Inbound Marketing

Marketing Strategy

Whether you are thinking of hiring someone to help you get started in Online Marketing or you are ready to get started yourself, there are some things you should consider before jumping in.

First, decide what you need. Are you looking to increase:

• Company/Brand Awareness – Do you want to increase the awareness of your company or non-profit.
• Education – Does your potential market need more education on what problems you can solve and why it should matter to them?
• Increase Traffic – You just need a comprehensive push that gets more targeted visitors to your site.
• Conversions – You are getting the right kind of traffic but you need to turn that traffic into people who will take the required action.

Now take a look at where you are today.

• Does your website do what you want it to do? Is it saying what you want it to say? Is it moving people towards the actions you want them to take. Does it speak in the style and language that makes your visitors comfortable? Is your content fresh and do you add new content frequently?
• How much traffic are you getting now? Where does it come from? Are the people finding your site the ones who are your actual market?.  What is the bounce rate for your site (people who come to one page on your site and then leave quickly.)
• How many people come to your site and then take the action you want them to take (buy something, sign up, subscribe, call you, email).
• Have you checked out the competition? Are you fully aware of what they are doing, not just on their site but in social media, advertising (banner ads and things like pay-per-click) and using articles and multi-media.
• Have you done though search engine searches on your name, the company or non-profit name and your competitors names, to not just see were you all are ranking, but to see where you are showing up as a presence, if that presence is positive or negative and what people are saying about you.

Decide what skills you have, other members of your team have, or, you can afford to outsource.

• Technical Resources- These are the tech savvy people who can make changes to your website and support your marketing.
• Creative Resources- Ahhhh, the writers, artists and graphical designers.
• The Number-crunchers- These are the people who love to look at those graphs and charts and magical numbers, translate them to help your team understand the measurements of all your efforts.
• The social butterflies- Those people who love to connect with others. The ones who see each stranger as someone they haven’t made a friend of yet. They love to network. But most of all, they love to listen, listen, listen. In addition, these are the people who are passionate about what you do.

How much of a budget do you have? Don’t be fooled by people who tell you that Online marketing is free, free, free. Everything has a cost and sometimes that cost is hidden. Now is the time to look carefully at what it will really cost and decide what you have to spend. Remember, costs are not just money. They can be time and resources too.

Once you put all the above together, you will be prepared to start your planning. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Get your priorities straight. Don’t start working to drive traffic to a badly done, confusing or old and dated website. Don’t concentrate on driving people to sales or other actions before you know with certainty you are getting the right people, who need what you have, to visit the site. Understand the difference between the old traditional marketing techniques and the new ones. Doing it the old way meant shouting at someone to get your message across. The new way is to build relationships and develop loyalty by offering value.