The Fuel Blog

POSTED BY: Nikos Lemanis - Tuesday 20th December 2011

7 Steps to Streamlining Your Online Marketing

Online marketing is simple to do, but not simple to do well. Anyone can send a bulk email, but it takes some foresight and a strategy to convert email recipients into customers. Anyone can start a Twitter profile, but it takes time and a strategy to build an active and engaged following. Anyone can install Google Analytics into their website, but what do you then do with the data?

Well, here are some pointers to bear in mind if you want to ensure the best possible start in your digital marketing exploits.

1. Powerful headlines and subject lines

Your bio on Twitter, your info field on Facebook, the subject line of an email – you have a multitude of opportunities to catch the eye of a potential customer and encourage them to read on or engage with you.

The short 'headline' has been proven to be one of the most important online marketing tools if used correctly – as people's in-boxes become more clogged, they become more selective about what they take the time to read, and the best weapon for getting your email noticed in the crowd is a catchy subject line.

2. Clean up your presence

Inconsistency in your branding and messaging can result in a negative view of your product or company in the eyes of a customer. It is important that both your online and offline marketing activity tie together seamlessly in their look and feel as well as in their tone and content.

A simple starting point would be to ensure that your entire online presence is standardized, and that all profiles and listings have up-to-date, relevant and consistent content. This means that whoever looks after this side of your business needs to be kept in the loop in terms of business developments, product changes and service updates.

Make sure your branding looks and sounds the same across the board – any confusion about your identity weakens your image.

3. Make it easy

Your customers are not only bombarded with more information and advertising than ever before, they are more in control of it. Simply put, they are in charge of their relationship with you. So make it easy for them to find what they need or want and you are much more likely to engage and convert them.

You can start this process by humanizing your voice on social channels. An audience’s expectations of a blog or social network profile differ significantly from that of a press release or corporate dispatch, and this is certainly worth remembering.

In short: don’t just sell to them - actively seek feedback (positive and negative), find out what they want, then make sure that you are giving it to them!

4. Create a strategy

There’s very little merit to jumping in at the deep end when it comes to online marketing. Chances are you will have suppliers, service providers and self-titled ‘gurus’ recommending every type of online channel and every possible approach. But what do you actually want to achieve?

The greatest single benefit of using digital marketing channels is the ability to benchmark and measure the results of your activity. So decide what you want to achieve - whether it’s increased brand awareness, the creation of a community, increased sales or product feedback - then create a strategy for achieving it.

5. Be targeted and relevant

Email marketing systems and CRMs have come a long way in the last 5 - 10 years, and the days of sending mass emails to all your contacts no longer works.

A customer or contact should never feel that an email from your company is irrelevant, so the key is splitting down your audience into targeted groups based on how they discovered you, which of your services they have shown interest in, and even their demographic information, then sending them only communications that are relevant to them.

Although the above applies centrally to email marketing the same concepts can be applied to your social media activity and search engine activity, both paid for and organic. Audiences have a multitude of ways of finding what they want online - if you have what they want then make sure you’re there when they look for it!

6. Analyse and improve

I’ve already said it above, but feedback is one of the most important drivers of digital activity. Never before has it been as easy to listen to and engage your audience, both directly and indirectly. You need to know your customer and their changing habits and expectations.

Analytics and marketing tools are freely available and easy to use, but as important as the data they produce is, it’s important to properly analyse this data and transform it into real insights that guide your activity and user experience and evolve your business model.

7. Get the right tools in place

Retaining management of your digital channels can be a daunting task, and time is often seen as a very real barrier to achieving your online goals.

There are plenty of tools available that will help to streamline your activity (such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite for social media), and you should research the options before you start. Even simple tips such as aggregating some of your favourite blogs into an rss reader will ensure that you have a constant stream of news and inspiration to dip into for blog posts and commentary.

Once again, if you concentrate on what you want to achieve, and therefore the channels you will use, you can make a decision on the right tools for you.  

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