Internet Marketing Strategy- Six 'hot' questions
There are a number of factors to consider when devising your internet marketing strategy:
Whether you want to learn how online marketing can help grow your business. Already have a website up and running or are building one from scratch. We’re here to help you make smarter decisions…ensuring you’re seen, heard and visible.
There are two specific areas you need to succeed in to make it work for you. We break Internet strategy down to website design and online marketing activities and have 6 ‘hot’ questions that drive us.
Here are the 6 ‘hot’ questions to ask yourself
Q.1 Why do you want to be online?
Is it personal or is it for corporate reasons…or both? If it’s for corporate reason…why and how do you see it working for your business? Do you want to be passive or proactive in your approach?
Do you want a simple ‘brochure’ site that you will tell people about or do you want to target people who are looking for what you offer, build relationships with these people and encourage them to spend and refer?
Q.2 Who are your customers? … Who do you want to attract?
Who do you want to attract to your website? Think about your current and past customers and new prospects. What do you know about them already? Where do they come from, how did they hear about you?
Who do you want to talk to? (Whom would you like them to recommend to?)
Q.3 What do you want your site to do for you?
Generate new leads and revenue. Help you become an expert in your field and seen as an authority in your field or sector by providing relevant information on what your potential customers are looking for.
Increase and enhance your brand and re-enforce positioning. Allow you to build relationships with:
Six more things to do!
Q.4 What attracts people to your website site?
Online and Offline Marketing should work like brother & sister. Encouraging relevant traffic and helping you achieving your business goals. There are a variety of activities you can use to enhance your sites visibility – choosing what suits your business needs and budget is what we can help you with.
Core Internet marketing activities include:
Q.5 What keeps people on your website and what persuades them whilst there?
People use the Internet to save time, waste time and be amused! – This is known as the ‘convenience paradox’.
Once people have found your website how do you increase it’s ‘stickabilty’ and how do you persuade them to an ‘action’ whilst there.
You have 8 seconds to engage with a user. Your website needs to be relevant, informative and interactive
You need to encourage a visitor to explore your website by being immediately relevant to what their looking for. Tell them about your benefits and how you can help them. Shout about your success stories through case studies and testimonials – whilst demonstrating how you can help them.
Provide useful clear information; think about what would be useful to them and provide valuable information, guidance or tools that will enhance your reputation, build trust and encourage a relationship.
Quality Content – this is something you’ll hear over and over…the reason…it’s not only important for visitors to your website BUT also for how much search engines like and rank your site. Here’s a tip (for free!), the more you add to it the more some search engines will return, this can help with your rankings and visibility.
Get to know your potential customer, ask for feedback and keep it simple. Can you think of something that might get them to join in? What would your ‘type’ of customer find appealing? Offer it to them (make sure it’s useful!), and learn about them in the process.
Think about your onsite sales process, call to action or data capture. Is it simple? Do you incentivise? Is it obvious?
Is there a WOW factor about your site that encourages talkability and the ‘have you seen this’ factor?
Q.6 What makes people return to a site and what makes them reply?
As in question 5, content is king. Be informative and useful, ensure you taste not tease. Ask users permission to get in touch. Offer them more relevant advice in exchange for an email address.
WARNING - You want to ‘turn people on…not off’ – be clear and clever in your email strategy
Your email strategy can remind prospects to visit again, upsell new services and products. Be used for lead generation and referrals. Retain current customers and increase brand loyalty.
And don’t forget…track what customers are doing. Remember most things are trackable on the web. You can gain visibility on what your visitors ‘typed’ into search engines to arrive at you website. You can even see how they move about. The more you know about your visitors and customers…the more you can tailor your site and it’s content to satisfy their needs.
The ‘hot 6’ are bases we feel should be covered. What’s important, is understanding what’s important to you and your business when positioning your online strategy to deliver your goals. If you’d like a free consultation and discover how we can help you get the most from your internet strategy …then simply get in touch…we love to hear from you.
Bryan Adams, Director ph-creative.com
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