An online marketing strategy in 7 easy steps
How to create your company’s online marketing strategies
Are you starting your adventure with online marketing and you don’t know how to define your marketing goals and what to focus on to achieve success? Before you start advertising, create an online marketing strategy for your business. This guide will help you set your goals in internet marketing step by step and build an online marketing strategy that will bring you an increase in the number of customers and sales.
Find out how to plan your online marketing strategy
Online Marketing Strategy – What is it?
What is an Internet Marketing Strategy for Your Business? It is a set of many activities, on the basis of which a plan is created to achieve a predetermined goal, which is measurable, real, specific, and limited in time. For internet marketing, a good goal, for example, is to increase your sales by a certain percentage over the course of a year.
How to create an online marketing strategy in your company?
The first step in the process of building your online marketing strategy should be to prepare a list of your marketing goals and the tools needed to achieve them. Remember that your chosen goal should be:
- measurable,
- specific,
- limited in time,
- real, i.e. achievable,
- accurate, i.e. tailored to your needs and possibilities.
Examples of general online marketing goals may include:
- promoting new services or products,
- building the image of an expert,
- starting an investment in internet marketing,
- website or online store positioning,
- Google Ads campaigns,
- activities in Social Media,
- reaching new customers,
- retaining existing customers,
- building brand awareness,
- increase in sales and revenues,
- brand awareness development,
- increasing market share, acquiring new sales markets.
You should specify each of these goals, for example by adding information about the planned growth (increase in the number of customers by 20%, increase in revenues by 20%, increase in the market share to 10%, etc.).
How to create a marketing strategy – a step-by-step guide
Creating an effective marketing strategy involves several important steps, thanks to which you will get to know your client, his expectations, and the actions of the competition. Also, check the quality of your marketing channels – maybe it is worth improving them to improve sales results?
Create an online marketing strategy step by step with our tips.
Creating a Marketing Strategy Step 1: Define your target customer
When creating a marketing strategy for your business, you need to know to whom you will be offering your services or products. Are they consumers or entrepreneurs? Is your client a professional with extensive knowledge of the industry, or does he need some basic knowledge? What are your customer’s expectations of the product – should it be cheap or durable? Is the service supposed to cost little or be effective in a short time? Answer these and other questions about your potential customer and on this basis assess whether the offered product or service can meet their expectations. Also, adjust the content of the message – if the client is experienced, he does not need blog articles on the basics of your industry, but he will definitely enjoy technical and specialized content.
Creating a marketing strategy step 2: Design a sales funnel
Online customers buy in a different way than at stationary points of sale. You should take this aspect into account when creating a marketing strategy for your business. The sales funnel in the network includes:
- drawing attention – the user hears about your brand or product for the first time (e.g. sees an ad on Facebook or in Google search results),
- arousing the interest of the user who starts researching the brand or product – the client has become acquainted with your brand or product and starts looking for more detailed information, therefore he reads about your products and analyzes the competitors’ products,
- the desire to have your product,
- action – the customer chooses your service or product and makes a purchase,
- loyalty – the customer returns to your store or company to buy the product again or use the service.
Sales funnel on the Internet in graphic form
Your online marketing strategy should take into account each of the elements of the sales funnel. Which is why you should create various types of content – both for customers who decide to buy and those who are just considering it,
invest in various forms of advertising (positioning, paid Google ads campaigns, advertising in social media),
analyze how customers come to your website, take care of conversion optimization on your website or in the store,
do not forget about customers after the purchase – stay in touch with them, offer a discount on subsequent purchases, encourage them to share their opinion about the service or product.
Creating a Marketing Strategy Step 3: Start with one marketing channel
If you’re just starting out to promote your business online, don’t invest in multi-channel marketing right away. Start with one of them, and if you get satisfactory results, you can consider expanding your activities with new advertising channels. If you have a limited budget, but you want long-term results, invest in SEO for websites or stores first. It’s also a good idea to combine SEO activities with advertising in paid Google Ads campaigns. Also, get to know ideas for online marketing with limited resources.
Creating a Marketing Strategy Step 4: Analyze your competitors’ activities
If you want to plan an effective online marketing strategy, you should consider what your competitors are doing. Based on the data obtained, you will be able to improve your marketing strategy, implement changes in it and avoid mistakes made by other companies in the industry. If you are planning an investment in internet marketing in the form of positioning, check:
- what keywords the competition is positioning for,
- what content is created by competing companies,
- how the competitors’ websites are technically structured (URL structure, category structure, filtering, and search capabilities on the website).
Creating a Marketing Strategy Step 5: Check the effectiveness of existing advertising channels on the Internet.
