The view of most businesses is that they require an online presence which obviously we would agree is essential to any business success. Without doubt the basis of your online marketing should revolve around your website, as opposed to any of your other online channels such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
As popular as these social media channels are you will not have the control and ownership as you do for your own website, these should be used more as channels of promoting your business for which your website is your online shop window. Looking at how fickle we have been with some of these social media channels it is highly recommended to have your website as your main online presence.
With that established we must look at how to market your business online, of which there are many, many different channels that can be used these days. To know which is most appropriate for your business will be key to your online business success.
Below are a list of tasks that you need to bear in mind when creating your online marketing campaign, for which we will be going into more detail in future blogs.
Creating a persona
First things first, who are you marketing to? One of the best ways to understand this is to create a marketing persona. This is a character based on your target market. This is often also based on your current best clients. Once you’ve created a persona it makes it much easier to understand how to market to them, what language to use and what online marketing channels would be best.
Search engine optimisation
Before starting the campaign also make sure that your own website is optimised for search engines. There are many tools available to run against your site to see where improvements can be made to your site is more effective. We found sitebeam a great tool, although also many free options and plug-ins you can have for your browsers.
Site structure
Just as you would expect to go into a supermarket and have all the rules labelled as to what products are selling you need to make sure that your website is structured to make it easier as possible for your visitors to find what they’re looking for. This makes a much better experience for your visitors and also lowers the bounce rate which will negatively affect your site. Is worth investing in getting your site reviewed through impartial channels.
Keywords
It is worth making sure you know which keywords are appropriate to your business. If you are a shoe shop you may think you would like to optimise for the word shoe (which is not entirely correct) there are many types of shoe, many styles and great amount of competition for that keyword. The more specific you are with your keyword better in the long term searches will be. If you think about it from a personal point of view if you were to look for shoes online you probably would not typing just “shoe” you might type in something like where can I find a “quality brown leather shoe in Croydon”. Now using Google’s keyword analyser and see what competition there is for your keywords.
Creating a strategy
You are now in a position where you can start your online marketing, the two main areas split, marketing is whether it is inbound or outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is where your site is optimised sufficiently that users come to you. This in the long term is the most cost-effective approach and best for your business, but take some investment in time to get established. Inbound marketing uses tools such as link building, social media marketing, posting on blogs and forums to attract visitors to your site as well as give your site ranking authority within the search engines.
Outbound marketing is where you directly promote your business to potential visitors to channels such as email marketing or pay per click advertising (such as Google AdWords). This is a great short-term strategy but as soon as the emails stop or the adverts are withdrawn your online marketing campaign also stops.
We will be discussing more in further blogs about each of these topics in greater detail. However, if you want to comment please do not hesitate to contribute or get in touch.
Happy online marketing from Smart Cow.
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Digital marketing agency Surrey
If you need a helping hand with your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with us at Smart Cow Digital Marketing for expert advice on how to conduct an effective digital marketing campaign!
Services we offer include web design and development, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.