Here at Blue Beetle, we spend a lot of time helping our clients to find the flood of new traffic, orders, and profits that can come with a successful online marketing plan.
I guess we just take it for granted that they’re ready to handle them when the time comes.
To be fair, they usually are. For a lot of businesses, ramping operations up to meet a jump in demand is a good problem to have, and an easy one to deal with. For others, though, a sudden spike in orders can be a big headache.
With that in mind, ask yourself: are you really ready for online marketing success? Here are a ways to tell:
You could easily double your sales volume next month. If handling extra production, shipping, credit card transactions, and other details wouldn’t represent a problem, you’re probably well-poised for online growth.
Your site is ready for more traffic. It used to be fairly common to see business websites crashed by spikes in traffic. These days, most webmasters are better prepared, but it’s still a good idea to be sure your site could handle a rush of new shoppers.
Customer service isn’t a weak point. Often, where a lot of companies fail isn’t in finding new buyers, but keeping them happy once they do. Finding customers only to watch them leave after their first order – and possibly start spreading bad word of mouth about you when they do – is never going to lead to big bottom line improvements.
Most entrepreneurs and marketing managers don’t sit up nights worrying about what will happen if their online marketing plans are too successful, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to figure out whether you’re really prepared for the flood of new customers you’re trying to find.
Even if you aren't a fan of football, you have to love the way players and news outlets have embraced social networking sites to broadcast news, opinions, and personal updates. You don't have to be a world-class striker or holding midfielder to follow their example. Here are a few things the World Cup has shown us about social networking:
Twitter is a great tool for broadcasting news, but only if people are already interested in what you have to say. We've heard from players, agents, and managers about their opinions on different games, their predictions about what's ahead, and even thoughts on the business side of things like transfers, new signings, etc.
For the biggest names, tweeting has been a quick and efficient way to share their thoughts, largely because they've already gathered thousands of followers. Take steps to build a large following of your own, then you'll start to realize the power of Twitter.
Facebook can help the world get to know you. For those who are newer faces to a lot of audiences, Facebook has been a popular first stop. With bios, pictures, and lots of background information, you can quickly learn everything you'd need to know about a player just by looking at his profile.
As your company gains dance and reputation, make sure that your Facebook page reflects that. If someone were to view your profile for the first time, what impression would they get?
YouTube is more popular than BBC, ESPN, or any other single channel... and a lot more cost effective as a marketing medium. By serving as an almost universal news and replay outlet for most of the Internet-connected world, YouTube is a first stop for fans looking for World Cup highlights. It's also an important destination for your customers and prospects.
Don't underestimate YouTube's importance; make sure that your videos, channel, and profiles are aimed at helping searchers first to find your company, and then leaving them with the impression that they would be better off doing business with you.
Search engine optimization, which is only a about a decade into its existence as a serious discipline, is already undergoing some big changes. It used to be that writing a few articles, changing a few heading tags, and getting a couple of links to your site was enough to see your site crawl towards the top of Google or Yahoo. These days, though, that just doesn’t cut it. Online marketers have gotten smarter and more sophisticated, so your company will have to be, too.
Even more, the changes that are taking place have big implications for all areas of marketing, not just SEO. Here are four trends to look out for, and what they mean to your business:
The rise of the long tail. Searchers aren’t just looking for basic keywords anymore; increasingly, they’re trying longer strings – hoping to find exactly what they’re looking for, rather than something close. That means your landing pages should be specific, and informative, or you’re running the risk of leaking visitors.
More emphasis on social media. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are factoring more strongly into search algorithms, meaning that searchers are as likely to find your social profiles as they are your home page. Keep that in mind, and use your accounts to not only enhance your SEO, but add a soft marketing tint.
Video results gaining in popularity. Google, YouTube, and others are making video more important than ever – even outside of normal “video sharing” sites. Be sure you’re using clips as part of your marketing mix, especially for your most important key phrases and themes.
Higher pay-per-click costs. More advertisers, especially in the high-traffic keyword areas, are driving up click prices. That doesn’t mean you have to abandon PPC – for the most part, paid traffic still converts at a higher rate – but that you have to be smart about it. Setting up your PPC account and ignoring it is the recipe for a lot of wasted time and money.
