5 Critical Ingredients To Online Marketing

It’s amazing how many people try to leverage the internet while missing a key piece, or ignoring a piece because it’s too hard, too expensive or some other internal reason (personally or within the business) that makes them NOT want to do things right the first time.

HOW do you effectively plan your entire online marketing campaign RIGHT from step 1?

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #1 – TARGET AUDIENCE

First thing (and I myself have ignored this many times, and the effects are disastrous) is to identify, draw and sketch out every little detail that you currently KNOW about the person who buys your stuff… Or the person who frequently buys the product you want to sell the most right now. Could be because that product has your highest profit margin, or because you know folks who buy that first product often buy others. Either way, nail down who buys it… or who it’s right for…

WHAT TO COLLECT

• Age group
• Websites they visit (Sports sites, coupon trading sites, investing sites)
• What level of computer savvy they have
• What social networks they tend to be on
• How they word things when they search online (are they educated or ignorant?)
• What industry acronyms might they use?
• What other interests might they typically have?
• What gender are they? Males or females
• What kind of money do they have? Are they over $40k a year or under?

Once you have that kind of information ALONE, you can begin to write copy and build landing pages. Landing pages that target their hopes, dreams desires… That build on the critical 7 emotions that sell… (Lust, vanity, pride, envy, laziness, greed, fear) and you can offer them exactly what they’re looking for. You can select the right colors, the right call to action, the correct language (intelligent or simple) and really get maximum impact. You can ALSO easily start identifying search targets, content network targets (websites you can advertise on) that will hit close to home, but cost very little.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #2 – COMPETITION ANALYSIS

You should know what your competitors are peddling, because.. Guess what? Your customers know! Most consumers research and dig around before deciding to buy most things. When they do, they’ll be met with many other offers that focus on different guarantees & benefits. Price (cheapest or most expensive), Quantity (more widgets or less), Guarantee (7 days or 90 days) and a whole host of other elements…

Google the phrases your consumers will type and see what they’re getting currently. Take screenshots if you have to of each so you can use those when you go to craft your own campaigns. This is one of the most critical elements because without this, you can’t really ACTUALLY come up with a good USP (Unique Sales Proposition) or what separates you from the competition. What makes you better? Why should someone choose you? Why are YOU the best out there?

Keep in mind, you can’t say “I have no competition, I’m the only one selling something…” because even Accounting Software had a competitor when it came onto the market. THE PENCIL. Why are you better than a pencil? Yes, you have to tell them that. They may not know.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #3 – LANDING PAGE CREATION

When your target audience shows up, after looking at all those other competitors (brick & mortar or otherwise) what do they see? Does YOUR Page instill the critical ingredients gleaned from your research above?

• Credibility (BBB, Verisign logos, CNN Logos, Expert endorsements, clinical trial results, testimonials)
• Simple Layout (Simple benefits, headline and call to action, little other navigation or un-neccesary clicks)
• Email address collection (Your insurance, at least build a list so you can contact them later if they don’t buy)
• Strong offer that’s better than the competition (And here’s why!)
• Tracking – Obviously some form of analytics should be in place or your wasting your time
• Graphical or visual (video,flash) examples.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #4 – TRAFFIC STRATEGY

Once you know who your audience is, you know what their 3am issue keeping them up at night is, and you know how to give it to them… The next part really can’t be much easier… When you go to execute your PPC strategy and your identifying keywords and writing ads for maximum click thru, use your research that you learned from competitors, consumers and what they WANT. You can attract alotta bears with the right honey.

When you consider your SEO setup, do the keyword research and ensure every bit of content that you want users to link to and chat about to be written STRAIGHT to Joe Smith we learned about in critical element #1 your research. Ensure your content is viralled out to the websites they hang out on, and visit most often. Ensure you’ve got a “share on this network” and it links to Linkedin or whatever network that audience uses most frequently. When you go to execute your media buys, your content network and other ads, ensure you target sites this audience is likely to frequent.

CRITICAL INGREDIENT #5 – ANALYTICS

Learn quickly how to identify your wins (optins or sales or both).  Adjust and split test and always be on the lookout for a way to improve what you have. There’s ALWAYS room for improvement and you should always be testing. Relaunch the successful tests into your existing marketing. Take successful headlines to email, twitter, facebook, content network and so on and roll out those pieces. Continually survey your email list ensure your material is hitting the right spots, helping them and showing them what they want to see.

Sincerely,
Daniel J Deyette