With so much advice available regarding online marketing, it’s almost impossible to decide what works and what’s a bunch of fluff. I know because I’m going through it myself. For that reason, I thought of an online marketing plan. Here’s what I’m doing with my online marketing efforts. Maybe you can implement this online marketing plan to improve your business. Here goes.
Create Your Website
Create a base for your online marketing. Just like a house starts with a foundation, so does online marketing. Your base should be a website. A site you own and have control over. Don’t create your base on loaner space such as Social Media (SM) sites. SM sites are here one day and gone the next. With your own personal website, you control how long it’s available. A well designed website provides a place to inform, engage and convert your visitors into sales. Read this post to learn How to Build an Audience and Grow Your Business.
The work doesn’t stop at creating a website. Once the website is available, you want to give visitors well written content. Content that can help them and the people they know with a problem. Yes, if the content is good they will share it. People love to share helpful information. So make sure the content on your website is CCC: clear, concise and consistent. Clear as in well written and understandable. Concise as in it gets to the point; isn’t long and drawn out. Consistent as in stick to the message. If your niche is marketing, dont write about home decor.
While it’s okay to re-purpose a topic, stay consistent in your message. Write for your niche. For example, Quick Steps To Spring Cleaning may fall under lifestyle content. However, a person in the business of providing support service could re-purpose the topic to read How To Spring Clean Your Inbox. This is a great way to use a topic totally opposite of your niche yet still answer a potential client’s problem.
Plan Your Online Marketing
Plan your online marketing. A plan provides a roadmap for your online marketing. For example, decide which course of action you want to take by selecting a platform to aid with your online marketing. Three strategies you want to use in your online marketing would be to guest blog for popular sites, link your blog to SM or provide your content to community sites. Reddit, Huffpost and Bloglovin allow content contribution and are great for online marketing. You can do one of these strategies or a combination of the three. But I highly suggest you link your blog to your SM accounts.
In regards to SM posting, discover which SM site will provide the greatest return and layout your post schedule(e.g. post to x SM sites 3 times a day & 3 times a week between a certain time). Be your own case study and determine what’s best for your business. Just make sure you are engaging and leading potential clients back to your base. Schedule your SM post using an online SM manager such as Hootsuite. That way you’re not a slave to your SM. Check out this Top 10 Tools for Managing your SM.
Implement Your Plan
Implement your online marketing plan. So far you decided which platform you will use to aid you in your online marketing. You went a step further and scheduled the frequency to how you would use your selected platform. Now you simply need to put the plan in motion. No rocket science work or research needed. Just begin!
Evaluate Your Online Marketing
Evaluate your online marketing with analytics. Google analytics is great for evaluating your online marketing efforts. It can be a bit much to take in at first so I advise you to think of ABC. Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion. These are the areas you want to pay the most attention to as they let you know how you acquire users, their behavior on your site after acquisition, and their conversion patterns.
Once you decide which online marketing plan works better for you, stick with it for 90 days to gauge whether it works. If after 90 days your plan isnt working, try a different approach.
Now that you’re armed with the Secrets to Online Marketing, how are you going to implement these secrets? Please leave me a message in the comment section. I would love to hear your online marketing plans.