HOW TO DEVELOP AN INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY AND AN IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS THAT WORK.

INTRODUCTION

Before we talk about how to develop your website marketing strategy, let’s just consider how we might measure the success of any Internet presence.

A DEFINITION OF A SUCCESSFUL WEBSITE:

• A site that meets the organization’s business objectives and the target market’s expectations.  Those objectives could range from selling products or services, persuading or educating, collecting or disseminating information, improving processes or providing customer service.  Your audience’s expectations are that you supply all the information they need to make a buying decision, or everything they need to support their earlier buying decision – when and how they need it!

Or in very simple terms:

• A site that either gets you customers
• Or helps you to retain existing ones!

Or we could put that another way:  

• A site that increases your revenues or reduces your costs or both.

After all, companies measure the results from their offline marketing activities to make sure they’re getting a return on their investment.  It’s perhaps even more important to measure the results from your online marketing.  This is your shop window, but unlike a real bricks and mortar shop, the customer is completely in control and very impatient.  Online you have between 2 and 8 seconds to convince your visitor they’re in the right place.  Fail to do this and they leave and go to your competitors!

IN A NUTSHELL!

1. Budgets – set aside 4 budgets:  one budget for strategic planning and research, one budget to build your site, one budget to market the site, and one budget to track and monitor what is happening and make changes.  If you only have a budget sufficient to cover the build cost, then don’t spend it on Internet Marketing.  It is estimated that there are over 30 billion web pages out there so it’s easy to disappear among the crowd.
2. A Strategic Plan – know where you want to be and have a plan to get there.  Your Internet Marketing Plan must be a part of your overall Business Marketing Plan.
3. Research – you must know who and what your online competitors are doing.  You must know who your target audience is and what their needs and problems are.  Profile your most important customers.
4. Build and Content Manage – Build your site so that it meets your customer’s needs.  Make sure it is easy to navigate and has all the information prospective customers need to make a buying decision.  Use a Content Managed System so that you are in control of your content and can add/update quickly as conditions dictate.
5. Market your Site – with over 108 million websites online, if you don’t market your site it’s unlikely to be found.  It’s vital to drive the right sort of traffic to your site.  Use whatever marketing methods are most appropriate to your site:  Search Engine Optimization, Paid Advertising, Link Building, Article Submission, Social Networking sites etc.
6. Track and Measure – you must know how much traffic your site is getting and what that traffic is doing once it arrives – how much of it converts into customers?  What ROI are you getting? Most sites only convert between 1% and 2% of visitors.  Use Conversion techniques to increase your conversion rate.  Change what isn’t working.

PART 1 – INTERNET MARKETING BUDGETS

SET ASIDE 4 BUDGETS:  

• one budget for strategic planning and research
• one budget to build your site
• one budget to market the site
• and one budget to track and monitor what is happening and make changes

If you only have a budget sufficient to cover the build cost, then don’t spend it on Internet Marketing.  There are estimated to be over 108 million web sites out there with more than 29.7 billion pages!  So it’s easy to disappear amongst the crowd.
I believe that if you have set aside a marketing budget for building a website, but no budget for planning, research, marketing or tracking, then you should probably spend your marketing budget on some other form of marketing.  Otherwise, I fear you are wasting your money!
Now this is rather a sweeping statement!  I am talking about company websites, not personal ones.  Unless your company is so well known and popular that you don’t need to do any marketing at all, just having a website is not enough.

PART 2 & 3 STRATEGIC PLANNING AND RESEARCH

A Strategic Plan – know where you want to be and have a plan to get there.  Your Internet Marketing Plan must be a part of your overall Business Marketing Plan.
Ask yourself the following:

• What are our online Objectives – what do we want the site to do for us?
• What functionality do we need?
• Who are we?  Do we have a Brand?
• What do we do?  Is it clear what we do or sell?  Customers are not aware of 60% of what you do.  Make it clear.  Keep it simple.  Keep text for the most part at a reading age of 13.
• Who are we competing against both online and offline?  What are they doing well or poorly?
• What is our USP?  Or a compelling reason why customers should choose us rather than a competitor?   “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete” (Jack Welch CEO GE).
• Who are we targeting?  What are their needs/problems?  Profile them.
• How can we meet those needs?
• What do we want visitors to our site to do?  Have meaningful “Calls to Action”.
• How can we satisfy the “Trust” issue?  Have your company name and contact information prominently displayed.  Mention any memberships/qualifications/awards etc.
• What Legal Requirements do we need to meet?  Privacy/Data Protection/Disability Discrimination etc.

Remember that on the web the customer is in total control – they choose when and if to leave your site, what to look at, what to read, what to ignore, and ultimately whether to do business with you.  
Traditional “marketese” fails on the web.  Internet users are busy and impatient and are not interested in your company, its history and its successes.  They’re only interested in what they want and how they want to buy.  Or WIIFM!  (What’s in it for me!)

