The World Wide Web is a tool with endless limits. Creating and
maintaining a business presence online is more practical than ever
before. In fact, online companies are popping up out of the woodworks.
However, I can vouch that sustaining a successful online business is
easier said than done.
With the immense amount of information on the Internet and users
largely having the control to view exactly what they want, getting your
product in front of potential customers can be challenging to say the
least. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about what works (and what
fails terribly) when it comes to marketing online. Today, times are
tough. Most companies have little room left in their tight budget when
it comes to marketing. Here are 7 tips to follow to develop a successful
online marketing strategy on your startups limited budget.
Know your market.
Your marketing strategy will
never be successful if you do not have a clearly defined audience.
Before you spend a dime on marketing, figure out your target market
first. There’s no need to pay top dollar to hire a fancy market research
firm. If you know your product, you should be able to figure out your
market yourself. For example, who will be most interested in your
product? Men or women? What is their age group? What are your customer’s
interests? What is their likely financial situation?
Once you have a thorough profile of your customer, determining how
and where to reach them is much easier. This step may take awhile, and
that’s OK. If you start marketing before you have a clear customer
profile though, you will likely be wasting your dollars in places that
will never reach your customer. Just because Pinterest is growing
rapidly, doesn’t mean your audience is the one making it grow.
Set and reset goals.
Determine what you are
looking to gain from online marketing. Increased awareness? Increased
revenue? You will probably have multiple goals, but keep track of what
they are so you can measure your success. When you reach your initial
goals, set new goals so your company can continue to improve.
Set a budget.
Now that you know who your target
market is and have set goals, plan your budget accordingly. The good
thing about online marketing is that you can be successful even when on a
tight budget. A lot of platforms are available at no charge. However,
sticking solely with free forms of online marketing might not be the
best strategy for your company. Carefully determine what outlets are
most necessary for your product and be willing to spend some money to
get results.
Brand yourself.
Set yourself apart from the
competition. There are thousands of companies trying to sell products on
the Internet. Thus, you need to make your brand unforgettable. This
begins with your website. Your domain name should be your company’s name
if at all possible. If there are other companies online with names
similar to yours, you may even want to consider changing your name to
one that will not be easily confused with another product. Acquiring a
domain name has a fee involved, but using a hosting service is very
affordable even for the smallest budgets.
The way you want your brand to be viewed by customers is really up to
you. But once you figure it out be consistent and stick with it. Having
a professional website and a strong social media presence is important
here, but you should also take the time to interact with potential
customers and build relationships with them. The main cost involved in
this step is just the man hours put into the process, which will
drastically be reduced when you’ve established your brand.
Search engine optimization.
When someone enters a
search query into a search engine about something relevant to your
company, obviously you want to be one of the first results displayed. So
how do you make this happen? Essentially, you need to make your website
more appealing to search engines. Do this by using keywords that are
commonly searched, backlinking your site, customizing the headline and
description, etc.
SEO can admittedly be a complicated and time consuming process,
however the time needs to be spent here to ensure your website is
getting found. Your best bet is usually going to be spending a bit more
of your budget and hiring the right people to do the proper research. At
Ciplex, we stress the importance
of not including keywords to simply rank your site, but using the terms
your audience is looking for. That is what will get you the highest
conversion rates.
Today is our final round up of our top stories of 2012 with the Marketing Land stories most shared on Facebook.
