The 3 Series Punch to Marketing your website and Blog
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3 Steps - Credit to #freelance
Many people want to just start their online marketing campaign - be it SEO, Paid search or Social Media Marketing, without doing any previous marketing analysis. However it’s much more important to have your business plan down pat when you are marketing online, over when you are doing offline marketing.
To give you an understanding why, I’ll give you 3 different “case studies” with a lawyer who is trying to grow their business. They are an experienced attorney.
Case #1: A client finds the lawyer in the yellow pates, and calls up. The lawyer schedules an appointment, and the lawyer impresses the client with his professionalism and experience. In short, at the end of the meeting, the person happily becomes a client.
Case #2: The attorney puts 4 outdoor billboards up, and gets clients calling in because they remember those signs, and the numbers. Same situation as before, the lawyer impresses the person with his professionalism, experience and “can-do” attitude. The client signs on to become a client.
Case #3: The lawyer has a website, and aggressively markets their site on the internet. Clients go to one of the search engines, looking for “Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorneys“. They find a page filed with 20 lawyers. So who do they pick?
(As an aside, while you think about the question above, I want to address something. It probably sounds like Online Marketing is alot harder than billboard advertising, yellow pages or even magazine advertising?
What ARM customers find is that although it take more work and more commitment to get the online marketing campaign going - the online marketing brings in a very measurable amount of business that makes the investment more than worth it. We are such believers in online marketing, that we view online marketing as an investment in your business. With paid search campaigns, you can start seeing leads flow in within a week or two!
The difference between the 3 cases is that in online marketing, the customer has seen your competitor’s ads as well. He’s being bombarded with answers. The only way you are going to get business is if you stand out from your competitors. There has to be something that makes you stand out. How experienced you are? Which cases you specialize in? Maybe which lawsuit you’ve won?
By doing the market research we talk about below, you will increase the amount of people calling from your website, or whatever else you’d like your website to do.
In a formal business plan, the market research is called the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat Analysis). You can see more about SWOT here:
So here’s the four steps to do before you start your online marketing:
1. Identify your target market, product offer and do a little market research (competitive analysis)
- Target Market - Many people like to identify the customer that they want to reach (e.g can afford my consulting fee!). The best way to do this is to start off in your customer’s head. Who is the customer that is desperately wants / loves what you have to offer?) This will make you think about what you offer and how you offer it (the next two parts of this exercise).
- Product Offer- This is pretty simple. Basically, what are you offering to your customers. If you know who your customers are, you will be able to think about how you can make them ‘love’ your offer. In our business, it’s a guarantee of any sort.
- Market Research - This is perhaps the simplest of this first step - and also the most beneficial. Go to the internet, and Google your service offering. Take a look at how your competitors are positioning themselves, and what they are offering. Compare this to what you’ve done so far, and you are in good shape!
If you’ve taken a piece of paper (or a word document) and put all of the information above down. You will now be able to look at your website, your blog, and your online ads, and improve them with the better message you’ve created. That is what we are going to do in steps two and three.
2. Assess and Improve your Lead Generation Funnel.
Marketing Funnel Credits to Madalin Matica
(A lead generation funnel is the process people go through to hit your website. For example, a visitor hits your adwords (Or Yahoo Search) ad. First Move!
They click on it (because you created kickass messaging in step 1!), and see your landing page. Second Move!
They like your offer, and decide to do what you tell them to. Katching!
Your Lead Generation Funnel consists of 3 parts.
- Your original message (Adwords Ad, text the search engine displays on search results, a forum link, craigslist ad, or online video)
- Landing Page
- Call To Action
Without going into detail on each of the above, if you know who you are talking to, what they so desperately want, and why they should pick your product/service, you will be able to create a great lead generation funnel.
3. The third and final step is closing them as a customer! If you’ve got everything mentioned above, the sale should be an easy step! Good Luck!
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About Results Marketing is a Los Angeles Internet Marketing Company, dedicated to increasing your online revenue. Give us a call at 866-539-3549 if we can help.
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