Digital Marketing ,Virtual Branding

How to Create an Online Marketing Strategy

The Internet is the marketplace of the present as well as the future. The number of people who get online for the first time more than doubles every year. And it is for that reason that offline businesses and new solopreneurs are scrambling to create a Web presence.

Whether you have an online business or are only begin to think about it, you need to have a marketing strategy that is designed for the purpose.

Here are three strategies that you need to pursue so that your prospects can find you.

1. You must build an online presence.

Here is a test. Without using inverted commas, search for your name (if you are a sole trader) or the name of your partnership, firm, or company. How many of the first 20 results are about you?

You see, those first 20 make up the first two pages on any search, and frankly if you’re not among them, it’s unlikely that you’ll be found by people who could buy your products.

Optimising for keyword phrases is a valid technique for being found, but if your name or that of your company doesn’t show up very much in the first couple of pages in a major search engine, then it means that you don’t have much of a web presence.

And that’s a problem.

2. Your site has to convert.

Let me ask you something about your website: “What do you want your visitors to do when they get to it?”

Do you want them to spend time on it, gathering information about what you do, and then feel compelled to ring you for more information?

If that is your expectation, then you’re going to be very disappointed. It is widely believed that most visitors spend much less than one minute on a site before moving on; and I’ve heard of numbers that were less than 10 seconds.

The only valid measure of the effectiveness of your site is whether or not those who visit it do what you want them to do. Some sites want people to click on the ads that appear on their pages. They know if that has happened because they get a commission from the company advertised every time someone does.

Some sites invite visitors to get a free report or ebook in exchange for their email address. If you’re list is growing, then that’s proof that the people who came to your site read enough to want to learn more.

Blog comments are evidence that people are reading the posts. The blog host can then evaluate the content of those posts and use them, together with the comments, to create more content that is likely to capture the attention of visitors.

3. Your strategy must integrate all of your online marketing efforts.

Whatever methods you are using to drive traffic to your website, they must all work together. You must decide how they will, and then design your strategy accordingly.