User loginNavigation
|
How to reach 86% of your market online with a limited budgetWhy do search engines like smart marketing? Explore the simple steps you can take to maximize your marketing efforts online and grow your business. This includes launching a new company or product to building a brand and getting new customers. Learn how traditional marketing objectives, planning and activities will deliver solid results with minimum budgets. As any business manager knows, getting people to contact you is a constant game of cat and mouse with your competition. The internet has changed many key business principles and none more so than your marketing efforts. From businesses dealing in the smallest town in mid-America to those with international customers, the core marketing principles are not much different. This article will lay out the logic behind sound marketing strategies to meet your business objectives. It discusses the use of online tools as a way to educate, inform and drive customers to you. Let’s start with Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO. SEO activity is a game that anyone with a business must be monitoring on a regular basis. SEO is the activities where your website and business comes to the top of the list when prospective customers search on “key words” or “key phrases”. One common mistake people make is to identify their business with key words they think are important as opposed to words your customers think are important. This is an ongoing game that requires monitoring and attention so that you stay one step ahead of your competition. Step # 1: Identify and define your business the way your customers think about you. With over 400,000,000 (400 million) searches performed each day, it’s important that you get the best exposure you can with the budget (or lack of) available. Once you have your key phrases identified, you will want to be in the Top 20 searches (with Top 10 as an ultimate goal). Nearly 97% of all Internet traffic comes from the most popular engines and directories. So you may ask, “How much advertising money do I need to spend to reach the Top of the search engines?” Advertising does have a place on the Internet, but it must be used as part of a bigger plan and used appropriately and with the right expectations, but there are better ways to get results. Some basic statistics of how websites are discovered may surprise you: If you look at these statistics, from the best-to-least results, it makes sense that you focus your efforts on those that will deliver maximum impact. JCO Group prefers marketing efforts with focus on the Top 3 activities: Search Engines, Random Surfing and Word-of-Mouth. We focus on these because a good, yet simple and inexpensive marketing plan can address those three activities so you can have an estimated 86% impact on getting the most prospects to your site and to contact you. How you handle those prospects then becomes your “sales” effort. So how do you get 86% impact; by taking a traditional marketing approach. Step #2: Develop, manage and track an active marketing plan It’s always surprising how few businesses have a real marketing plan. If you look at the most successful businesses and companies, each year they will write and follow a marketing plan. Not having a marketing plan is like a ship navigating without a compass or a destination in mind. By setting objectives and a clear plan of action, you are mapping your daily activities to achieve the desired results. You also are tracking what is working and what is not. This is especially important when you are spending money on activities that do not get good results. Once you have a marketing plan, you have identified your key phrases and your website is in good order, then what’s next how much will it all cost? The good news about the Internet is that it has finally come of age where the many promises of early days are in fact available today. Any company of any size has all the tools and resources available to them that just a few years ago would have cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. You just need to know what activities work and how to get access to the tools to leverage them to your advantage. The secret to maximum results across the board is CONTENT. Not just any content, but “relevant” and “well placed” content that people want to read. Some of the reasons they read it is to learn, become informed, to feed their passion, or most importantly, to become comfortable with whomever is providing the content so they can BUY. Yes, people use the Internet to learn and become aware of specific things. By going on this quest, they start with a search engine. Then they randomly surf the results of the top 20 links, then they listen to and read what other people are saying about those companies or issues. This is classic human behavior that you can use to your benefit immediately and if you do not have an active plan using the tools available, you are losing sales. It doesn’t mean that you are still selling to those clients that already know who you are, but it does mean that you are not growing your business to maximum potential. The best news about all of this is that you can reach the 86% of the online market with very little money spent. All it takes is a plan, a little time and some appropriately placed well-thought out content. The best tools to deliver and get your relevant content noticed include: These are critical activities because they all fit within the top three activities that get 86% of your results. In a simplified explanation, search engines rank websites based on relevant content and third-party references back to your site (or content). That means your marketing activities should include relevant content (key words, phrases and issues) that are well placed (on third party sites) that link back to your website and company. Believe it or not, all of these cost little money and can reach tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. They also deliver more impact than your typical online advertising efforts. However, be cautious for any service provider that promises you instant results. These take time and search engines recognize and punish fraudulent activity with exclusion of low rankings. Step # 3: Consistently develop relevant content (key words, phrases and issues) that are well placed (on third party sites) that link back to your website and company. Brought to you by generixMEDIA generixMEDIA is a media and marketing company providing readers and partners with the tools to inform and market content on the Internet through a Connected Community philosophy. generixMEDIA powers and markets content with proven open source tools and Web 2.0 applications through structure and sound marketing principles. Read more about generixMEDIA here |
Search
|
