What You Need to know to Plan Your Online Marketing for Success

Strategically planning your online marketing is a crucial, first step for any business that needs to reach new potential customers! This outline will help you plan your online marketing — whether you’re a brand-new startup or an established business that needs to revamp its online marketing efforts.

Online Marketing Essentials

Today’s digital marketing is daunting. However, if you ignore it, you’ll be left behind in the dust because your competition is probably way ahead of you.

People buy from whom they know and trust. You want to build trust and credibility.

Top Sources of Referrals

Where and how do people find you and your website?

Search Engine
Social Media
Email
Paid Advertising

Elements of an Effective Website

24/7 Salesperson
Convert visitors into leads
Call-to-Action (CTA)
Capture their name & email
Conversions
Remember – you want to convert visitors into leads
Nurture leads into sales with marketing automation

Content Marketing

Blogging – 3-5 times a week to start
Fresh content
Helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Videos, Podcasts
Pictures, Infographics
Share other people’s content on social media
Don’t just share your stuff!
It’s about your target – not about you!

Use Social Media to Promote your Content

Share your content
Helps with SEO
Drives people to your site
Have both share and follow buttons on your website
Exposure & Social Amplification
Build a following – 90 minutes a day
Manage it all in 30 minutes a day

Email Marketing & Automation

Your sign-up form can ask 1 or 2 questions, 3 max
Segments your list
Personalized email drip campaign – automation based on their answers
Welcome, thank you, link to whatever you offered them
In 1 or 2 days, follow up with a video
Once they’ve watched the video, send them an offer.
Send them a newsletter at least once a month with excerpts of your most recent blog posts

Paid Advertising

Google Ads
Social media paid advertising
Targeting
Paid advertising on popular websites that your target frequents
Test to see with $100 which works for you
Use the networks’ ad departments

#1 – Who’s Your Target Market?

Before you start doing anything, you have to clearly define your target market niche. You can have more than one target audience.

B2B – Business to Business

Are you Business to Business? Your main targets are other businesses, but you still have to deal with people in the business. Who is the decision-maker in the company? This person becomes your “consumer”; What’s their size, location, goals, and objectives? What’s their main service or product? Most importantly, what is their problem – or pain point that you’re going to solve? How are you going to make their lives easier, more productive, or more successful?

B2C – Business to Consumer

Business to consumer: your main customer is the average consumer who would buy your products or hire your services. You could have more than one “persona”. What are their interests, desires, wants, and needs? What are their pain points?

A company can have both B2B and B2C targets. Consider what percent is business and consumer so you can split your marketing efforts accordingly.

Free Download: Define Your Target Market Workbook

Your Perfect Customer

Who’s your perfect customer? If they walked in the door right now, what would they look like? Married, single, age (not age bracket), male or female, income, kids, educated, etc. Most importantly, what are their pain points (problems) that your product or service is going to alleviate or solve? How has COVID-19 affected them?

#2 – Research

segmenting your target markets for effective online marketing

Learn as much as you can about your target market
- What are their pain points?
- What are they searching for?
- How can you solve their problems?
Which social networks do they frequent the most?
What devices do they prefer?
What are their buying habits?
Your industry’s economic outlook
Demographic & local information

Target Market Personas

Obviously, research is very important. Your target market’s pain points change with the times! Clearly, that’s where creating personas comes in. Create a character that represents your perfect customer – give them a name. That’s the person that should be featured in your promotional posts. People relate to people who are like themselves.

Know Your Competition

And don’t forget your competition! What are your competitors doing online?
Search for your major keyword. Where do they come up in Google search compared to your business?
Look at the top 10-15 organic listings on the search engine results page (SERP).
How many followers do they have?
How often are they blogging and posting?
If they blog once a month, then you need to blog 3x a week to overtake them.
If they rarely post on social media, then you need to post daily. Do this for 30 days then check your analytics.

Whatever they are doing, you have to do more of it and better.

#3 Set SMART Goals

Make sure you set SMART Goals for your online marketing: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. An example of a SMART goal is: getting 100 X (formerly Twitter) followers in 30 days. Now, getting 1000 Twitter followers in one month isn’t attainable unless you’re working with a celebrity. Likewise, another goal would be to get 5 new clients in one month. Determine a monthly income goal for your business. How many new clients do you need to close to achieve that goal? Set goals each month and adjust the goals for next month based on your analytics.

You have your goals, you have your target defined, and now you need a strategic plan to accomplish the goals. This is one step that many people skip and the old adage still applies: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail! Once you have your goals set, then you need your strategy on how you’re going to meet those goals….

#4 – 3-Part Online Marketing Strategy

It’s a 3-part strategy. You need to have content — a blog, videos, podcasts, or gallery providing the fresh content that Google is looking for. Plus, you want to become a content magnet. How do you do that? You promote that content and engage with your potential customers on social media. First, you must have a website that’s set up to capture leads. The objective is to convert a visitor into a lead, and then have them in some sort of automation system to nurture them into a sale. You can’t do one and not do the other 2 and expect to get good results.

Online Marketing Tactics

Tactics are what you use to implement the strategy. Clearly, not every business needs to be on every network. Moreover, focus more time on the networks and efforts that you determine by researching and getting to know your target. Spend more time on the ones that are driving traffic to your website & where you’re building valuable relationships.

Important Things to Remember

target market - focus on people first in your online marketing

Focus on People First!
Polish your message & make sure it’s the right message to the right target.
Do your research – use the data that’s available.
Video should be a big part of your marketing strategy in one form or another.
Be ready for change!
Be prepared to work – sweat equity

Customer Buying Journey

Naturally, not everyone is ready to buy the moment they discover you. Sure, there may be the impulse buyer who sees something then has to have it, but usually people like to either explore on their own — read articles on the website, check out reviews, look at your social networks. Furthermore, others may have direct questions and engage with you via your contact form. Ultimately, where you want them to go is to the sale. You want to make sure your marketing efforts guide the potential customer to that buy button.

The Essential Steps to Effective Online Marketing

In conclusion, there’s no need to be overwhelmed when it comes to online marketing! With some guidance and a logical, strategic plan, you can promote your business effectively. Let’s start with a FREE 15-minute Zoom consultation, evaluation, and analysis of your current marketing efforts. Click here to book a session…https://my.timetrade.com/book/9LM42

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