WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

Internet marketing is the use of the web to advertise, promote and to sell products and services.  A strategic internet marketing plan is quite similar to a strategic business plan, just with a focused and narrower objective.

In building your internet marketing plan, you need to think about how this fits into your business objectives and other traditional marketing strategies.  All these strategies should interrelate and work together for the best results.

Find below the key elements that I always include in any internet marketing plan.

Business plan

Describe your company and your company history.  What are you long and short term overall objectives? What products or services do you sell?

Marketing plan

What targeted market do you compete in? List and describe your primary competitors along with their weaknesses and strengths.  Who are your targeted customers and on what overall basis do they make the final buying decision? What are your positioning, branding and pricing strategies?

Internet marketing

Based on your marketing plan, what are your online objectives in terms of lead generation, traffic, selling, warranty service or customer service? Develop your strategies around search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, affiliate marketing, podcast marketing and blog marketing.

Blog marketing

Based on your targeted customer demographically, what informative and interesting content can you present to them to develop a strong readership? You can always use your blog to support your other online marketing strategies and marketing plans.

With only a week left until our free webinar, we have just released the supplementary whitepaper “Blogging to Build a Reputation Online.” As we all continue to witness the rapid evolution of technology, blogging is proving to be more and more essential in order to establish a web presence. A company blog is undeniably a digital marketing tool that your business cannot afford to ignore.

Prepared by Eric Cook – a Certified Internet Business Consultant with WSI,  who is also hosting the free webinar of the same topic – this complimentary whitepaper will take you through the Ins and Outs of leveraging a blog to enhance your company’s image and solidify your expertise with your online customer base. A blog can give you, your employees,and your consumers the opportunity to post thoughts, share experiences and showcase what you know. You don’t even have to be a ‘webmaster’ to master the technique of blogging. It’s all about interacting with your audience to develop a relationship and build your brand’s credibility. Considering that many believe that “your reputation precedes you,” blogging is an outstanding way to ensure that your company’s reputation is a positive one!

Some key highlights of this whitepaper include:

• How-to’s for promoting reader engagement
• Tips for dealing with both the good and back feedback from your readers
• Techniques for measuring your blog’s return on investment

Click here to download your complimentary copy of our whitepaper “Blogging to Build a Reputation Online.”

Companies that market to small businesses should focus on creating a social media strategy as a way of promoting their services and be open to trying new methods of prospecting. Companies that are marketing to this sector should have a strong presence at the top or on the most relevant social networking sites. Especially since this is an excellent way of getting the word out about your business.

Here are some other ideas that you can add to your digital marketing strategy to try to increase your online visibility:

Product Reviews and Ratings

When someone is deciding whether to buy something online they will nearly always look for reviews or testimonials; they provide great input to the decision making process. Make sure prospects will find great reviews of your products or services.

Podcasts and Webinars

This year has seen a dramatic increase in the use of podcasts and webinars as a way of educating your prospects as more and more managers are looking online for information. Small business owners consider these as great resources for their professional development and research. They are also not time consuming, so you are more likely to get someone to listen to a short webinar than to agree to an in person meeting.

Social Media Company and Brand pages

Creating a great image on the social media sites is now a necessity for most small businesses, but make sure you also include some educational resources. Try to answer the most common questions your company is asked as a part of the profile page. Also consider adding some presentation materials; this is easily done using SlideShare which can be added to your LinkedIn profile, and optimized for search.

Company Blogs

A well written company blog can have a big impact, but this does involve a commitment to keep on creating additional content. So make sure you have a plan for this before you start one. You need both the content strategy and resources necessary to create and maintain a good one.

All of these activities act to engage decision makers in your business or brand and can set your company apart from the local competition.

To keep up-to-speed with the evolving social media technologies and techniques of today, take a look at our Social Media Strategy Kit.

Do you have a company presentation? You can use SlideShare to get the message out about your business. SlideShare provides tools and web space for publishing your business presentations online.

An astonishing 25 million website visitors – most of them professional people – participate in SlideShare every month, making it ‘the world’s largest community for sharing presentations‘.

