The Next 3 Things to Do Immediately About Your Online Marketing

Three of the most common mistakes I see business making in their online marketing campaigns are so simple to correct, but so much money and effort is going to waste. Make sure you are not wasting your online marketing budget.

Don’t throw money at your online marketing.

It’s all too easy to employ one of the myriad of online marketers out there (myself included) and say, “Here’s your monthly retainer, now get me to the top of Google.”

You have just divorced yourself and your business from what is, or should be, a major source of lead generation.

I’m not suggesting you should fire your online marketer, but you should be working closely with them to action your online marketing campaigns. Ask them to train your staff on how to engage with social media. What type of posts? How often? What keywords should be included?

Let me give you an example. I recently took over the online marketing for a local pub group. The previous chap was paid a monthly retainer and there were lots of social posts about the local town and the pretty boats in the harbor and local news events. Whatever website traffic it generated was not interested in eating, drinking. or staying in one of the pubs—they liked the pretty pictures of boats in the harbor! The pub owner saw they were getting x-number of hits a month, and thought it was all going well. In fact, it was a waste of time and money.

When I took over I told them I was not going to post anything. Imagine the dumfounded look I got! Instead, I trained their staff to recognise a social media opportunity, and how to use it. I equipped each site with an iPad logged in to all the social media networks we use, and away we went. Before long we were getting a regular picture of the specials board whenever it changed. We had pictures of the meals, posts about the events, and guest reviews about the rooms. We had the happy smiling faces of the guests staring into the iPad lens—we had the personality of the business radiating through their social media platforms.

Which style of online marketing would you prefer for your business?

Make sure you have the right finish line for your online marketing.

What is the goal of your online marketing? To make more money—right? But so many businesses don’t make that the finish line for their online marketing.

How many analytic reports have you seen telling you how many visitors your website had? Or what the bounce rate is? Or what the average visit-time was?

All of the information is interesting to a web-designer—maybe. It means diddly-squat for a marketer. Online marketers should be interested in how much money each marketing effort generated for the business. From that information they can see what works best, so they can do more of that.

Let’s start with the money your business wants to make online. For the sake of argument we will say £1,000,000. Your average sale is around £10,000, so you need to make 100 sales to reach your £1,000,000 target.

You know from experience your sales department will convert 2 out of every three good quality leads they receive. This is your lead-to-sale conversion rate, so you need to generate 150 leads to make 100 sales.

To keep things simple, let’s say you have only one marketing campaign which needs to generate all 150 leads. If your online marketer is worth his wages he would have nurtured leads on your website over time to the point where they have contacted you to start the sales process, or they have engaged so much with the resources and information on your website you already have a relationship with them and it's ok to give them a call.

Let’s say 20% of your website visitors end up being a nurtured lead—the exact figure of what is a good or bad visitor-to-lead conversion rate will depend on your industry.

A quick bit of arithmetic will tell us we need 750 website visitors to give us 150 leads, and this is split more or less evenly between email marketing, PPC, SEO, and blogging.

What is the moral of this story? Don’t let website visitor counts be the finish line of your marketing effort. The finish line is booked sales! Along the way you need to be watching visitor-to-lead conversion rates and lead-to-sale conversion rates, but don’t stop peddling until you get to the real finish line.

Stay on target with your online marketing.

This may seem so obvious, but you would not believe how many businesses do not target their online marketing effort properly. Marketing personas have been around for years, way before the Internet, but they are just as relevant (if not more) today.

When you post on social media, or write a blog, do you know who your audience is? Just think about that for a moment… who was your last online marketing post aimed at?

If you just thought of a specific client, or a specific made-up composite of your clients — well done. Go to the top of the class! If you thought of a group of people, say “People who are in the market for my product/service” — you must try harder!

In reality few people take the time to actually sketch out their marketing personas, but if you are engaging with an online audience, it is essential. Right now, as I am writing this article I have a fictional character I crated a few years ago in my mind. I know all about him. (He also has a twin sister with subtle differences.) I know his habits, his likes and dislikes. I am writing this article specifically for him. It keeps me on target with my message, and I don’t waste time with people who are no good for my business.

I may not get a bullseye every single time, but I’m damn close. Use a sniper-rifle, not a blunderbuss!