Internet Marketing Strategy – 6 Steps to Creating Your Online Marketing Campaign
Marketing your business on the Internet is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate new clients and customers. By publishing updates to your website or blog, engaging in social media outlets, networking in industry forums, creating online press releases, and running pay-per-click advertising campaigns, you can quickly generate targeted traffic to your website, product, or promotion.
Internet marketing uses the same basic concepts you utilize in offline marketing. You still need to define your campaign objectives, choose a target market, and create a relevant marketing message. But it also allows you to test your campaigns without spending lots of money, determine which marketing messages work best, and collect statistics and hard data on which marketing strategies are most profitable.
Internet Marketing
Here are six steps to creating your internet marketing campaign.
Step 1 – Define Your Marketing Campaign Objectives
What, specifically, do you want your marketing campaign to do? Is your primary objective to build brand awareness, sell products, or generate leads for your high end services? Perhaps you want to get people to download your free report, to join your newsletter, or attend a seminar you are holding. Be specific and clear about what would make your marketing campaign successful. How many leads or sales do you need to generate to break even? How many new visitors do you want to drive to your website? How many new newsletter subscribers do you want to acquire?
Step 2 – Choose Your Target Market
Marketing is most effective when you narrow your focus and choose a niche market. Which types of customers and clients do you want to attract? What are the characteristics of your most profitable clients? What are their demographics, psychographics, expectations and requirements? The more you know about the types of customers you want to attract, the more targeted you can make your sales pitch.
Step 3 – Create Your Marketing Message
The biggest question your prospects want to know is why they should choose your product or service over all the other options available to them. The better you know your target market, the easier it is to give them a clear, concise reason why your product or service is superior to your competition.
Step 4 – Determine The Best Ways to Reach Your Target Market
Where can you find your target market online? Which websites, forums, blogs and social media websites do they frequent? What keywords do they type into search engines to find products and services like yours?
Step 5 – Set a Budget
What are your client acquisition costs – how much can you spend to acquire a customer or client and still make a profit? Many small businesses don’t keep track of these costs and end up spending more money acquiring a customer than profiting from them. For instance, after crunching the numbers, they might find they spend to make a sale of so their net loss is . On the other hand, if you find you only need to spend to make a sale of , you are netting per customer and your campaign is making you money!
Step 6 – Monitor Your Results
Which marketing strategies are netting you the best results? Which campaigns are the most profitable? Which campaigns are losing money and should be cut out of your overall marketing strategy? One great advantage online marketing has over offline marketing is how easily you can track which campaigns are working. By monitoring your web statistics, you can tell which websites and advertising campaigns send you the most traffic or make you the most sales.
By following these six steps and focusing your marketing resources on the campaigns that are most effective, you can drastically increase your sales and profits.
Internet Marketing Strategy – 6 Steps to Creating Your Online Marketing Campaign
Need help writing your marketing plan? Download your free 45-page strategic marketing plan guide today at http://www.morningstarmultimedia.com. This hands-on workbook covers the 6 steps for creating your marketing strategy and includes a fill-in-the-blank marketing plan template you can use to craft your monthly marketing plan.
Krista Baker is founder of Morningstar Multimedia LLC, which provides marketing coaching services for service-based businesses.
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