Basic Online Marketing Strategy

Together, we’re going to go over basic online marketing strategy:

1. Distinct actions you want your website visitors to take (IMPORTANT!)
2. Explaining Conversion Rates (and how they affect your bottom line)
3. Discovering how much you should be willing to spend for a customer or lead
4. Simple, free ways to track your website traffic

This is a pretty intensive section, and the things we’ll learn here will be the foundation for everything we’re doing going forward. You may want to note the URL of this page, or bookmark it (CTRL+D) so you can come back and reference it later.

If you are already a savvy marketer - then you probably understand this stuff already. I’ll ask you to sit tight until next week, when we’ll start to get more detailed about actions you can take immediately to gain new customers.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau

1) Figuring out what you want your website visitors to do.
Traffic (also called visitors) to your website is a good thing, right? Most of the time, it is. However, if you don’t have a clear ACTION you want your visitors to take when they arrive at your site, you are potentially missing out on a gold mine.

As a small business owner - you’re likely to have at least one of the following actions in mind (we’ll call these “conversions” from here on out):

• Directly Purchasing a product online from your site
• Contacting you electronically (either via email or a web form)
• Contacting you by telephone
• Registering for a newsletter or online community
• Physically walking to your store/shop and making a purchase

The first thing you should ask yourself is, “Which of these do I need my customers to do?” Research indicates that, for many businesses, a phone call is the best way to get customers. If you don’t have the staff to answer the phone all day, maybe an electronic contact is best. If you’re selling online, the desired outcome is pretty clear - although adding an option to sign up for an email list is a great opportunity for on and offline stores.

We’ll talk more in depth about each of these in coming editions, but for now, it will suffice if you think about your best case conversion scenario.

2)Conversion Rates and how they affect you.
Using the information in #1 - we can define a conversion as: “A website visitor that performs one of my desired actions on my website.”

Hammer this into your brain: CONVERSIONS ARE WHAT MAKE YOU MONEY!!!!!

So, what is a conversion rate? It’s pretty simple - it’s the rate at which your website visitors turn in to conversions. If you have 100 visitors, and you have 8 purchase a product off your site, or submit a web form, you have an 8% conversion rate. You can calculate this by dividing the number of conversions by the total traffic.

Pretty simple right?

Right now, you’re probably asking “How do I track conversions on my site?” - never fear - that is coming next week, as it warrants a newsletter of its own!

So, how does this affect you? Let me present you with this scenario. It’s going to illustrate why the most important number in your marketing plan is your conversion rate.

In this very realistic scenario, you can see how Business B got 50% more customers, at a much lower cost per customer, EVEN THOUGH HE HAD LESS TRAFFIC!

Our focus isn’t going to be to get you more traffic - that’s not hard. Our focus is to get your MORE CUSTOMERS.
We’re going to talk a lot in the coming weeks about how to take steps to increase your conversion rates - so make sure you stay tuned. Of everything we’ll discuss, those tips will be the fastest, most inexpensive ways to increase your profits.

3) Determining how much you should spend to get a new customer or lead
In the above scenarios, we introduced a new concept - cost per customer. When you’re putting together a marketing plan, an important number to keep in mind is how much you can spend to gain a customer, and still turn over a tidy profit.

Of course, we’re going to talk a lot about free ways to get customers - but you’ll need to know this number if you’re doing any sort of advertising.
The best way to figure this is to look at your product or service as it stands now.

Once you take away the costs associated with what you’re selling (wholesale cost, materials cost, salary cost, etc.), you’re left with your profit (also called margin).

For example, if you’re selling a widget online for $29.95 - and you pay $15 wholesale for it, and you have $5 in other associated costs you need to cover (salaries, web site hosting, etc..), you profit $9.95 for each widget you sell. This means, you can’t afford to pay more than $9.95 in marketing costs to sell this product.

The same principle applies to services - if your average plumbing job nets you $400, but costs you $50 in materials and $150 in salary costs, then you can only afford to pay $200 acquire that customer.

Of course, these are very simple examples - but you get the idea.

Homework Assignment #1 - sit down and figure out how much you’re willing/able to spend to get a new customer. You may want to find out the max you could afford to pay, then take off 25-50%, and set that as a goal (that will leave you a nice profit).

4) Simple and Free website tracking
I’m sure you’ve noticed that all of the things we’ve talked about require you to actually know what’s happening on your website. To do this, you need ANALYTICS on your site. It’s possible you may have some already. If you’re using something provided by your web hosting company, chances are it’s not as in-depth as you’re going to need as you become a sophisticated online marketer.

So, here’s your second homework assignment - You’re going to want to install Google Analytics. (If you’re using an analytics package you pay for, you can disregard this).

Just go to: http://www.google.com/analytics/ and click ‘Sign Up”
It’s completely free, and they will walk you through the process.

Tags: Online Marketing, Online Strategies

03 Jan 09 | Business, Email Marketing Strategies, Goal Setting, Online Consulting Services, Online Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing | Comments (0)