SEO, SEM, SMM… What is the right online marketing strategy for you? How do you pick one over the other? Is one better than the other? Should I try to learn it myself or hire it out? Where am I going to find the time to figure out what I need to do for my business? These are the things that keep small and medium sized business owners and marketing managers awake at night.
The brave new world of the internet is over 15 years old now. But still, many businesses are operating in the dark ages, mainly because they don’t really know what to do.
The old days were pretty cut and dry; yellow pages, classifieds, display advertising, direct mail, radio…tv. Today, it’s all about positioning and building relationships. If you aren’t in a “wired” position you will miss the opportunity to build a relationship. In the old days it was hard to figure out how to harness mass marketing. Today, we distill mass marketing down to individual relationships. This can’t be done hap-hazardly. There is a defined process for gaining a presence that allows you to build relationships.
First, understand that marketing, especially now, is a process, not an event. You have to start at the beginning and build your momentum through the various projects with the myriad channels of the web.
Here’s a list to help you work through the process. Even if you started already, this list can put you back on track.
1) First things first: A search engine friendly site that has been optimized for target terms you know your prospective customer is using to find the types of goods or services you offer. Can you do this on your own? Sure! But you will need to learn what constitutes a search engine friendly designed site as well as, what on-page optimization means. This will take a substantial amount of research to dissect what is fact from fiction and myth.
2) SEO is not only about creating a search engine friendly site and applying optimization to your pages. Today, search ranking is a 50/50 combination of on-page factors and off-page factors. Can you do this on your own? Probably not. “Linkage” as it is known is a very specific skill set fraught with plenty of strategies that are just plain wrong.
3) Blogging is the next logical step in the process. When you blog on your site, you regularly build new content for your site. For a blog to be effective, you need to write at least one blog post a week. More is better! Blogs give you the chance to speak to your customers in depth about subjects. This in turn, creates in depth information about who you are and what you do. This “transparency” is the first step in establishing relationships with your prospective customers who will begin to find you on the web. If you enjoy writing, you will love blogging. If not, you are probably going to need to hire it out.
4) SEM aka PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising makes sense to engage once you have set up an informative, optimized web site and have begun to “talk” to the world through your blog. PPC requires that you establish a budget. The goal of the PPC campaign is to turn visitors into customers. There are a variety of strategies for this based on the type of product or service you sell. Can you do it on your own? Sure, but remember, there will be an entire new skill set to learn in order to be successful.
5) SMM aka Social Media Marketing is the new darling catchphrase of the internet these days. However, it does not supplant carrying out items 1-4. You need to build a foundation before you can decorate! SMM is a strategy used to create interest about your business in the social world of the web. Each social place, be it Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter (or dozens and dozens of other places) are social communities of people who have gathered together in one place. You have to build an audience of your own before you can be effective in this medium. But it is where you can build strong relationships, develop aficionados and work through customer service challenges. SMM demands about a half hour per community per day from your time to be effective. If you don’t have that spare time you will need to find a professional.
6) Direct marketing is the final piece of today’s online marketing wheel. From your efforts in 1-5, you build a list of customers, prospects and casual visitors. By asking people at all junctures to “sign up” for your newsletter, you will begin to create a direct mail list. At the least, 3-4 times a year, send out a newsletter with short informative stories to that list. People were excited enough about you to sign up. Now, its your turn to reinvigorate and inform them of your existence. Pros are great at handling email marketing. They know the importance of getting people to move to the next level and convert from being a casual visitor to a prospect to a customer. They also know this work is a process that must be seriously adhered to.
Take these 6 steps and refine, repeat and continue. Visit each one of them regularly and improve on your past effort. If you have pros handling certain aspects, meet with them regularly to gauge effectiveness and reset goals. This is not a race. It is a marathon. It punishes those who don’t stick to the process and above all have patience.