What’s Next For Your Marketing Plan?

2009 April 18

Are you a part of a large corporation, or a small business owner that has plateaued in terms of revenue, and you want to launch a marketing campaign that makes sense for your size and your budget.  Typically, that means you are not seeking Super Bowl ad airtime or even front page ads in your metro area newspaper.  What can you do to promote your business without tapping out all of your resources and get a positive return on an investment in your brand?

My answer is to build your Web presence, enhancing your brand online.  These days, pretty much everyone has a website of some sort, but I see that only a select few are using the Web to its full potential.  A domain name, a few images, and a few things about your business do not cut it now.  It is an entirely different internet now when compared to 1997.  In fact, one of the biggest mistakes I see companies (and individuals) make when it comes to their website, is that they toss a lot of money to a web designer or put in a lot of time and effort to make a really pretty website.

While it may be pretty and impressive, does it:

  • Provide functionality for the user?
  • Appeal to the intended demographic?
  • Have any supporting Web elements to drive traffic to it?
  • Allow Google, Yahoo, etc. access the necessary information to get you to show up in their searches?

In my experience, at least one of those questions warrants a “no” response for over a half of the websites that I come across on the Internet.  Keep in mind, my use of the Web is FAR more extensive than that of the average user.

Interested to know more?  Come on back, keep reading, and visit other sites on the Internet to see how you can launch a SUCCESSFUL Internet campaign that will be inexpensive to start, easy to expand, and bring you closer to the ultimate goal of bringing more business to you door.

You Convinced Me To Add An Internet Campaign To My Marketing. Now What?

2009 April 27

After you have decided to launch the Internet aspect to your marketing campaign, your next step is to determine where it should start.  As you begin to design your campaign, you need to identify your audience and their impressions about your business.  The most important things to consider when designing an Internet marketing campaign are to decipher who your current and potential customers are, your reputation with them, and their feelings about your brand, product or service.

Some other vital information to consider as you begin your design are your competitor’s presence and tactics, as well as the reputation they have created among your targeted audience.  On a technical note, you will also want to consider your website’s search engine optimization, keywords, and other factors that help ease your current patrons’ search for your products and services.

As you look to tailor your campaign to your new potential customers, you should consider your current customers as a guideline for the demographic make-up.  Since you can get some demographic data from your current client base, they will give you a good idea of who you should be targeting for new business.  One important thing to note here: your efforts to attract new business should not alienate your current business.  An example of a poor choice in this regard is the use of tremendous incentives by the major cell phone service providers to attract new customers to their service, while not offering similar incentives to their existing customers.  The key here is to engage your current customer base in such a way that they actually help you promote your marketing efforts to their network of contacts, both online and in person.

The perception of your brand is something that can direct your campaign’s focal points.  If you have an outstanding reputation already, you can enhance and share it with new people through your online campaign.  On the other hand, a lackluster reputation will require focusing more on repairing relationships with those that have a negative opinion of you before you can expect to turn new contacts into patrons.

As far as your competitors are concerned, a thorough examination of their presence on the Internet, as well as traditional media, will give you an opportunity to see what avenues they have chosen to use and an idea of where you should focus your efforts.  Your focus should be to have a respectable presence everywhere that your core competitors have chosen to be, but you should really take advantage of becoming dominant in the media that they have ignored, provided that they are viable avenues for your business.

If you have not secured a domain and constructed a website for your business, this should be the very first thing you address in your Internet marketing campaign.  Unless you have a tremendous technical aptitude and strong web design skills, you should probably hire someone else to do the design of the site, rather than attempting such a large undertaking yourself.  Some things to consider when discussing the design of your website with a potential designer:

  • Ease of use for visitors to the site
  • Functionality for its purpose
  • Ease of search for potential visitors (more technically, the “SEO” and keywords)

If you already have a website, it may behoove you to revisit these three items and re-engineer the site to optimize it.  Regardless of whether you are designing your web presence or re-vamping it to meet your new needs, you should strongly consider the addition of a weblog as an aspect of it.  This provides you with an opportunity to connect with your current and potential customers and provide them with the most up-to-date information about your business without having to alter your primary website.

Ready for more?