INTERNET MARKETING:
FIVE CRITICAL STEPS TO BUILDING AN INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY
by Steve Ebner, April 2008  

Whether you are launching a new website or you’ve had the same website for 10 years, the basic steps for developing an Internet marketing strategy are the same.  Many companies, big and small, frequently skip one or more of what I call the “five critical steps” to an effective Internet marketing strategy.  However, you’ll get the biggest bang for your money (& energy) if you follow these steps in their right order:

1. Step Back & Understand the Role of Your Website
2. Setup Analytics Tracking for Your Website
3. Set Measurable Goals for Your Website
4. Develop Action Items that will Help Achieve Your Goals
   • Boost Organic Search Engine Rankings through SEO Services
   • Leverage Pay-Per-Click Advertising Campaigns
   • Integrate Website with Other Online & Offline Website Promotion Campaigns
   • Keep Tabs on Your Competition
5. Continue Measurement, Benchmarking, & Ongoing Campaign Adjustments

For some “old school” CEO’s and Marketing Directors, a company’s website is still perceived as an ancillary sales tool.  It's time to jump into the 21st century, and view the Internet for what it has become.  Your website should be seen as a core marketing channel, even if your product is predominantly sold through direct sales representatives.  It all starts with identifying the most effective way to use your website to help achieve your corporate goals.

STEP 1: Step Back & Understand the Role of Your Website
Are you counting on your website to convert leads into online purchases?  Is it primarily a means to drive leads to sales representatives?  Are website content and features meant to keep customers connected with your brand between purchases?  A company website can be utilized in many different ways.  Most likely it will serve multiple functions.  It’s important to think about all your company’s stakeholders, namely current & prospective customers, investors, partners, and employees.  Then, think about how they use (or could use) the Internet.  Next, brainstorm on various content, features, and functionality that could be integrated into your company website to better fulfill the needs of your stakeholder groups.  Sounds easy, right?  Well, just take it one step at a time. Your company’s available resources and corporate goals will dictate the scope and rollout timetable of your website programs.

STEP 2:  Setup Analytics Tracking for Your Website
It’s critical to understand “where you are”, so you can ultimately understand “where you want to be.”  Confused?  The bottom line is you need to track, analyze, and continually monitor your website traffic.  You need to look beyond visitors and pageviews.  Learn things like which link on the home page do most visitors click, or which pages do visitors visit prior to submitting your contact form.   It’s also important to track how visitors are coming to your website (e.g. organic search engine results, paid advertising, your email newsletter, a partner website).  You need to understand how users are using your website so you can make the right adjustments to achieve your end goal.

Regardless of which analytics application you use (and there’s even a great free one available from Google), it’s helpful to start tracking a month or two before you begin search engine optimization or pay advertising campaigns.  This will create a baseline that you can use to measure ongoing progress.

STEP 3: Set Measurable Goals for Your Website
Now that you’ve defined how your website will be used and understand the current traffic metrics, you are ready to set some quantifiable goals for the website.  For example, let’s say the website’s chief role is to generate leads for the sales team.  Perhaps the site includes a free download for an exciting new white paper about your industry.  Users complete a registration form with contact information to access the download.  This registration info is routed to the sales team for follow-up.  One of your measurable goals for the website could be defined in terms of user registrations for the download.  Ecommerce websites may use online unit sales or online revenue.  Sites that generate advertising revenue might use a metric such as revenue-per-visitor. 

Some of these measurable goals can also be labeled as "website conversions" and directly tracked in your analytics application. Other goals will need to be tracked manually or through offline tactics such as awareness focus groups or customer surveys.

STEP 4: Develop Action Items that Will Help Achieve Your Goals
Regardless of the goal metric, it’s important to align all your website content, search engine marketing, website optimization activities, and other efforts to helping reach these goals.  Your activities will need to be customized to your specific goals and industry, however, the following checklist will apply to most Internet marketing strategies.

WEBSITE MARKETING CHECKLIST: Boost Organic Search Rankings through SEO Services
Everybody always asks “How do I get my website to be the top ranking in the search engines?”  It’s a simple and valid question.  However, the answer is complicated and continually changing.  The truth is that while there are proven tactics, such as strategic keyword inclusion throughout your website and building qualified inbound links, Google and other search engines are continually changing how they calculate rankings.  Google’s mission is to display the most accurate and relevant web page links for a particular keyword search.  That’s an increasingly tough assignment when businesses continually invent new shady tactics (e.g. link farms, cloaking) to fool Google’s process. 

The secret is something your mother always told you…be honest.  If your website has relevant content, particularly unique and original content, Google wants your website in the corresponding search results.  However, the search engines are rightfully suspicious and need to take extra steps to validate your website’s ranking for a particular keyword.  This is where your site’s popularity (relevant inbound links), metatag coding, internal link structure, page text, site map, and other criteria can make the difference between a top ranking and a useless ranking on page 73 of search results.  A good SEO services consultant (like Steve Ebner Marketing, Inc…shameless plug) can help your company sift through the complex search engine optimization process.  

