The 5 Components of a Successful Online Marketing Strategy www.expandeer.com
Whether you re thinking of taking your business to the next level or initiating a new ecommerce project or marketing campaign, the level of success will be determined by your online marketing strategy. The strategy formulation and ideas you ll see in the next few pages are the results of years of direct observation and hands on experience from Expandeer.com www.expandeer.com hello@expandeer.com +297 661 7780
Before we start, let s get the definitions right. There are many definitions for strategy from the outright complex versions to outdated ideas. Online marketing strategy can be simplified as follows: Strategy = I think Tactics = I do
More specifically: Strategy = Analysis, planning, ideation Tactics = Mechanisms, activities, deployment
And if you drill down even more: Strategy -= tactics Analysis, = Einstein's planning, brain ideation in a jar Tactics - strategy = Einstein without a brain at all Tactics = Mechanisms, activities, deployment Strategy + tactics = GROWTH Next: let s look at the 5 key components
5 components of an online marketing strategy Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats CUSTOMERS POSITIONING MESSAGE TACTICS MEASURE Technology Next: customers, who are they? Source and copyright: Expandeer.com 2011
CUSTOMERS There is a simple truth. Customers don t care about you or your company. What customers really want to know is how you are going to solve their current problems. Are you going to relieve their worries or is your service or product going to bring them happiness? Because of this fact, you have only one job to do: to understand your customers fears, wants and desires. Your job as a marketer is to fully know: 1. Who are your customers? 2. Do you clearly understand your customer perspective? 3. What are their needs and goals? Next: your positioning
POSITIONING Within 5 seconds of shaking someone s hand you are able to draw some conclusions of the person s disposition: friendliness, height, speaking tone, confidence and much more. So it is with your company. The value of your product or service, your unique competitive advantage, should be clear within 5 seconds of visiting your site. What benefit do you offer consumers? You need to make the immediate benefit or ROI of using your service or product crystal clear. For example, Diamonds.com does an excellent job with their value proposition. They don t sell diamonds, they sell moments that last forever. What you should know: 1. What problems do your prospects have that your business solves? 2. What makes you different (your Unique Selling Points. USP)? 3. What is your value proposition? Next: the message
Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats MESSAGE Writing copy (content) is one of the most important elements of any effective online marketing campaign. Copywriting involves creatively delivering words that get people to take some form of action. It s best explain with the following quote: Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It s freedom from fear. It s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you re doing is Okay. You are Okay. Don Draper What you should know: 1. What are the product/service truths? 2. What do we need to do to communicate this? 3. What do we want the audience to do? Next: tactics
TACTICS Any successful business uses multiple customer acquisition channels, constantly adapting its tactics to shifting trends in the market. It s important that a business experiments with several online channels to find out which one performs best. While it s natural to immediately think of Google and Facebook as advertising channels, the truth is there are 100 s of possible effective channels. The deeper you go, the more targeted your campaign will be and the cheaper the overall acquisition costs. Your job is to find out where you customers live online and target them with: Paid Search SEO/Blog/copy Affiliate Marketing Display Advertising Email Marketing Social Marketing Lead Generation Retargeting Advertising Sponsorships and much more Next: measuring
MEASURE Unlike tv, radio and print, online marketing gives you powerful analytics tools to measure your performance. As a business you have to be able to track from the first click all the way to a conversion or action. Similarly you need to track across all channels: website, Google, email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Why is all of this important? Consider the phrase below: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half John Wanamaker What you should do: 1. Choose the right tracking and measuring technology 2. Set up tracking 3. Measure every $$$ spent and re-allocate budget to most profitable channel 4. Optimise, optimise, optimise Next: Key takeaways
Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats KEY TAKEAWAYS We leave you with these key takeaways: 1. Online marketing like everything else is constantly evolving. Experiment. 2. Online marketing isn t just Facebook, banners or driving traffic. It s about creating a coherent strategy. It s about creating a marketing machine that lets you track, optimise and get results. 3. Start now. If you re not online, your competition will be. And most importantly your customers already are online. Next: contact
Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats THANK YOU Should you find any of this daunting, there s a huge amount of help and information already on the internet. Someone else has almost always been there first and left some advice on how to navigate your way through these issues. And don t forget that you can always contact us at Expandeer.com for help and advice. www.expandeer.com hello@expandeer.com +297 661 7780