Just like you need four sturdy walls to hold up a roof, you need four parts to support your marketing strategy. It is crucial to have every part of this strategy in place, and to have it working properly as a cohesive group. Even if you develop and design the best website in the world, it won’t mean anything if you don’t have the other parts to support it.
The fantastic four categories of this strategy include: search, content, social media, and metrics. They all rely on each other, and together they will lead you to the promise land! If you are new to online marketing, then these four principles are about as foreign to you as having only eight planets in the solar system. If you aren’t new to online marketing, keep reading for pointers on how to improve your strategy.
In a previous blog post, we talked about the checklist to having a good website. That is the first stepping stone between having a good marketing strategy, and having a successful one.
Search. Also goes by the name of SEO, with the main goal to get your site found. If you have this great site, you want to show it off and have people go to it, right? Working on your SEO will only benefit your company, and if you don’t know how to go about doing this than find an expert to help you (like us!). The main focus of SEO is on keywords, which should reflect in your entire online marketing strategy.
Content. At the end of the day, this is what your customers really want. If you do this the right way, than SEO will reward your efforts and rank you higher. When doing your online marketing strategy, think of logically where your content should go. Use social media platforms and have your website link out to them when necessary. Look at the perspective of the customer and think about how they navigate your website, and where they would look for the information they are searching for. You want useful, relevant and helpful content so your customers will go to you for help. The last thing you want to do is have a confusing website to navigate just so they stay on pages longer.
Social Media. This isn’t just a place for you to waste time on during lunch or when you should be working. It’s a great place to network and engage with your current customers as well as potential ones. The sky is the limit with social media, as long as you are using the right social platform for your content. Are you starting to see how all four of these go together? If you have trouble finding the time of when to work on your social media content, set aside a couple hours a day to devote solely to social media content for your company.
Metrics. There are so many sites that now offer analytics; how can you not look at them? It is like a report card, only for your business. This will help monitor and track the progress of your efforts. It helps you to see what people respond to, what you need to work on, and what was a success.
Thomas Edison once said, “ I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.” Keep this in mind when you are working on your online marketing plan. You can learn from your successes and failures to make your plan work for you.