You have heard about all these businesses successfully marketing online and have probably been assaulted by dozens of social media managers by now, but how can you be confident in their anticipated results?
It all comes down to one word, strategy.
Beware of these social media managers and website designers willing to accept your money without ever addressing the strategy they propose to implement. Creating a posting schedule for every social network out there and creating a pretty website may sound glorious, but is it worth it if is not generating any income?
I am pretty sure you like to make investments that yield an ROI so I am going to guess you said “No Joe, it isn’t worth it.”
So let’s go over 5 imperative segments of a successful strategy.
1) Design Strategy
Any graphic artist or competent website designer can make something pretty, but will it convert visitors to subscribers and sales? It is important when creating the look and feel of your site you take into consideration what actions you want your audience to take on every page of the site. The home page design is the most critical because it is where most of your visitors will land, but remember your objective is to get people to stay interested and check out other pages.
2) Content Strategy
Ok, so you have addressed the design of your site as a whole and you have defined the objectives for all your pages, now it is imperative that your copy leads people through your site the way you want. It is your content which is going to directly influence the time spent on your site. The more time on your site the more opportunity you have to develop confidence and comfort with your visitor.
Content is typically a component drastically overlooked when developing a site, but it is more important than the design in my opinion. Unless you have a site like Jim Carrey, which is freakin’ amazing by the way, your site must be engaging and provide as much value as possible on each and every page.
3) Promotion Strategy
Now you have got a design people will love, and content has been created that will fully engage anyone interested in your topic, but since less than 1% of people come to your site for the first time to make a purchase how do you plan to capture their information?
This is where the rule of 7 comes into play. In order to capture information you must create an irresistible offer. Now this is not a news letter or some PLR crap you downloaded and repackaged, you really want this to be something that exposes your awesome knowledge and credibility. You want people to take advantage of your proposition and make it a point to revisit your site since you exceeded their expectations.
4) Engagement Strategy
If you have completed the first three segments, congratulations! You have already done more than most businesses, but your work is not over yet. That was the easy part, and it was easy since all of those tasks, once they are set up, are relatively stagnant.
There should not be regular massive changes to your design, but engaging with your audience frequently is a must. Just because someone opted in for something you offered does not mean you have free reign to market and sell them on the next greatest thing out there. Engagement on social media, your website, and in your email campaign, offers you the opportunity to establish comfort and reliability in your knowledge so you can earn the permission to offer a product or service to your list.
5) Conversation Strategy
Knowing how to create blogs, status updates, and content updates on your site in a way that spawns conversation is a strategy that you should establish ahead of time so that there is a predetermined schedule of content going up and a scheduled time to respond to interaction. The last thing you want is happy and maybe not so happy people talking about your brand and you not have any response.
If you are willing to take the time to address these 5 areas prior to fully launching your site you will find it much easier to generate and measure the results of your internet marketing efforts. Check out the Biz Resources page for other tools both free and paid that may help you on your online marketing journey.
Have an awesome day!