The key to creating an effective online marketing strategy for your business is auditing your existing marketing channels. Do you have a website? Do you run profiles on social media? See if these channels are bringing you traffic and income. For this purpose, use free tools – Google Analytics and Google Search Console, in which you can check, among others
- what channels do you acquire customers from,
- how users navigate the site,
- where on your site visitors leave your site
- how many users visit your website,
- which subpage generates conversions – is it a home page or a popular blog entry?
Thanks to the information obtained by analytical tools, you can check whether the current marketing activities are paying off. Data from Google Analytics can also be a source of ideas for improvement and optimization of activities. The Google Analytics tool will allow you to check the effectiveness of your current marketing activities (it is in the back office)
Creating a Marketing Strategy Step 6: Build a Stand Out Offer
Do you want to attract customers? Take care of a distinctive offer and product. Do not compete in the market solely on price, build brand awareness and image by providing advice and creating content that will be useful for users. Take care of a wide range of products so that customers can choose different products in one purchase. Ask your clients why they chose your offer and emphasize their advantages in the marketing message. Find out how to get customer feedback online. You can get opinions, among others in the Google My Business listing (in the back office).
Creating a marketing strategy step 7: Constantly monitor the effects of marketing and optimize activities
Your marketing strategy will not live forever. This means that you have to constantly monitor its effects and make improvements to make it even better. The competition in online marketing is fierce, everyone wants to achieve the highest possible sales and demand, so make sure you constantly optimize your marketing strategy and its activities. What data and indicators should you track?
- sales volume,
- market share,
- number of clients,
- the method and cost of acquiring new customers,
- customer expenses in your store,
- data on the website (number of sessions, number of users, bounce rate, time spent by the user on the website).
How to Step up Your Online Marketing Strategy
Online marketing is a recent means of communication, specific to the dynamic and uncertain environment of the Internet. However, the economic investment devoted to marketing remains a delicate subject for companies. Given the difficulty of quantifying the efficiency of this resource, many small and medium-sized enterprises prefer to focus on more “concrete”, short-term, focused departments where efficiency and profitability are easily measurable and comparable.
Let’s remember: marketing makes it possible to get to know one’s clientele better and to be able to offer her what she likes without even asking her. Several variables such as price, distribution, advertising, and the product will make it possible to adapt the offer to this demand
Online marketing is simply an application of these techniques on the Internet. It is an essential tool for any company whose goal is to stay on the Internet and in the minds of Internet users. E-commerce will enable the implementation and positioning in the minds of consumers. This is one of the keys to success for businesses today.
Another foundation is to be dynamic and constantly up-to-date with the latest news and technological innovations that are constantly appearing. For this, especially for companies that have not yet had the opportunity to enter the sector and develop an online marketing strategy, we will discover together what are the pillars of this world in its own right and what are the means of counting and measuring their effects?
THE FIVE MAIN TOOLS OF ONLINE MARKETING
Let’s start by listing the tools necessary for the proper deployment of a web marketing strategy. Far from being exhaustive, this list will however allow you to know the fundamentals of a successful strategy.
WEBSITE
This is the main pillar of online marketing, all others rely on it. The ultimate goal of a website is to offer another type of relationship, complementary, not limited by distance. The windows of your store are multiplying to adapt and improve accessibility to different consumers.
The e-commerce site represents a large part of the online storefront and will help improve the satisfaction of the most “connected” customers. Distance will no longer be a limit and foreign customers will enjoy your offer. It is a type of alternative distribution that seems essential today. Multinationals like Amazon.com or Alibaba.com base the distribution of their offer only on e-commerce.
Once the site is created, you must try to grow its traffic by encouraging users to visit it. A good SEO will allow you at first glance to appear more relevant on the search engines (all marketing tools will intervene for that). In addition, your site must be neat, interactive, fun, and intuitive. The message must also be clear and the content quality. These conditions combined, interested Internet users will stay longer on your website and will be more ready to buy your products.
Finally, an essential feature is to allow the user to contact the staff of the company. To do this, there are many tools such as instant chat or the innovative “click to call” service which greatly facilitates contact with the customer.
ONLINE POSITIONING :
SEO on search engines, we mentioned, is the biggest gate of your website. Indeed, a good ranking (appear on the first page among the first four results) is the equivalent for a physical store to be located in a pedestrian and commercial street. The lower the listing, the more the store will move to the unknown suburbs and dead ends.
To be well referenced you can create high-quality content through a professional blog or press releases but also use keywords and images in your e-commerce site, etc. In this way, you will be in the news of the conversations and themes shared with other companies and blogs which will make you arrive at the top of the research results.
THE PROFESSIONAL BLOG :
Having a blog allows you to offer your users quality content and encourages them to follow you. Moreover, as we said before, quality content will increase your chances of being well referenced.
