Online marketing is a recent strategy used by companies in order to maintain a better relationship with their stakeholders. However, it is important to know that the tactics that are created at present will not necessarily work over time, and that neither are there winning strategies that can be adapted to all products and services to be marketed.
While there is not a unique successful strategy to follow at all times for all companies, there are ideas about how to improve online marketing, as long as this ideas are adapted to each particular case. Next, 10 good proposals as to how to obtain a better online marketing strategy will be explained:
1. Listen To Customers
Find out what customers think, what they like or do not like, how they feel about the brand or the competition, whether they are satisfied with the products or services offered and how they relate to the brand. All this information is essential to create strategies geared specifically towards our targets, which can save us money by avoiding multiple processes of trial and error.
2. Provide Value
The first step is to figure out what it is that customers consider the most important thing they can receive from the brand. Next, it is necessary to incorporate it into our brand and communicate it. This is going to be what sets our company apart from the competition in a market that is overrun by messages of all kinds.
The ideas presented below are based on these two mentioned above:
3. Adwords Campaigns
These campaigns have the objective of instantly increasing the number of visits on a Web site or Facebook profile, for example. They consist in a group of ads that are targeted at particular user profiles, based on specific keywords and within a certain budget. And although they allow a first contact between users and a Web Site or profile, the latter must be properly updated and designed to be useful to those users.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Being well positioned in search engines (Google, Yahoo, Altavista, etc.) can help to increase the number of visitors and, as a result, to get more sales. The SEO does not mean placing a website in the top positions of search engines, but to properly structure and optimize the web site to be easily indexed by search engines.
5. Website Update
The website of a company or entity is the letter of introduction to society and groups of interest. The way that the products, services or brands are presented, how easy the interaction on the Web site, profile or account is, and the design are essential and should always be updated for our target groups.
6. Social Network Profiles
Lately, there has been an increase in the use of social networks, and it is really probable that the current or potential consumers are available in these networks, using them to learn and communicate. That is why brands must be present in profiles or accounts thereof, to establish closer communication with users, analyze their spending habits, try to make more sales and get enough information to obtain a better management of these relationships and better results out of them (like Sancor Seguros in Latin America).
7. E-mail Marketing
Today e-mails allow companies to provide users with a lot of information, news, and updates about the brand or product that may be of their interest, and, besides, it is a free tool. On the Websites, a button that allows users to join a newsletter via e-mail –according to their interests—can be added. It is important to avoid spam, and to send e-mails only with the users’ consent that they want to receive certain information.
8. On Site Improving
This idea is based on the possibility of investigating, detecting and improving the design of all social network profiles, accounts and websites to make them clear, understandable and easily accessible to users. To this end, it should be considered to include key words and phrases, accurate descriptions of “about us” and “what we do”, titles with keywords, and readable, friendly-user texts, among others.
9. Off-Site Improving
Not only is it necessary to have official profiles and accounts, but also to use other strategies outside of these, to increase the presence, and improve the position and the access to information on the part of users. This can be achieved by links, comments on blogs and thematic web sites about topics of interest to the target groups, press releases, forums, and articles, to name a few
10. Start Over
It is indispensable to analyze and review the whole of the strategy developed in order to examine whether the implemented plans are yielding the expected results.
It must be taken into account what was mentioned in the first part: there are no strategies, ideas or specific steps to make a successful strategy; what is needed is to use those ideas that suit our business and pay special attention to the first two ideas proposed here: Listen to the customer and create a valuable proposition. The rest of the ideas should be adapted to these two.
