The main function of the web is to provide information and connections among human beings – what a perfect scenario for marketing! One of the best things about the web is how it serves as an incubator for new ideas and applications. Just as quickly as we become accustomed to applications for grabbing attention, like Twitter, a new service comes along to bolster the benefit and make it more effective. Blogs, like this one, and social networking services like Twitter, Facebook, and so many more are loaded with conversations and feedback about everything you can imagine.

If you could only aggregate the comments by topic and get a look at today’s buzz on your favorite topic – say, your product. How valuable would that be?

You guessed it – someone already thought of that. Amidst the onslaught of marketing messages now flying in all directions, people are creating applications to sort out the stuff they actually care about. One such application is Backtype. This is a nifty, simple tool that allows you to track conversations through more than a dozen (yes, there are more than that!) applications including Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, Blogger and WordPress. Backtype is basically a search engine that crawls social media networks and offers a simple interface. Enter a search term, like “social media marketing” and you’ll see, in this case, over 500 comments, which you can filter by date to get the freshest perspective.

Another spinoff of the social media frenzy –- use it to understand your audience, your product appeal, and enhance your web site marketing strategy.

I’m getting an e-mail once or twice a month from a vendor that really wants my business. He’s polite, not too intrusive, and just a little pushy. And, I feel incredibly guilty when I am tempted to hit the delete button without responding to his message, even when that response is “Thanks, but I’m just not ready to move forward.” Why do I have such a guilt-complex over deleting his particular e-mail marketing message and not the dozens of others I direct straight to the spam filter? Because he once made the effort to drive 90 minutes to meet me in person.

The great thing about personal interaction is that there are so many ways to work them into your web marketing plan. Even if your clients are across the country, you can use webinars, web video, chats and so many other tools to get their attention and push them to your web site. I’ve participated in many conference calls, and find that my favorites are those that utilize a web-based discussion forum along with the call.

Marketing just isn’t something you do once, and is certainly isn’t just one thing you do. It’s an entire plan, wrapped around a strategy, encompassing the breadth of your potential reach. When budgets are tight, you can cut back on some of the traditional, pricey and high-maintenance items, like magazine print advertising and glossy marketing brochures, in favor of web-based marketing. Much more affordable alternatives exist and more are being invented everyday. But can you find a replacement for the rapport facilitated by personal interaction? It’s just one extra thing in a world of cutting back that might make your clients hesitate before they hit delete on your latest e-mail marketing campaign.

So much about the Internet is rooted in anonymity. Much of that is out of necessity for the preservation of privacy, because as marketers and business owners, we want to know as much as people as we can. But they don’t want us to know them, unless, of course, we are friends. Friends will tell you about their habits and preferences. If they like you enough, they will tell other friends about you. So how do you convert strangers to friends to customers? Here are a few tips to sharpen up your web site marketing to make it “friendly.”

• Show you care by listening. Sure, you have a lot of really important things you want to say about yourself on your web site. How great you are at this and that, what a big success this last product release was, etc. What are your customers saying about it? Your current customers are your best resource as you go friend-shopping. Find out from them what they like and don’t like about your products, your web site design, or your customer service. Use those comments to put strangers (aka, new web site visitors) at ease – assuring them that you are a trustworthy ally, not a cold, unresponsive website.

• Be accommodating. It’s not about what you need, it’s about what they need. What information does a new visitor need to feel welcome and part of the club? Treat them like a guest in your home. Offer them a drink (i.e., a one-time discount or a free consultation). Take them on a tour, for example, dedicate a “first-time user” space on your web site to orient them to your way of doing business and show them why you are better than the competition. Even better, add a feature like a virtual spokesperson, who is literally the host or hostess of your front door.

• Invite them to come again. This goes along with another tenet of friendship: remember their names. Create an opportunity to capture their name and email address (maybe when they sign up for that free consultation or discount) then politely invite them back with a casual message. Don’t be too pushy – you just met.

Once you’ve established a connection with a new visitor, offer them incentives to bring their friends along, too. Remember the precepts of human relationships don’t change just because you are online – rather, they become even more important.

The web isn’t the hard sell it used to be. Most businesses recognize without a lot of persuasion that if you’ve got so much as an apple cart, you’ve got a reason to be on the web. Similarly, if you’ve done any kind of online marketing to drive business to your website, “target marketing” is so much a part of your daily vernacular you likely don’t even hear it anymore.

If anything has been exploited in the realm on online marketing, it’s the concept of targeting. That’s not to say you should not narrow your focus to the right audience; by all means, don’t aimlessly hurl your messages into the chaos. But targeting is about more than getting to the right customer– it’s getting to the right customer, at the right time, with the right message. That’s not one target. That’s one in a million.

Love me, love my spam

You can send all the emails you want to your customers, once you’ve got the magic opt-in go-ahead. That’s the virtual equivalent of seats in the nosebleed section. You’ve got a lot of work to do before you earn your way into the stadium suite. If you overuse the privilege you’ll alienate yourself in no time. If you send the wrong message, you risk being blacklisted. You’ve got to get to know your customers just like your best friend. The first step in getting to know your customers well enough to predict their behavior is knowing what they did with your message. Did they read it? Did they click on a link? Did they visit the website you so painstakingly constructed for them? Which offer proved irresistible? And, at what point did this informal contact convert them into a loyal paying customer?

Results, Results, Results

In case you didn’t know, the days of sending an email blindly into the void without any real method of tracking results are long gone. Email marketing services let you tailor messages, templates, and entire campaigns to a particular segment of your customers, for example, those who have just made their first purchase, or those who have abandoned shopping carts. If your website is a lead generator, your communication can inform potential clients of new success stories or updated service information. By knowing who they are and what they did, you’re on the track to building more than just results. You’re building relationships.

Before you hit send on that next mass email campaign, investigate the options that let you create more meaningful communications. Your customers will tell you exactly how to reach them, if you are ready to listen.

Been There, Haven’t Done That

Marketing your small business, service, product, whatever it is that you offer, is never the same from day to day. It may appear the same. But the fact is, every marketing plan and ploy is in constant revision. It happens on the scale from “tweaked ever so slightly” to “completely thrown out the window.”  Particularly in web marketing and web site design, the ability to react and reset is critical, and the opportunities are frequent because the environment changes so quickly.

For example, are you on the lookout for the emergence of new customer types? Just because you developed your product or service for X, doesn’t mean that you don’t have appeal to Y and Z who suddenly discover you due to a great web marketing campaign. They may be subsets of your target market, but they look at you differently than even YOU do. Glean their insight to develop your outreach.

Also important is to measure outcomes. If your business is seasonal, you should know at the end of this fall season what you want to do differently next fall. Did you meet your goals? Great! Now, how are you going to push it even further next time? Did you come up short? Find out why. If it has happened before, figure out what you did that was the same. And try something different next time around.

There is something to be said for “sticking with what works,” but only if you know WHY it works and only if the definition of working is “increasing sales and profits.”