How To Internet Marketing: Your Internet Marketing Strategy

All internet marketing should start with a strategy. Too many businesses these days just randomly undertake isolated online marketing activities with little or no thought regarding what they really are trying to achieve. It is little wonder that most businesses really do not get as much as they could out of their internet marketing efforts.

First step for an internet marketing strategy

All internet marketing strategies should begin by answering the question:

"What am I trying to achieve with online marketing?"

Its amazing how few businesses deliberately reflect on this question… and the answers are many and varied. Here are some variations which have been relevant to many of my clients:

Direct sales for a shopping cart website
Lead generation for a professional client
Sign up to an email database for someone preparing for a new product launch
Assist with brand awareness - no direct online sales but part of the sales process
Provide information for existing clients (in this case students)
A membership site for gambling tips
Add credibility to the tender process

You will see how different each of these purposes is. Given each is so different, they should each have a completely different structured marketing strategy.

Document your purpose before you undertake any internet marketing work.

Step 2 for an internet marketing strategy

Once you understand why you are doing this, what you are trying to achieve, you can create your advertisement. In most cases, your advertisement will be a website, but these days it could also be a social media presence.

Regardless of the form of advertisement, when creating it it must be done with the specific intent of achieving the purpose you have defined in step 1. The structure of your advert AND the copy will be very different depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Ie. There is no point in having a direct response sales letter on a brand building style of website. This will simply make your piece of branding look tacky. Similarly, information copy on shopping cart websites just do not sell.

Step 3 for an internet marketing strategy

Next you put your advert in front of your target audience. This means you need to generate traffic to your online advertisement. There are many ways you can do this, I have included some ideas below:

SEO
Pay Per Click advertising
Social Media activities
Email a database
Use business cards
Networking and or seminars
Any form of print advertising

Yes - you can use non-online means to promote your online efforts.

If you want to understand more about an internet marketing strategy, your first task is to visit our blog athttp://oceanfeather.com.au/internet-marketing/. Here you'll find stacks of valuable information about internet marketing strategies and ethical internet marketing and how to deal with all types of related issues. If there is anything you don't understand, just use the form to let us know what you need to know and we will write an article just to answer your questions.

Step 4 for an internet marketing strategy

Now that you have people looking at your advert, you need to monitor what they are doing. Is your target audience responding to your advert as you expect them to do, converting commercially in the way you defined in step 1 of this process? You need to be able to measure this.

Once you are getting statistics about the performance of this marketing strategy, you can take measures to improve it.

Final step for an internet marketing strategy

Review step 2, 3 and 4 of your internet marketing strategy. Are there things you can improve? Think logically and creatively. If there are, do NOT just plow ahead and put them in. Take a deep breath, find some testing software and set up some tests.

Each time you want to try something different, split test performance against what you currently have to make sure the change adds lasting value to your business. Random and untested changes (including brand new websites) are simply gambles.

Think, test and measure to get lasting and long term improvements in your online marketing performance.