In Indonesia, we have experienced fast growth in active users, mostly by mobile users. Based on a survey by Internet World Statistic, internet users in Indonesia has grown to 1000% in the last eight years from year 2000 – 2008. I’m keen on getting the 2009 statistic research as I believe it should be the fastest compare to years before. And rest assured, this percentage will increase vastly in years to come.

Now, with those information above, imagine how huge is the available market. For people with knowledge in marketing and PR, they should be able to read that opportunity and quickly getting the company online. call up a web design firm to build the website.

But after they have a website, what’s next? Most of the time, they leave it there in the nowhere of the internet world. This type of website has no value at all. Even updating contents frequently (like news) is not enough nowadays. We are competing against thousands and millions of similar websites all over the world. How do you think their website can exist in the list?

We need to think of some strategies. There are many more we can do to optimize the online marketing impact. Yes, it requires lots of effort and a relatively high cost in maintaining but believe me, you’ll earn that rewards.

Online marketing strategy is not a one time work, but it is a long-term development with lots of idea and concept involved, application design, monitoring, evaluating and maintaining.

I’d like to think of a website as a human body that needs food, sport, lifestyle, getting in touch with the environment, etc. Filling ourselves with food only won’t make us live a healthy life. We need more than that to maintain.

Same thing goes for a website, an online media that needs maintenance in its life. Let it filled with useful contents, offer interactivity to visitors, let them love the experience of being there, etc. Oh yes, that ‘Experience’ is essential. Think of one website that you happened to visit lately, Did you like what you see? Did you feel good when browsing its pages? Did you get something from it? And lastly, would you come back? If your answer is ‘yes’, that website has successfully developed its experience. Visitors will keep coming back because they need to and feel worth to visit again. And in the end, this will improve the rank in search engine.

Of course not all of them has that good memory to remember the address and directly type in the URL in address bar. They will most likely fire-up Google and search. If the rank is high, they will find it easily. Anyway, it is also not good to just let search engine do the work itself. The company needs to maintain and remind the visitors too. Put on RSS feed and let them subscribe to email newsletter (with terms and conditions ideally to coop with anti-spam act) are two basic features.

Don’t forget the social media as well. Gathering community online and build up positive thoughts of the company and brand.

A whole lot of strategies need to be conceptually developed and maintained to maximize company’s online investment. Having a website only is not enough. It will definitely be a wasted investment. Nobody comes, nobody likes it or even worse, nobody knows it exist. If you’re an entrepreneur, I don’t think you’re gonna do that investment too.

By Wahidin Wong