By Jasmine Sandler
Of all the marketing tactics available, online marketing is the least expensive and most readily available. The problem is nearly all businesses use it. So, how can you compete and raise awareness online about your business, find your target audience, and get them to act on your fan page, website, or lead form?
You begin by planning. Planning is essential to reaching your online goals, whether they are to drive gains in market share, increase brand awareness, lead acquisition or to develop a community of advocates around your mission. Planning requires not only a thorough analysis of your direct competitors online and where your industry is succeeding at using the web as a marketing tool, but also for real-time mining of the behaviors of your online audience.
There are several online tools, both free and paid that can help you glean important planning information. Examples include:
If your clients are willing to take a survey, you should certainly use their feedback to help shape your online marketing direction. Asking your clients questions about such things as their favorite websites, time spent using email, social media usage, and what they like and don't like about your website is a great way to get going in the right direction.
Trial Testing Critical
Beyond this research, you need to assess online marketing channels (search engine marketing, social media, online advertising, affiliate marketing, email, and online PR) for which types and resources are the most effective for your specific business. Through your competitive research, you will get an initial understanding of channel effectiveness, but nothing is as important as trial testing. In general, if you are new to web marketing, you will need to test paid search for at least 90 days and run an SEO program for six months. Any paid media must be carefully assessed for effectiveness.
The core element of online marketing is to continually develop and distribute engaging content. This content includes and is not limited to:
- Web copy
- Online articles
- Webcasts/ webinars
- Online multimedia press releases
- Tips and tricks
- Opinions
- Blogging/commenting
- Company updates
- Creative – Banners, widgets, etc.
- Video– humorous, promotional, and educational
Success Stories
Let's look at some small businesses that have succeeded with online marketing.
VFitness
VFitness is a personal training and boxing service in New York City. They are probably the smallest of any in-home personal training service as well as any boxing studio/gym in New York City. Their competition is heavy. For their approach, first they reviewed their competition online in terms of value, market share, and marketing activities.
The company then surveyed their clients to understand what was important to them and learned that their clients wanted low-cost, frequent, fun boxing and conditioning classes. They also wanted all their gear to come at a discount from VFitness. The company also found that they had a clear opportunity to offer a low-cost high-value introduction to boxing service and boot camp. This then quickly became their position.
With that position, VFitness re-designed their website to provide a more compelling user experience and to support their lead in the group boxing and boot camp fitness market.
The company chose paid search and search engine optimization as their primary vehicles for driving awareness and customer acquisition. They had a limited budget for paid search and had run some keyword estimates on their industry to know how to budget, determine what keywords to bid on, and decide how long to run their campaigns. To help them out, they hired a consultant to develop effective ads and a plan.
For the SEO part, they brought on some people to help them reach out and drive content distribution with relevant and qualified links (to boxing and personal training). After only one week using paid search, VFitness ranked #1 for their key phrases—intro boxing classes NYC, group boxing classes NYC, boot camp conditioning classes NYC—and received over 22 calls for business. In natural search, after 90 days, they received top ranking for searches on similar terms.
With a small, targeted approach and budget, VFitness figured out what works best for them. And because of new clients, they now have some funding to reinvest in online marketing and are moving on to the creation of content and PR work.
Get Your House In Order
Get Your House In Order, a personal home organization business in New York City, knew that online marketing could serve their lead generation needs, but they had a limited budget and resources. A client survey showed that most called the service company for help before and during moves as well as before and during baby room planning. The survey also showed that clients wanted to speak with Maeve Richmond, owner of the company, on a more frequent basis when they were in "clutter crisis."
In addition, the online marketplace showed a proliferation of home organizers in the New York City marketplace who were contributing to advice sites such as www.apartmenttherapy.com and that providers were specializing in certain needs (moves, children's growth, etc.)
Get Your House In Order decided to expand its website to include specific landing pages for the different needs. Copy was created to engage those specific targets by page. A blog was created to brand Miss Maeve Richmond "Clutter Girl" as "Inside The Organized Brain" that provides tips and advice, and the company began providing advice to www.apartmenttherapy.com. Further, the company used paid search to develop and run effective ads by need and interest. The ROI for paid search over a month's time was over 300%, resulting in four new clients who continue to work with the company today.
And Maeve Richmond is now busy completing an ebook and book in print on Clutter Therapy. Online PR will follow.
As you can see, it is possible to use the web effectively to drive business. But it takes careful planning, some help from experts in content creation and in management of online campaigns, and tests. If you do all three well, you can reap the rewards of online marketing.
Jasmine Sandler is the Founder and CMO of Agent-cy, a New York City-based Online PR and Marketing Strategies agency that helps small and mid-sized business drive significant Online Audience Development. She can be reached at /5695_jsandler@agent-cy.com.