In my first online marketing blog, How to Market Your Business Online, I outlined the top 5 most important advertising channels for your online marketing strategy. In this blog, I delve a little deeper into the 4 key components to a fully integrated online marketing campaign.
- Goals and ROI Driven-Metrics
At our full-service online marketing agency, I am most thankful for real-time metrics. Online marketing is fully measurable and easily highlights ROI (return on investment). However, you have to remain cognizant of what metrics are useful to prevent getting buried in numbers. The challenge with many marketers is the tendency to measure everything rather than what is really important. In the long run, mountains of data cannot add value to your online advertising campaign if you can’t align it with your company’s revenue and goals. If your business’ goal is to increase revenue by 25% in 2015, then work backwards to that result. Are your sales primarily coming from phone leads? Form submissions? Facebook conversions? Identify what is important to your bottom line, and measure the metrics accordingly. For example, if your goal for 2015 is to increase engagement with your brand, then monitoring KPIs (key performance indicators) like bounce rate, average visit duration, and social media interactions are your ROI-driving metrics to measure. Optimal results are achieved when you concentrate on measuring the metrics appropriate for your business.
- Comprehensive Paid Advertising
PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, SEM (search engine marketing), CPM (cost per thousand impressions) marketing, and CPC (cost per click) marketing are all fancy ways of saying, Paid Advertising, or advertising I’m paying for. As mentioned previously, this is probably the most direct, effective, yet most complicated, of all the channels in which to market your business online. If managed poorly, paid advertising is often ineffective and costly. Luckily, there are professionals out there certified in Google AdWords to ensure you’re not missing anything.
With paid advertising on Google AdWords, Facebook, etc., it’s important to test multiple ad variations. Create multiple versions of every ad; often the tiniest change in ad copy or layout make a significant difference to CTR (click through rate), conversion rate, and CPA (cost per acquisition). DIY marketers may require more time to gather data to compare the effects of the ad variations, but it’s important to monitor the ads regularly to eliminate the lowest-performing versions.
Similarly, many online marketers forget the importance of using Ad Extensions with their Google AdWords campaigns. Ad extensions include site links, location extensions, call extensions, etc. These extensions create more reasons to click your ad and tend to improve your ad’s visibility, which will in turn increase your CTR. And we all know, more clicks means more traffic! In fact, Google rewards those campaigns utilizing ad extensions and will often bump your search results above your competitor (who doesn’t have ad extensions) at a lower CPC to you. Pretty cool, right?
- Landing Pages for Lead Generation
So, let’s say you’re running an SEO, PPC, and Social Media marketing campaign. That’s a lot of website traffic coming your way! However, if your site doesn’t have landing pages specific to lead generation, then you’re losing out on a tremendous opportunity to turn those visitors into customers. What do you want your visitors to do when they come to your site? Pick up the phone and call the office? Submit a form? Subscribe to your mailing list? Ensure your landing pages encourage a specific behaviour. For example, if your primary business goal is to increase sales by increasing the number of online appointments booked, drive your traffic to a landing page with an easy-to-use booking form. Your landing page should be optimized for search engines, with a crystal-clear headline describing exactly what your audience will receive when they perform the behaviour you’re encouraging. An action-oriented headline like “Get Your Project Started” inspires one to behave accordingly.
Most importantly, following-up on those actions is key to the success of a fully integrated online marketing campaign. Many small business owners are often too busy to follow-up on the website leads they’ve received. Remember these are individuals that took the time to fill out your form or call into your office, and are hot leads! These are potential customers just waiting to hear back from you, so follow-up with all website leads in a timely and efficient manner.
- Content Creation
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: content is king! Content marketing is no longer a trend; it’s the powerhouse behind every successful online strategy. With a wide variety of content types to choose from to create, I predict 2015 will see a huge trend in rich-media content like video and dynamic graphics. The digital video landscape is changing and evolving. Whether it’s embedding a Vine video on your Facebook page, using an MP4 clip on your landing page, or investing in PPV (pay per view) or CPV (cost per view) marketing with YouTube, video marketing is sorely missing from many DIY marketers’ online strategies. Search engines love and reward video content simply because videos are sharable, highly engaging, show up across multiple devices, and allow brands to illustrate compelling stories that speak to the right target audience. Most importantly, the mobile consumption of data is increasing exponentially and mobile phone screens are increasing in size with every new iPhone launch, boosting mobile video consumption even further.
If you’re not yet convinced about the effect video marketing will have on your revenue goals, check out this awesome GoPro YouTube Case Study: http://youtu.be/oCUjAmW5yCA. In it, the owners share their insights into the rich media platform, “Customers were marketing the brand for us!” and “As views increased, we immediately saw a lift in direct sales.”
What’s missing in your online marketing campaign? Paid advertising? Content rich website? We can help! Check out our free guide to the 4 essential components to any successful online marketing campaign or get in touch with a marketing expert at Spark!