Publishing articles on current and specialized topics, with new information, will allow you to attract new readers and retain them. All this, as we have seen, will increase the traffic on your website and therefore your chances of selling your product or service. Remember to link your articles to your e-commerce site and your social networks, to create a real ecosystem between your different media.
EMAILING :
This tool will allow you to retain your customers and your community. Offer them to subscribe to your newsletter to receive new information about your new products, promotional offers, or invitations to events.
Keep in mind, however, that any excess can have negative effects. In this case, a too fast pace of newsletters may cause you to go through the “junk mail” section of mailboxes. Strive for a good balance by offering a regular but not too intense mailing cycle
SOCIAL NETWORKS :
They will also help you increase the traffic of your website and retain your customers. Their goal is to maintain a relationship of proximity and quality with customers. This is the opportunity to share additional information to newsletters (discovery of interesting products or services, arrival of new articles in stores, new publications on your blog, quizzes, etc.).
The statistical tools offered by these social networks also make it possible to follow trends with respect to your offer. To do this, it is important to know the different social networks and to know your customers well to know which they are the most adept.
Now that we have listed the main tools of online marketing, let’s take a look at what are the prerequisites for a good strategy and good planning.
THE STEPS PRIOR TO LAUNCHING A WEB MARKETING STRATEGY.
Deploying a marketing strategy on the net requires going through 5 major steps. If these are very similar to the different stages of setting up a more traditional marketing strategy, it is necessary to think about them in the very specific context of web marketing.
KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE:
For this, we have a simple question to ask ourselves. Who can be interested in my product Once you have a clear answer, you can begin to segment your population and differentiate your marketing actions according to the latter.
For example, if the age of your target is between 16 and 24 years and has access to the Internet, then your presence on social networks will be fundamental and its actualization and dynamism important. In addition, the language must be adapted so that the target population can feel concerned. In the same way, if our target groups specialists in a particular sector, then the language will have to be sharp and precise.
STUDY THE COMPETITION:
Any comparison is not odious and all the more so between companies in a very competitive environment. Compare makes it possible to know what is being done and what is not being done and therefore to better adapt your strategy. We will talk about benchmarking, a process of compiling information that brings new ideas.
KNOW YOUR STRENGTHS:
But also your weaknesses! The SWOT matrix – English Strengths, Threats, Opportunities and Weaknesses – can be of great help to you. This will allow you to know which aspects will be maintained, developed, and which ones will need to be improved or even repositioned within your structure.
SELECT THE APPROPRIATE TOOLS:
Let’s keep in mind the 5 tools presented upstream and ask ourselves a few questions. For example, what is our priority? Should we increase the traffic of our website? Should we increase the level of lead conversion? But also, what is our budget? How much of our budget can we spend on online marketing? And finally: Do we have enough resources (time, manpower) to put in place the tools previously exposed?
TO FIX OBJECTIVES :
And that they are realistic! Concrete and viable objectives will allow you to see yourself progress and continue your momentum. A good balance is to be found between objectives too vague and too ambitious. It is a guarantee of success.
Once you have chosen your tools and defined your action plan, you only have to measure the effectiveness of your online marketing strategy.
DATA ANALYSIS
There are several tools to measure the effects of marketing actions. Google, for example, offers the tool ” Google Analytics ” that will give us key information such as the number of visits to your website, the source of traffic, the time spent on the site, etc. which will allow you to evaluate the interest of the Net surfers and to deduce which aspect of your site works optimally and that which would still have to improve.
Who is better, however, than a certain distance and a combination of measuring tools?
The data and results obtained by one will complement those obtained by others. A synergy between Google Analytics and for example a virtual number tracking tool used for your online marketing campaigns. In addition to knowing the number of clicks and being able to detect the interest of your users, you will get data on your potential customers, those on your Internet took the initiative to contact you directly.
Interesting information, crossed with others will allow you to reach your own conclusions. With this combination and competent staff, you will be able to offer a close and quality related to your current and potential customers. All this information about your online marketing campaigns will help you know your return on investment and evaluate their results. This will allow you to better adjust your budget devoted to this essential department.
All companies present on the Internet with an e-commerce service must devote their time to improve their online marketing strategies. By taking into account their strengths and opportunities, these companies will be able to adapt the use of online marketing tools.
An effective internet marketing strategy for your business – summary
Preparing a marketing strategy and defining goals in online marketing is a time-consuming activity, but it brings the expected and measurable results. If you want to be successful in selling and building your image online, you should act according to a predetermined plan. This will allow you to reduce errors and focus on specific activities tailored to your goals and user expectations.
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