Before starting to plan and implement an Internet marketing strategy, you need to ask yourself a number of questions and give them clear answers. This will allow you to spend money and apply marketing tools as efficiently as possible.
Qualified specialists of a solid agency certainly have a lot of experience and will cope with the tasks that you will set before them. But for your collaboration to be 100% effective and live up to expectations, marketers need to provide reliable input.
The ability to ask the right questions will save a lot of time, eliminate possible disagreements in the future and allow you to determine the real needs of the client in order to develop a competent business promotion strategy.
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What Tasks Do You Want to Solve with the Help of Internet Marketing?
Every business has its own goals. For most, it can be an increase in traffic to the online store, moving from Bigcommerce to Shopify, and an increase in the volume of sales. But there are other options, for example:
- increasing the average check;
- retention of existing customers;
- expansion of the client base;
- increasing brand awareness or managing its reputation.
In any case, the goal must be clearly defined so that the most appropriate tools for its achievement can be chosen – SMM, contextual advertising, or other channels. In the event that you need to raise awareness, the reach of the advertising message should be maximum.
Which Channels Would You Like to Work With?
Since there is no single perfect solution that fits all tasks, it is necessary to carefully evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each Internet marketing channel. The winner is usually the one who knows how to effectively combine several tools in the work.
For one business, the optimal solution will be a tandem of SEO and PPC, for another – a successful addition of search engine optimization with content marketing, and for someone, it makes sense to focus on social networks. But you need to understand that different channels (Instagram, Facebook, Google Ads, etc.) serve various tasks. You will have to track the interests of your target audience to determine the most effective and popular content.
Having formulated primary goals and sub-goals (which are measurable), analyze the effectiveness of their achievement and optimize work with channels.
What Jobs Could You Do on Your Own?
The rational use of promotion resources implies competent savings. How is that possible? Analyze your staff, it is likely that you have personnel at your disposal who could handle part of the tasks independently or under the guidance of a specialist from the agency. It can be a programmer, designer, or copywriter.
Most often, a successful promotion campaign does not require huge budgets. If there is an opportunity to get more return for the same money, this is already a benefit.
Can You Describe the Target Audience?
As the practical experience of agencies shows, not all clients have a deep understanding of who their target audience is and which Internet resources they prefer. After all, this is the foundation of strategic planning in any business. Starting an online promotion without understanding your target audience is like using a leaky pelvis to swim in the high seas. Even in a general niche, entrepreneurs can focus on fundamentally different consumer segments. Upholstered furniture, for example, is budget or elite, and is the result of typical or exclusive solutions.
Internet marketing contractors should get clear portraits of your company’s potential customers. This will allow you to attract traffic that generates conversions and deliver content specific to your target audience using the Internet resources they use. Creating effective advertising messages is always based on a deep understanding of the needs of the addressee.
Promotion of Which Goods and Services Are a Priority for You?
Even at the initial stage of forming a business promotion strategy on the Internet, it is necessary to set priorities and accents in work in order to correctly allocate funds. Rarely does a company have unlimited resources to promote all key pages at once. For online stores with a wide assortment and many product categories, this is an almost impossible task.
By scattering the budget in all directions at the same time, it is impossible to achieve a visible result. Therefore, prepare and highlight priority areas – in this case, you will have a step-by-step plan. When the first pages of the online store reach the top and ensure a stable flow of customers and sales, you can proceed to the next items on the list.
Name Your Main Competitors and/or Niche Leaders
The number of places at the top of the search results is limited, so you can break into it only by replacing one of your direct competitors. By investing in contextual advertising, you can easily beat the price. But in the case of SEO promotion, the matter is completely different. You can achieve high positions only by carefully studying your competitors, analyzing their resources in detail, and implementing changes in your own project based on the data obtained.
Gather all available information about your competitors, from the advertising methods they use to their estimated revenue. Also, do not ignore those who are not your direct competitors, but only intersect with you in small segments of the market. Perhaps you will find original solutions or non-standard approaches that can be borrowed from them.
What Are Your Main Advantages Over Competitors?
In conditions of high competition, when the same goods are offered to buyers on similar terms, and the user can go to the competitor’s site in a couple of seconds, it is critically important to differentiate yourself from dozens and hundreds of other sellers.
Even if you have achieved high traffic on the resource, you still have the task of converting visitors into customers. There is only one way to do this – to prove that you are better by clearly demonstrating the benefits of working with you. What it could be:
- own production;
- availability of warehouse space and stocks;
- free delivery for orders over a certain amount;
- loyalty system;
- second purchase discount, etc.
Any benefit for the client is your additional weapon in the competition.
You can invest thousands of dollars in Internet marketing, hire creative marketing agencies and not achieve a high return on investment in a short period of time for only one reason – if you do not answer the questions listed.
By the way, the search for answers may be with surprises. Companies that do not have experience in the field of Internet marketing sometimes do not even imagine how informative and efficient this process is, and what horizons it opens up for business.
