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Online Marketing Strategy - your first step to marketing your business online

Confused what to do? - Get online marketing strategy adviceMany small businesses often struggle with defining their online marketing strategy, simply because they feel overwhelmed with all the technological jargon. 

With such a proliferation of various online marketing  strategies and strange names like Squidoo, HubPages, Twitter, Ning, Digg and Foursquare, it is easy to understand why.

An online marketing strategy is nothing more than a plan of action for driving visitors to our website and convincing them to take action - to read your offer, leave their contact details or make a purchase.

However, in order to define this strategy, you need to know, at least in theory, what traffic generation strategies you have at your disposal and what costs vs returns can you expect from each one of them.

Components of an online marketing strategy

In a nutshell, online marketing follows a simple model:

website + traffic + conversion = sale

Unfortunately, most small businesses get hung up on website design, endlessly tweaking it, rather than focusing their efforts on generating traffic and improving visitor conversion.

For your online marketing to be effective, your strategy should include five important components:

Keyword Research and Competitive Analysis
Website Plan
Traffic Generation and Link Building strategy
Visitor Conversion strategy
Your metrics (Key Performance Indicators)
Keyword Research

Keyword Research will tell you if there is a market for your products and services and what keywords your potential clients are using to search for them online.

Competitor Research

Competitor Research will tell you who your biggest competitors are and  how did they made it to the top of the search results. It will also tell you what you need to do to beat them. Some keywords may have a lot of traffic, but the competition would be too difficult to beat. You need to choose good keywords.

After you have conducted your research, you need to plan the content and the structure of your website with military precision - focused, clear, concise, easy to navigate, uncluttered. You should also plan your visitor conversion strategy.

Traffic and Links

Then you need to figure out how will you get traffic and links. You have to know know many links you you need for each keyword to beat your competitors and what online marketing strategies will you get them? How much will it all cost? How long will it take? What skills do you need and do you have them in house?

8 steps to creating an effective online marketing strategy
Define your website objectives (to inform?, to create brand awareness?, to get leads? to sell?). 
Describe your target audience (B2B or B2C? Male or Female? Age group? Industry? Location? Interests? Problems?). Create personas to help you identify with a specific segment of your target market.
Research your market and your competition (Keyword Research, Competition Research, Market Trends).
Based on your research, select the keywords that will drive traffic to your website.
Set goals in terms of number of leads, value of sales, click-through rate, conversion ratio, then decide on your calls to action (Buy, Call, Download, Click etc)
Define your metrics or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) e.g. number of visitors, click through rate, conversion, bounce rate). These will be your metrics you need to link to your Traffic Analytics e.g Google Analytics and your website goals
List and evaluate your potential link building and traffic generation strategies such as Article Marketing, Directory Advertising, Blogging, Video Marketing, Social Media, offline marketing, Banner Advertising or Pay-Per-Click. Don't get intimidated by unfamiliar terms; every industry has its "lingo". You can look up the terms in our Glossary (see the menu at the bottom of this page) or check our FAQ page for more elaborate explanation of the term.
Pick strategies that will  give you the best Return on Investment and create an Implementation Plan (broken into individual tasks with deadlines, assigned responsibilities, budgets and milestones).

How can we help?

If you have sufficient understanding of the online marketing and all you need is some help with the keywords, go to our Toolbox page. You will find there various tools and resources that will help you with your research. Unfortunately the online world changes rapidly and what worked last year may not be effective any more. We publish a lot of useful information in our Blog, so don't forget to look there if you need tips or inspiration. Alternatively if you need don't have the skills or time to do it yourself, you can hire us to do it for you. We have sophisticated tools and many years of online marketing experience, so we can easily design a strategy to fit any marketing budget.

Online Marketing Strategy Advice

Online Marketing Strategy AdviceGetting professional advice early in the game will help you save money in the long run. Most businesses spend a lot of money on web design and then are shocked to find out that their website attracts no traffic.

We will help you get perspective on what is needed for your business to start selling online and set realistic expectations in terms of time frame and required marketing budget.

Our consulting fee depends on the size of your business (number of products/services you are trying to market) and your specific objectives. Obviously the more products/services you have to market and the faster you want to do it, the longer it takes to find the right angle and approach.

We charge $200 for a comprehensive Keyword Research and Online Marketing Strategy Report. The fee also includes 1 hour online marketing strategy consultation (via Skype), during which you can clarify any issues related to the Keywords or the Online Marketing Strategy recommended by us.

To order an online marketing strategy consultation, click on the blue button below.