How to build an online marketing strategy
Online marketing strategies are starting to gain real momentum as people become increasingly savvy in terms of their online habits. Internet marketing has fast become one of the most popular, yet costly, forms of publicity. The perceived high cost is unfortunate and untrue. It’s important to embrace online marketing, but it doesn’t need to break the bank.
So where should you start? Firstly it’s crucial that your online marketing is aligned with your marketing plan. There’s no point if they don’t marry together and have the same or aligned objectives. An online marketing strategy will determine your online push and pull strategies and identify your online target audience. It will clarify the four P’s (product, price, promotion, and place) of marketing tailored for online channels.
Although business owners are more internet savvy, they’re not necessarily technical gurus and they simply don’t want or need to be. But, just knowing the basics helps to stay on track. Here are some technical factors to consider when developing a successful online marketing strategy.
Get your goals right
Before launching any type of internet marketing, you need to be certain of your goals. Forming realistic goals that can be measured and attained in a specific time frame is a vital factor in building your online marketing strategy.
Technically assess your target audience
Once you have your objectives set, you need to evaluate your target audience. You can determine your target market by either getting the information from Google Insights, doing a survey online or by installing Google Analytics on your website to receive and assess comprehensive information on your website visitors.
Know your keywords
You also need to determine the most popular keywords that are relevant to your business or your services, as this will be the foundation of developing a search-engine-optimized website.
Online SWOT
Conducting a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis for your online marketing plan as well as your overarching business plan is ideal. This SWOT will help you identify your web exposure against other businesses of the same nature.
Make sure you have these basics covered and you will not only be better positioned to learn what you need from a third party to implement the strategy, but you won’t enter the project blind and will avoid breaking the bank. The end result will be more achievable and you’ll learn a bunch of stuff about your customers and your business along the way.
David Fastuca is co-founder of the digital creative agency Locomote.
