You are way off the mark if you believe that only online enterprises need internet marketing strategies. Today, many brick-and-mortar stores also use online marketing strategies innovatively to being customers to their conventional stores. A well-planned and smartly executed online marketing strategy can do wonders to the bottom line of your business, regardless of whether you operate online or offline.
However, internet marketing is lot more complex than traditional marketing. It is imperative to have a thorough knowledge of factors like search engine optimization, leveraging social media reach, email marketing, affiliate marketing and other elements that constitute the core of internet marketing strategy. Internet marketing guru, Rafi Chowdhury states that the type and scale of your business and the market and audience you are targeting will play a key role in developing a marketing strategy that will work best for your enterprise.
Analyze Competitor Strategies
Your competitors can be your best guide for creating a winning internet marketing strategy. Take a closer look at their website design and content. Find out the marketing strategies they are using and how it is helping their business grow. If the internet marketing strategies of your biggest competitors are working for them and you are competing in the same marketplace, you can take a page or two from their strategy, give it your own touch, tweak it to match the special needs of your business and enjoy greater success. Also try to evaluate their shortcomings and marketing bloopers so that you can steer clear of them while developing your campaign.
Know Your Market
Internet marketing, or any other marketing strategy for that matter, has to be market-specific. Launching a broad marketing strategy without knowing which market you want to target can dilute your efforts and adversely affect the outcome of your campaign. You should know your audience to create a laser-focused approach that will specifically target that market demographic. If you are targeting a niche market, your strategy need not cover all online consumers but must focus on those specific consumers only.
Incorporate Strategies That Have Worked For Competitors
If you research right, you will be able to find out the kind of followers your competitors have and how they generally respond to marketing input on top social media channels. If the responses are positive, you can make these strategies a part of your campaign too because what works for your competitors should ideally work for you too if you are competing for the same market space and targeting similar audience. Of course, you should fine tune the strategy using the services of a digital marketing consultant to meet your expectations and to match your business situation and goals.
Plan And Develop Multi-Pronged Strategies
It is not unusual for online enterprises to launch a slew of marketing campaigns one after the other. This is the line of approach adopted by most internet marketers for increasing brand recognition across various online platforms. Experts suggest that you follow these steps to create a successful campaign in a systematic manner.
- Choose a brand name that would resonate with your audience. The same holds true for your brand image. Ideally, you must have your brand name, image, trademark, tagline, website and business plan in place before launching your online marketing strategy.
- Open your social media accounts on top channels where you are most likely to find your audience. Put a team in place to handle your social media campaign.
- Provide interesting information about your business, products or market that are of value to your audience and make sure the pages are updated regularly. Communicate with your audience through blogs, articles and videos and seek feedback. Appreciate their comments.
- Develop a search engine optimization strategy using the services of a digital marketing consultant. Choose keywords that are related to your products and services. When done rightly, your website can get high ranking and appear on the top pages of popular search engines.
- Make sure you follow the latest SEO guidelines to prevent being penalized for spamming or using unauthorized methods for achieving high ranking. Stick to White Hat SEO methods at all times.
- Use the powerful and much-acclaimed email marketing strategy to reach directly to your audience. Start a campaign that involves a surge of emails initially and then a steady pace such as weekly or fortnightly. The content must be informative and high value.
Track Your Campaigns To Measure Outcomes
Use Google Analytics or other similar tools to know how your internet marketing campaign is faring. Know which strategy or platform is offering the best ROI. You can track your online and offline campaigns using advanced tools. Focus on the ones that deliver great results and gradually phase out others or tweak them for better output.