How Can SlideShare Help you?

Participating as part of the SlideShare community enables you to upload, enhance and share your slides, and discuss other PowerPoint, PDF and Open Office presentations with like-minded people.

The purpose-built online sharing tools allow presentations to be shared privately (for internal use only), as well as publicly, with the aim of eliciting some social interaction from your target audience.

Getting Your Message Heard
Spreading your sales message across multiple web platforms is part of an effective Web 2.0 marketing strategy. With this is mind, you can use SlideShare to help:

• Upload your company presentation to share with new and existing customers
• Publish tutorials about your products to enhance your support services
• Share slides from business presentations as a means of reference and promotion
• Develop conversations with other businesses that relate to your industry
• Add insightful comments to enhance other presentations in your niche

To bring an extra dimension to your presentations, SlideShare tools allow you to synchronize audio with your slides. Once a presentation is viewed, the user interface provides all the usual methods of sharing content across the web that millions of web users are now accustomed to just as in YouTube.

Making New Connections
As well as publishing your own materials, use the SlideShare search tool to find other presentations that relate to your target market – or simply to locate topics that interest you. Make comments and contribute genuinely to enhance the presenter’s message.

As part of the SlideShare community you can join and create groups related to your areas of interest. Monitoring groups will allow you to hone in on who will be most compatible with your interests. It will also give you a feel for the tone to take when you first make contact.

Presentation Tips
Adopting a professional but simple approach to preparing your business presentations will enable you to publish short, succinct and memorable marketing messages. With this in mind, here are some tips:

• Be creative with your copy – not with ‘wizzy’ effects
• Keep the presentation style simple – a light colour background for your slides is ideal
• If you are using images, optimize them so the slides load immediately
• Keep your messages short and to the point
• Consider adding some personality – it is a social networking site, after all
• Don’t overwhelm the viewer with facts and figures; use them to enhance your message, not as your message.

Additionally, if you use business presentations, you may want to consider dusting them off and publishing them on the web.

There are many more digital marketing techniques like this that will help your business gain exposure and drive growth online. Here are a few of the world-class online strategies you can implement into your company’s digital marketing mix.

In order to have a successful website, you need your visitors to take action.  You might have exactly what they need. If you have your visitors interested, how can you get them to commit? You also might have a clear and compelling offer, but that is not always enough to let them take the final decision.

It’s a fact that people are wary about buying online. You always have to build trust by eliminating their risk. Your visitors are looking for reassurance.  Adding strong trust-building elements to your website or blog is frequently the difference between a poor performing website and a money maker.

Find below 20 tips you can implement into your digital marketing strategy to build trust, credibility and lower your prospects’ anxiety.

1. Offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee.
2. Include an option for a free trial or introductory offer.
3. Include a video clip of the product in action to help the customer see what they are buying.
4. Have a simple and hassle free returns policy.
5. Prevent surprises by disclosing shipping costs early in the shopping process.
6. On your home page and ordering pages have ‘trust logos’ prominently posted (Bank logos, VISA, HackerSafe).
7. Give reassurance that you will guard their privacy (no spamming, emails won’t be sold to spammers).
8. Include helpful product education and ‘how-to’ advice. The more time they spend on your site, the more they will trust you.
9. Include user product reviews and ratings.
10. Include real testimonials and reviews by people who have used your products.
11. Get endorsements from industry experts and professional organizations.
12. Include links to press coverage from the mainstream media; include an ‘in the news’ or ‘press’ section on your website.
13. List any industry awards you have won.
14. List any industry associations you are a member of (or use their logos in #5).
15. Include actual case studies you have done.
16. Disclose any ongoing costs to maintain and operate the product.
17. Include your phone number and physical address prominently on your site.
18. Offer offline ordering alternatives such as finalizing the purchase by phone.
19. Offer multiple payment options.
20. Offer multiple shipping options.

The goal with call to actions is to be transparent and to show your prospects why they should trust you. Always provide real value and offer your customer choices.

Visit our site for more digital marketing tips and industry techniques that will help your company’s website convert visitors into customers!