It’s a question many small business owners ask themselves – and the formula is pretty simple.
There are people out there looking for someone who does what you do. Your job is to make it as easy as possible for them to find you. Then to make it as easy as possible for them to get to know you, like you and trust you. People prefer to buy from people they like and trust.
The Problem
There’s a universe of noise out there. A seemingly endless barrage of marketing messages and sales pitches. You are not the only person trying to market online. When you get right down to it…
5 Steps to Your Online Marketing Strategy
1. Make it easy for people who are looking for you to find you
2. Make it easy for them to buy.
3. Make it easy for them to stay in touch with you. The majority of people visiting your site are not ready to buy yet – they may be researching, price comparing, or might simply be curious about what you do
4. Once they have decided to stay in touch – develop trust and likeability.
5. Occasionally make offers to those who have opted to stay in touch.
Make If Easy For People To Find You
There are people looking for you, what you do, or what you sell right now. The problem is they probably can’t find you. Help people find you – until people are coming across your website as a result of searches they do in search engines, you’ll get few new clients online. In some ways this is the most important step because without it, the other steps are pointless.
So, how do you do that? Your online marketing strategy should start with keyword research. This is the most important step. You can use free tools like the Google keyword tool, paid options like Market Samurai, or Spokal’s own keyword tool that comes with every Spokal subscription.
Keyword Research Is An Art
You’re looking for keyword ideas that revolve around the service, or product that you offer. Then you’re looking for those that have a decent number of monthly searches (the number of searches made every month for that particular keyword), with ideally less competition than other keywords, and in an ideal world that are related to each other to begin with. You can spend months or even years perfecting this. Tools make it easier (and quicker). For example, Spokal’s keyword tool automates as much as possible and provides hints and tutorials along the way. When you find a keyword that looks good (or better yet, a group of related keywords) then you target each of those keywords with a blog post, a video, or both.
There’s More
There’s more to it than that, which we’ll delve into later, but that’s the basics. Find keywords that people are searching for – and then write entertaining or educational blog posts that answer the question or problem the person searching for likely has. This blog post, for example, targets online marketing strategy as a keyword. It’s been written to give it the best chance at showing up near the top of search results for anyone searching for online marketing strategy. If you look, you’ll probably also find posts I’ve written that target related keywords, like online marketing strategies, online marketing, and inbound marketing.
If you’ve come here from a search engine, and typed online marketing strategy or something similar into the search engine, then you’ve seen how this works. Keyword research is THE most important first step in your online marketing strategy. You don’t need to be perfect at it – you just need to start, Spokal tools (or others) will give you enough information to easily be able to pick your first few keywords. After a while you’ll naturally get better at it, and you’ll get additional information from the performance of your first posts that will guide you to making better and better choices as time goes on.