call your virtual marketing department in the cloud.
That department will do all the content management jobs and updates for you.
They will monitor your brand, respond to social media posts if needed, and run digital campaigns for you.
And this all at a fixed cost per month.
You will be asked to provide the raw data, the virtual marketing department can take care of the rest.
Conclusion An Integrated Web Marketing Platform is a must for any business, small or big that wants to be present on the Internet.
There is a fast growing need to communicate digitally with all existing and new potential customers through a variety of devices, be it a computer, a mobile device or a tablet.
And the communication needs to be rapid, clear, understandable and driven towards building a community of users for your products and services.
And that community needs to be growing, as your business will be growing.