ONLINE MARKETING FOR NEWBIES

If you are introducing yourself into the world of online marketing you might’ve noticed that there is a lot to take in. On every step you discover new terms and acronyms, new and endless tools and much more. Overall you can tell that it’s a different and more personal approach (for the end consumer) than traditional marketing.

How do I start?

A few days ago I found this great post ‘The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)‘ written by Oli Gardner. He designed a “wheel of online marketing’ to guide Newbies about the online marketing strategic process.

It is basically a six month action plan that uses 8 basic Online Marketing tools. It’s made on a progression basis, so it gets more complex with each stage as time progresses.

SIX PACK ACTION PLAN:

Month 1. Set the stage of your online marketing plan

Month 2.Design, build, grow and communicate

Month 3.Optimized approach to Marketing

Month 4.Acquire, measure, evaluate and attract

Month 5.Testing, Networking and linkbuilding

Month 6.Feedback, Segmentation, contests and more

1. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social Media Marketing is really useful to generate traffic to your website as well as increase your brand´s recognition. There are many actions you can take, lets have a look at some of them.

Month #1

Create and define your brand in the major social networks. We will be using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as examples. Keep in mind that you should use the ones that are going to help you reach your target audience. Remember!!! Having a social media channel with no activity is worst than having no social media channel it all.

Set your Social media accounts

Define your style. Are you creative, curator or chatty?

The creator

makes his own content. It’s a good way to get to become a leader in your niche.

The curator

filters, synthesizes and then shares content, becoming a resource highly valued by fans.

The Chatty style does not usually work at first, unless you’re a celebrity. The best is the middle ground. Have some conversations with your followers and include personal appearances for your account to look human and interesting, but DO NOT saturate.

Month #2

Gain followers on Twitter.  How?.. You should read articles like “The Unofficial Guide To Get More Twitter Followers”

Month #3

Schedule your tweets. You can use tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to ewach your audience at the best time.

Month #4

Create a fan page on Facebook to win conversion. Connect your blog to Facebook. Gain fans on Facebook. You should read this cool article “Steal Our Facebook Targeting Hack to Jumpstart Your Online Business” written by Dave Danzeiser

Month #5

Start networking through LinkedIn

Month #6

Interact and talk. Create page contests and viral content on social networks

2. EMAIL MARKETING

Email Marketing is one of the most valuable online marketing tools if used correctly. We will soon create an eBook on how to go about that. Stay tuned.

Month #1

Choose an email marketing provider such as Mail Chimp. Design a template for your corporate emails.

Month #2

Create a campaign to start growing your mailing list.

Month #3

Segment your audience and create different mailing lists.

Month #4

Perform split A / B tests to see what works the best with your actual audience.

3.  LEAD GENERATION

What if you can’t do Email Marketing because you do not have any mailing list or potential client to send your information to? That’s where Lead Generation comes into play. There are many formulas to get paid-generated leads, but if you want to do it organically, here are some ideas.

Month #1

Create an account at Feedburner.com to capture and track RSS readers. And of course CREATE A BLOG!!!

Month #2

Take some time to start discussions or reply to comments on the LinkedIn groups where you can interact with people segmented by tastes and hobbies.

Month #3

Give some high quality educational content to your audience. ie. ebooks, webinars, case studies, and all sort of free interesting stuff.

4. SEO – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is possibly the most difficult subject for beginners, so it is important to know some basic steps to get started.

Month #1

Set up Google Webmaster Tools tool (for which you need a Gmail account). Investigate and define the main keywords

Month #2

Design the blog to facilitate search. For example, defining categories and metas

Month #3

Do linkbuilding.

5. CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION

The CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is one of the complex terms in online marketing. Basically there are techniques to increase the number of conversions…. you know!!.. the number of visitors who become your customers.

Some basic actions on CRO and landing pages are:

Month #1

Define a single purpose and a single call to action on each landing page. When the user lands on the page offer him/her a unique proposal, offer or product. Focus the attention of visitors in one essential action so they don´t get distracted. This gives you a better chance of them carrying out the action or actions you want them to do (buy, register, download…)

Month #2

A/B Split Test your pages and monitor the results.

Month #3

Perform the ‘5 seconds test’. This test is based on the theory that most Internet users stay only an average of five seconds before deciding whether to stay or leave a website. Take a look at fivesecondtest.com

Month #4

Use feedback tools. To know the opinion of users. From the comments or chats, to all kinds of surveys.

6. ANALYTICS

The analysis of results is often the most boring and messy part of online marketing (even more than the CRO). The essential actions can be summarized as insights in the Google Analytics tool. What to do?

Month #1

Create a Google Analytics account. Establish conversion goals. These are the actions you want your visitors to take once they reach your site. They include: Opening an account, subscribe to your newsletter or RSS, download files, etc.

Outline important milestones in Google Analytics. Especially traffic spikes and why they happen (a big post, a mention a link on another website or blog, etc.) It helps you remember and analyze what it was that attracted more traffic to your web, when and why in order to keep using the same path.

Month #2

Add customized reports in your dashboard Google Analytics

Month #4

Discover areas of poor performance of your website to improve user experience. Some metrics that you can look at are:

Dropout conversion funnel points
Bounce rates
Avg. Session Duration
Returning visitors

7. CONTENT MARKETING

The content is no longer the king, but rather the emperor. Content is the beginning, middle and end of a good story in Online Marketing. Content marketing is an open world of possibilities, where do you start?

Month #1

Start a corporate blog where you offer knowledge for free. Share content on your social networks. Use platforms like Medium and Stumbleupon to promote content.

Month #2

Establish a schedule of publications

Month #3

Create an ebook with your content

Month #4

Write guest posts on other blogs

Month #5

Writing about others to build relationships. (Always mention the author and link the sources when writing)

Month #6

Create infographics and visual content

8. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (Pay per click Advertisement / PPC)

PPC is the fastest way to get instant traffic to your website. However, it is difficult to get it right, so Gardner recommends not to start until the third month of the action plan.

The main thing is to know the Google Adwords tool

Month #3

Create an account Google AdWords.

Send traffic to landing pages (landing pages) and not to the homepage. That is, if I have a travel site and placed a banner announcing an offer of a cruise. This announcement should be directed to the offer page and not to the home page.

Month #4

Have a landing page for the ad group.  If you offer multiple products or have several promotions at once, design specific Landing Pages to each product category.

Month #6

Get help from an expert in PPC. It is the ultimate solution to complete your strategy if you’ve been stuck at any level.

Online Marketing as you can see is quite complex. It takes expereince and expertise to launch a successful online strategy. It´s always best to contact experts or to take your time to learn. Learning places you in a good position to succeed as mistakes will cost you money.