WEBSITE MARKETING CHECKLIST: Leverage Pay-Per-Click Advertising Campaigns
Google’s AdWords program is the undisputed king of Internet marketing.  While Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter, and others offer some value, it’s best to prioritize your budget for Google campaigns.   From one web-based interface, you can place pay-per-click (PPC) text and banner ads that are displayed in keyword search results on Google.com and other search engine sites, as well as thousands of independent websites that have content related to sponsored keyword.  Advertisers can limit ad runs to a local city, a particular time of day, user demographics, and a number of other specifications.  Through the Google platform, you can also run newspaper ads, ads to mobile phone users, and even ads on local cable television. 

     Google’s PPC marketing interface lets users control everything from daily budgets to prices it pays for each click.  The reporting component tracks conversions, click-through rates for a particular ad, conversion value, and the all-important cost per conversion.   A conversion, which a user must define, could be an online store purchase, a contact form submission, or something else.

     The great thing about any of the PPC marketing services is flexibility.  Most of them charge a one-time setup fee of about $5, and then simply charge you as you accrue ad charges.  Ad charges are based on either ad click-throughs (a click-through occurs when a user clicks on your ad and visits your website) or ad impressions (an impression occurs when your ad is displayed on a webpage regardless if somebody clicks on it).  Again, you control how you want to be charged.  There’s no minimum monthly cost, but most companies will need to spend at least $100 a month to see some noticeable traffic.   Local campaigns will cost less, while some national campaigns can cost tens of thousands each day.

     Another important element for Google pay campaigns is your ad’s “quality score.”  Remember, Google’s mission is to deliver the most relevant search results for a particular keyword.  This includes the paid ads displayed alongside the organic search results.  Therefore, Google analyzes your text ad in many ways to calculate a quality score for paid ads.  A low quality score for an ad means your ad is less relevant for a particular keyword, and thus your cost per click will be higher.  For example, a hot dog company is able to run ads for the keyword “hamburgers,” but it will cost it more than a more relevant keyword like “hot dogs.”  Again, it’s Google’s way of forcing out the irrelevant ads.

     The quality score calculation takes into account the ad text, the ad’s click-through rate, and even the linked web page in the ad.  The frustrating thing is you will never know your ad’s quality score.  Google won’t tell you and constantly changes the algorithms it uses to calculate it.  It’s all part of the mysterious fun of search engine marketing!  

While a company can manage these PPC marketing campaigns internally with some dedicated staff, you'll save a great deal of time and maximize your spending by tapping an experienced consultant to setup the campaigns. For more details about what's involved in the setup, check out this PPC management services page.

WEBSITE MARKETING CHECKLIST:
Integrate Website with Other Online & Offline Website Promotion Campaigns
It’s easy to get tunnel-vision with search engine marketing and search engine optimization.  A good web promotion strategy will tap into more avenues than just search engines and other websites.  The most obvious is to make sure your website address is included on every marketing and communication piece for the company, including press releases, business cards, letterhead, invoices, phone greetings, email signatures, annual reports, etc. 

You should also think through the opportunities to add content to the website that will support other campaigns.  Give your stakeholders another reason to visit your website.  For example, add full length research studies, or customer testimonials that you highlight in your marketing materials.  Another example would be a special video presentation linked from an email blast sent by your sales team.  What about a television ad campaign that directs users to visit a contest entry page on your website?  The possibilities are endless.  The message is to think beyond just search engine optimization and online banner advertising.  Just make sure the intended result is aligned with your website goals.

WEBSITE MARKETING CHECKLIST: Keep Tabs on Your Competition
These days it’s not always enough to simply follow your own Internet marketing strategy. Be sure to take off the blinders occassionally and check the pulse of your marketpace. Just as it's important to continually listen to your customers, smart businesses are continually watching their competitors too.  Where are your competitors ranked for the keywords you’re targeting?  Are they running Google pay advertising campaigns for the same keywords as you?  Is your competitor running ads for the keyword that matches your company name?  What websites are linking to your competitor’s website? You need to keep tabs on your competition and continually make adjustments to your strategy as needed.

There are plenty of tools that can estimate your competitor’s website traffic, keyword emphasis, and more.  For the most impact, your management or strategy consultant will need to sift through this competitive data and identify trends. You want to use the data to identify ways you can adjust your own tactics and counter the competition. This type of competitive analysis often illuminates gaps in your target marketplace that your company can exploit.

STEP 5: Continue Measurement, Benchmarking, & Ongoing Campaign Adjustments
Like any strategic plan, the success of your website promotion and search engine marketing strategy will need to evolve over time. You (or your consultant) should be monitoring and benchmarking your progress on a weekly, or at the very least, monthly basis. The real value of the tracking data will be using it to make adjustments aligned with your end goals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Ebner is an 18-year Internet marketing strategy veteran.  His Denver-based consulting company, Steve Ebner Marketing Inc., provides strategy planning, Internet marketing & professional SEO services consulting, and other promotional strategy consulting services.  Visit www.SteveEbner.com to learn more..

© 2008 Steve Ebner Marketing Inc.  All rights reserved.