Creating A Well-Rounded, Web-Centric Marketing Approach

The internet has changed the marketing priorities of major brands. They have backed away from broadcast advertising options like print, TV, and radio that receive no engagement as well as traditional media advertising options like e-mail blasts and banner ads. While these options still have their place, high engagement mediums of reaching potential customers is the method of choice. Blogs, communities, and social media have revolutionized the marketing field. There is a quick overview of how to develop a web-centric marketing approach. 

Creating a Brand Strategy

Creating your brand strategy is always the first order of business. Branding strategy is what allows you to target your business’ primary audience. Branding themes, logos and graphical components permeate all visual/textual components of this plan. This process is a collaborative effort between you and your agency. For more detailing information on branding strategy see our former blog post. 

Developing Your Web Presence

Your website is the central hub for all marketing efforts. The first step to optimizing your web presence is to establish, collaboratively, your key performance indicators (KPI). Once you know what you are after, you will want to bring the people in. Drive traffic to your site through internet marketing components: SEO, SEM, and Social Media.  You will need to provide audience-specific tools that help build brand awareness and customer loyalty, and, finally, track/measure all marketing/advertising efforts through site analytics.

You will also want to focus on mobile-friendly content for your audience when they are on the go. Why? Because mobile searches lead to conversions. Take these latest stats: 

• Mobile search will overtake desktop search by the middle of 2014
• Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year according to Google
• Mobile search isn’t just limited to phones. The tablet market will soon overtake laptop sales

HOWEVER, mobile for the sake of mobile isn’t worth the effort. Target high-value site content, and make it mobile-friendly. All mobile efforts should be conversion focused!

Formulate a Search Engine Optimization Plan

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) begins with keyword analysis. Keywords are the search terms that your audience uses to find your web content. This analysis is the basis for not only content development but also branding efforts and marketing efforts. Optimal keywords permeate all content developed throughout this marketing plan. The ultimate goal is to rank on the first page for your most important keywords. Keywords ranked on pages 2-3 are the low-hanging fruit. You will also want to consolidate your web presence. Once two sites are combined, authority and therefor organic rank, will increase. Many keywords on pages 2-3 that can be further optimized to get to page 1.

Public Relations Mixed With Social Media

Public relations has moved from traditional media distribution to online distribution. Social media and blogging can help with PR efforts drastically. You need both online and offline article distribution including white papers and case study development. Additionally, cultivate mailing lists and engage in ongoing email marketing campaigns.

Traditional Advertising

Traditional advertising still has it’s place. However, with the higher prices it is important to get it right the first time. The concepts and creative must support your brand strategy. Stay on topic, and make sure the audience understand your message. Offline this can be done in trade publications and online this can be done with PPC,targeted banner, and re-targeting advertising. Consistent visual components and themes must permeate all materials for consistency of message and corporate image. 

Incentive/Loyalty Programs

Audience-specific incentives and loyalty programs create trust, generate leads, and drive action. This could be a rewards system, a member’s only program, a discount program, or a brand evangelist program. Again, stay consistent with your messaging. 

A combination of all of these components will lead to a well-rounded, successful web-marketing approach. However, this is not a one-time thing. Long term success depends on ongoing implementation, management and tracking of plan components. Continue to re-evaluate plan components, themes and market conditions as you go. And don’t be afraid to make adjustments based on the data you collect. 

Understanding and Rocking Content Marketing

98% of all materials and product research begins on the web. For anyone selling products and services, this is an extremely important statistic. Your customers are researching you and your competition before you ever know they exist. If ignored, this can be detrimental to your bottom line. If utilized, you can grow your business at exponential rates. 

Today, your audience wants to first be educated and informed—not sold! When they understand your message, they’ll trust you, rely on you, and they’ll act. Strategic communication is critical to this process. When speaking to different audiences (investors and customers), it’s important to craft different messages. This is the essence of content marketing.

What is Content Marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content Marketing is a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance a consumer behavior.” In fact, 95% of B2B marketers are using content marketing to their advantage. 

What Does An Optimized Content Marketing Strategy Look Like?

There are a few different types of media used in content marketing: 

An optimized content marketing strategy utilizes all of these media types in harmony with one another. This includes press releases, blogs, keyword articles, feature articles, case studies, SEO, social media, PPC, banner ads, and trade publication ads. 

What Kind Of Content Should You Use? 

This first criteria of good content is that it be fresh. Posting new, non-duplicate content regularly is key. On-site, including keyword optimized content on every page with an emphasis given to the main objective of the page will also improve the page rank. Off-site, fresh content should be posted on Facebook, Google+, and other social networks to help increase overall website authority. 

The second criteria is “quality over quantity”. While you want to have a regular source and schedule of posting content, you don’t want to just post content without a purpose. Content must be keyword enriched, have a focus, and help make you a global source for industry-related news and information. When speaking to investors and shareholders, you want to speak to the successes, community involvement, and other stories that support your corporate story.

Final Results

All of this effort will have the final result of increased website traffic, lowered bounce rate due to increased quality of on-site content, increased keyword rankings, increased high-quality leads, and increased online authority. Give your audience what they want and they will do the same for your. It’s basic reciprocity!