A lot of attention is paid in online marketing circles – including this blog – to the best ways to bring traffic to your company's site. That's not a bad thing; whether you are relying on search engine optimization, pay per click ads, social networking strategies, or something altogether different, the fact remains that you can't have sales without visitors.
But never forget that visitors aren't enough. In fact, they are only half of the equation.
The other half, the more important half, is what you do for the people who take the time to click through. What is it they get – in terms of information, service, or value for their money – that makes it worth their time and attention?
Even though it isn't discussed often enough in marketing circles, the question is incredibly important for two reasons. The first is that your unique competitive advantage is what will ultimately turn traffic into sales. Regardless of what your business offers, there are probably dozens of other places to find online. Your customers need to have a compelling reason to choose you instead.
The second reason it's so important is that offering value drives its own traffic. In other words, if people love your product or service enough, they won't just keep coming back, but also refer to their friends, colleagues, and family members through strong recommendations. And as any of us who have been in marketing for any amount of time knows, those are the best perspective buyers you can find.
Decisions about what kind of business you're in, and what its unique selling proposition is, were probably made long before you jumped in to online marketing. Don't take it for granted, however, that you shouldn't take a bit of time to think about it now and then. Offering value to your customers, and communicating that on your website, isn't just a great way to gain traffic, but also to make the most of it.
This is an important question for any business owner or online marketer, and one that isn't easy to answer. While some businesses will devote all, or nearly all, of their advertising and promotional dollars into a web strategy, most companies face a dilemma when it comes to finding the right mix: put in too little, and they might see sales drop off; throw too much money at finding customers on the web, and their expenses end being counterproductive.
A lot of advertising “experts” advise putting anywhere from 10 to 75% of your marketing budget into Internet ads and promotions, but they aren't running your company... you are. For most businesses, the answer is going to fall somewhere in the middle. Here are three questions you should ask yourself to help find out where that middle is:
Where are your current leads and sales coming from? It's never a good idea to stop doing something that's working, especially when we are talking about finding the money that's helping you make payroll, run your business, and earn a profit. Regardless of what your future plans are, take into account where you are leads and sales coming from at the moment and make sure that revenue stream will continue.
Where will future sales be coming from? Are you likely to gather lots of new buyers from the Internet? If so, then try to start moving more of your marketing expenditures in that direction, until you can either find a flood of new business, or figure out that the money would be better spent elsewhere.
How profitable is your online marketing effort? Every form of marketing or advertising faces diminishing returns at a certain point – people stop responding to more of it, or you just end up chasing customers that aren't worth the money. Monitor your online marketing expenses closely so that you can identify the point without going past it.
In many ways, the explosion of social network marketing has mirrored the growth of search engine optimization just a few years ago. Both are focused around content, both change the ways that businesses can attract new customers (not to mention the philosophy behind those methods), and both are largely considered necessary for any company with an Internet presence.
In fact, given that they are coming so closely related, you might be wondering: are search engine optimization and social media marketing still different topics?
The short answer is that they are... but only just so.
At the moment, SEO is a lot like commercial real estate. You might start out at a remote location, but through the careful investment of time and effort, you can steadily move your business into a high traffic, high profit neighborhood in a relatively short amount of time. It's still one of the most cost-effective ways of finding new customers, and the process that often takes on a life of its own once you've got it moving.
Social network marketing, on the other hand, closely resembles networking events in the off-line world. Approach them the wrong way, and you'll quickly find yourself stuck in a mixer with low-level marketers talking endlessly about products nobody wants. But open the door with the right kinds of content and profiles, and you can slip behind the velvet rope and talk deals with the movers and shakers. In other words, social networking is a great way to meet individual decision-makers – rather than a horde of "generic" customers – as well as deepen relationships with your existing buyers.
Search engine optimization and social network marketing definitely overlap, and the two are inching closer to one another all the time. For now, however, they are still separate disciplines that yield separate results. But even though you might have to spend a little time on each one, both are great ways to bring new business into your company
