Developing An Online Marketing Strategy

The business landscape is a battlefield

The business landscape is a battlefield. Every offensive in a war requires a strategy. An online marketing strategy is even more important. It creates not only an immediate plan of action but an overall aim and vision for the business. It helps the business owner know which steps must be taken at which time to have a desired end effect. That end effect will be cumulative. A marketer gets out of an online strategy exactly what he puts into it. There are few effective shortcuts.

The first step in strategizing is determining the aims of the business. If a business markets its own physical or virtual product, or someone else's product or service, then the mission will be slightly different. Even the ad materials and squeeze pages will be slightly different. What size is the business going to be? Is there a business plan? Are there plans for expansion? These things should be kept in mind with an eye toward fine-tuning a marketing strategy.

Publicity will always be a necessity, but the marketing tools needed will be different. Publicity on the Web means getting traffic to advertising material. There are two types of traffic, directly purchased and organically grown. Purchased traffic runs the gamut from pay-per-click programs to bulk traffic streams. The traffic can be as productive and rich as one wants, based on one's ability to pay for it. Organic traffic comes as a result of traffic website links, social media networking, search engine optimization, traffic trading, banner exchanges, link trades and more.

Social media networks are legion. There is another new one every day. A central locus from which to plot social network strategy. That locus should also contain links to an email mailing list system for collecting visitor emails. Today's lost customer may be tomorrow's successful one. There are many programs from which to post to social networks. Many other programs have email list management features.

The degree to which a business buys links from major authority sites has changed drastically in recent years. Was a time, a Yahoo listing was mandatory for any self-respecting business person. Now, most authority site links are built up via hub and lens sites or other content-rich pages. Very few directories are worth the expenditure for the link. If ad or link space is purchased, a careful eye must be kept on the source and productivity of the traffic. One should also be watchful for any traffic leaks on link sites. This can radically effect traffic strategies.

Conversion judging is an important and regular process. If traffic isn't converting, the problem may not be in the traffic, but in the marketer's strategy. The smallest change can dramatically improve conversions. It's good to keep up on which colors surfers like, the ad types that are clicked on and what persuades a customer to buy. These traits change regularly.

An online marketing strategy is not a set diagram from which to work. It will always be a work in progress. Only the business owner will know when it is finished.

by: Helen Palmer

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