Acquisition is the very first stage of the customer’s journey online; it involves the various tactics that are used to drive relevant and targeted traffic from various offline and online media. In creating effective acquisitions strategies the reach and targeting of the various traffic building strategies must be adequately considered. While targeting involves driving interested and enthusiastic users of your products/services or brand, reach entails effectively achieving a reasonable and profitable volume of targeted traffic. Both reach and targeting are very important factors to be considered when drafting digital marketing plans as they significantly affect the effectiveness of the plan.

The Cost of acquisition can be considered in terms of the cost of getting the visitor to the site, and the cost of achieving the certain outcomes during their visit. Experienced online marketers control their traffic building through managing the cost per acquisition (CPA). Based on the context and market, CPA may refer to different outcomes. These cost targets include:

● cost per acquisition – of a visitor (cost per click, CPC)

● cost per acquisition – of a lead

● cost per acquisition.

The various tools used for traffic generation online are:

Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing has become very popular with e-retailers. The great thing about affiliate marketing for the e-retailer is that the advertiser does not pay until the product has been purchased or traffic generated. It is sometimes referred to as ‘zero risk advertising’.

Viral marketing: viral marketing harnesses the powerful ability of the internet to reach billions of people and uses online version of traditional word of mouth to generate buzz about a video, poem, cartoon, funny picture, political message etc. the message can be shared via the social platforms such as face book, twitter, Google plus, LinkedIn etc.

Search engine marketing: with the growing importance of search engines and their specific use in navigating the web and finding relevant information. Search engine marketing is an important tool for online marketers seeking to avoid the internet black hole. Research has shown that the higher the rank of your company and products in the search engine results pages(SERPS) the more visitors you will receive. The use of search engine marketing to drive traffic to websites and micro sites is achieved through optimization of the website and its web pages to appear on the search engine results page when the targeted keywords are searched in the different search engines. The use of the paid search engine advertising platforms like Google and yahoo also makes pages appear on the paid listing of search results.

Online PR: This is simply the practice of public relations online, since public relations is all about maintaining relationships, an important part of online PR involves online reputation management which involves monitoring and controlling messages placed about your brand online.

Other tools are social media platforms, email marketing, interactive ads, blogs etc.

Please leave your comments and additions because this list is not an exhaustive list….

PHILIP ALABI is a marketing consultant with Nexus marketing Solutions, Lagos, Nigeria. +2348023420701, info@innovativenexus.com, online/internet marketing web designer.

PHILIP ALABI is a marketing consultant with Nexus marketing Solutions, Lagos, Nigeria. +2348023420701, info@innovativenexus.com, http://www.innovativenexus.com, http://www.innovativenexus.com/index.php/services/website-design-and-programming

Author Bio: PHILIP ALABI is a marketing consultant with Nexus marketing Solutions, Lagos, Nigeria. +2348023420701, info@innovativenexus.com, online/internet marketing web designer.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: web designer, online marketing, digital marketing, internet marketing, web copywriting, social media