PART 4 BUILD AND CONTENT MANAGE

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Researchers found that viewers make a judgment of a site in 1/20th of a second.  This impression is classified as positive, negative or neutral.  Naturally, those making a positive impression are more likely to get business from the visitor.
It’s true to say that different people like different things and put their own interpretation and meaning on what they see.  The message you think your site is giving may not be the one you intended to convey.  So carry out your own research with a variety of different people to clarify whether the impression you’re giving is the one you want to give, bearing in mind your target audience.  For example, if you sell landscape gardening services and your site looks really modern, stylish and sophisticated – some visitors may assume that you’re very expensive and they won’t be able to afford your services.  This may or may not be true!

KEY STATISTICS

• Average time someone spends on a homepage – 3 - 8 seconds.
• The average reading speed is 200 wpm but people read 25% slower on screen.
• In 8 seconds visitors will read 20 words.
• In 25 seconds visitors will read 61 words.
• 59% of users use the Back button – it’s the most popular button of all!
• Percentage of people who will scroll a home page is 23% - this means that only 1 in 4 people will see what is below the fold.
• Consumers go to the search engines 91% of the time to find products and services.
• 78% of people will check you out online before contacting you or visiting your place of business.
• 63% of online B2B purchases are made by Females aged 42.
• 37% of online B2B purchases are made by Males aged 46.
• Eye Tracking research show that eye fixations on a page are 22% on graphics, 78% on text.

CONTENT

79% of visitors don’t actually read online – they skim and scan.  They look for top level clues like headings, highlights and important keywords, bold trigger words, bullets and short blocks of text.  If they don’t find them within about 8 seconds, they leave.
Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is information placed where a visitor is likely to look for it?  Does it use Eye Tracking principles?
• Are Calls to Action where they’re needed?
• Do you have to scroll up or down to see them?
• Are heading used to define the message of the page?
• Do you use white space to help scan ability and high contrast?  Remember those with colour vision deficiencies.
• Is you content easy to read – aimed at a reading age of 13?
• Is your content accurate and up to date?
• If your headings were the only text on the page, would they communicate the basic point?
• Are all pages consistent with design and navigation?
• Is your contact information easy to find?
• What are you doing to confront the Trust and Credibility issues? Does the site contain testimonials/portfolio/client base/case studies?
• Does your design make the visitor take time to work out how to use the site?
• Is the site full of content-rich copy or content-free marketese?
• Does the site highlight any guarantees?
• Don’t make your forms a barrier – don’t expect users to give you more information than you actually need to meet their needs.  Many people for example, are reluctant to give out email addresses.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Things change – the business changes, the market changes, the environment changes!  It is vital that you are able to update or add new and fresh content to your website really quickly as soon as circumstances dictate. You could of course wait for your web developer to do it for you, but this can take time and be an ongoing cost.  
Better to do it yourself, but this does mean that you need to factor in the training time and administration time for staff to maintain your web site.  If you can it’s great for your customers, bad for your competitors and good too for the search engines, who love new and fresh content.
Your choice of Content Managed system may depend to some extent on your budget.  We recommend and use Joomla!  Joomla! is an award winning opensource CMS, which makes it easy to update your content anytime and anywhere.  All you need is Internet access.

PART 5 MARKETING

Market your Site – with over 108 million websites online, if you don’t market your site it’s unlikely to be found.  It’s vital to drive the right sort of traffic to your site.  Use whatever marketing methods are most appropriate to your site:  

• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Advertising
• Link Building
• Article Submission
• Social Networking etc.  

Search engine marketing or search engine optimisation is all about driving the right sort of customers to your web site.
The ultimate objective of any SEM campaign is to increase visitors to your website but not just any visitor.  You want the visitors that come to your website to be qualified, relevant and interested in your product or service.

PART 6 TRACK AND MEASURE & ADAPT

The Internet is a dynamic marketing environment.  Things change!   The market changes, the competitive landscape changes, technology changes, your customer's needs change.  We believe it's important to take notice of what is working on your site and what isn't.  To do this we recommend Analytic tracking software so that you can answer the following:

• How many visitors?
• Where do they come from?
• How did they get there?
• How long did they stay?
• What did they look at?
• What didn't they look at?
• What ROI are you getting?  

Success comes from trying, testing and measuring.  This allows you to determine what is working and what is not.
Most sites only convert between 1% and 2% of visitors.  Use Conversion techniques to increase your conversion rate.  Change what isn’t working.

CONCLUSION

• 91.6% of buyers go to a website before calling
• If they don’t find what they need, 80% choose another supplier

It’s not enough to simply say to your web developer “Build us a website”.  The Internet has taken over as one of the key marketing channels for business.  Ignore this at your peril.  Even if you customers don’t actually purchase your products/services online, they are almost certain to check you out via your website before they contact you.  You will never know that you lost them!  Most sites lose 98% of their visitors!
It takes serious planning and commitment to make a site successful, so we strongly recommend that you follow our 6 point plan for an Internet Marketing Strategic Plan and Implementation Process:

• Budget for 4 stages
• Strategic Planning
• Research
• Build and Content Manage
• Market
• Track and Measure & Adapt

Written by L J Neale of cat3systems on 3 Jan 2009

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