The Story:
You’ve just had a beautiful, professionally designed website built for your company and you’re so excited. You can’t wait for business to boom as people rush to your new website to buy your products or sign-up for your services.
The Reality:
Nothing happens. Business doesn’t boom and you’re not sure what went wrong.
The mantra, “If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to websites. You need to promote your website, product and/or services. But the rules have changed. Traditional advertising or outbound marketing is not effective. You need to learn the new rules of inbound marketing. This is where your Internet Marketing Plan comes in.
Often people dive head-first into online media without a plan and they expect to see immediate results. Pretty soon, they get frustrated, claim it’s just a fad and quit cold turkey. Nothing like a dead blog to make you wonder if a company is still in business, just like the Latest News page with 2-year old news.
The Plan:
Step 1: You need to align your Internet Strategy with your business goals. What do you want to get out of your website? Increased Sales? New Leads? Market yourself as an Industry Expert?
Step 2: Who are you selling to? What are their needs? You need to define your Buyer Personas and determine how your product or services fills their needs.
Step 3: Once you understand the needs of your target market, you can build better relationships with existing and potential customers. Educate them on the benefits of your product / service and how it fulfills their needs. Be there for them. Build trust. The goal of inbound marketing is to get them to come to you because they want to.
Your Internet Marketing plan should include:
- Defining your keywords for SEO
- Competitive Analysis
- Link Building Strategy
- Content Creation & Blogging
- Promotion through Social Media
- Landing Pages & Lead Generation
- Email Marketing
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Analytics to Measure Results
Not sure how to get started? Download our free 16-page Internet Marketing Workbook, a step-by-step guide to creating an Internet strategy that uniquely fits your business goals.
Tags: inbound marketing, Internet Marketing, outbound marketing, Social Media