Consumers continue to transition to using the Internet for business, purchasing, finding information, and a host of personal and networking uses. In addition, the continued rise of Social Media is changing the fundamental business marketing model from  “advertising” to “engaging”. 

However, some businesses are still in online denial mode and believe that old media or offline marketing is still the way to market. So, they still use the telephone, the printed advertisement, the tradeshow and direct mail as the sole way of marketing their business. Therefore, the offline methods just mentioned are not obsolete. They can still be effective, but they should be adapted to the new media mindset of your customers and prospects. Take the best from both worlds to create a go-to-market plan that enables you to:

• reach your market with the right message
• make the right offer to create awareness
• increase qualified prospects
• convert them into lifelong customers

There is still a place for traditional marketing and we advocate a blended or integrated approach. The key to your marketing success is taking a comprehensive and holistic approach to your marketing strategy.  A holistic approach treats marketing as a single integrated strategy and process, rather than a list of stand-alone marketing initiatives.  While you may still gain benefits from executing standalone marketing initiatives, the benefits of implementing an integrated strategy are well worth the effort. 

Your marketing strategy is influenced by a variety of factors and will be unique to your company.  Even so, there are a number of core online marketing techniques that you should consider when developing your integrated go-to-market strategy:

• Content marketing
• Search engine optimisation
• Paid search marketing
• Social Media marketing
• Email marketing
• Newsletters
• Social bookmarking, social networking, social tagging
• Blogging
• Article marketing
• Press Release marketing
• Podcasting
• Videos
• Websites designed to optimise conversions

When combined with traditional marketing initiatives like print advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, and tradeshows, there is an even better chance of business success. So how do you decide what to include in your integrated go-to-market plan?  Well, it goes back to basics and knowing your target market and answering some basic questions:

• Who are your target market? 
• What are the most popular ways they search for what they are looking for? 
• Which marketing techniques enable you to reach them or be found when they are looking for your products or services? 
• Is your website designed to welcome and engage your target market and then facilitate conversions? 
• What combinations of techniques ensure that you can draw in the prospect and lead them through the cycle, from creating awareness to converting the prospect?
• How do you continue to engage and nurture your existing customers to retain them and keep them coming back for more?
• How big is your budget? 
• Do you have the expertise internally or do you need to go outside for help?

Developing a go-to-market strategy isn’t something you do every day but executing it is and it is a process where you need to:

• Create your plan annually
• Depending on your business, measure the results monthly, weekly or even daily
• Update your plan quarterly or as needed. 

One of the benefits of online marketing techniques is that they can be started, stopped, and changed almost immediately.  This enables you to react to, and even anticipate changing market conditions, and get ahead of them. It’s not as hard as may sound but you do need to commit to the process. So, let's look at four offline marketing techniques and see how they can be better integrated with an online marketing plan:

Telephone

The best use of the telephone is to call all the leads you develop through your online marketing strategy. However, the telephone is still a powerful way to reach new prospects and can be used in more innovative ways. So instead of just cold calling for sales prospects, think of some more creative ways to use the telephone.  For example, call people to conduct a survey on a trending industry topic.  You can invite them to take a survey on the phone or online. If they prefer the online survey get their email address and send them a link to your online survey. Be sure to offer them a free copy of the survey results. Once you have their email, then keep them informed by email in the future. Don’t just use the telephone for selling to prospects. It is better to try and engage with them so that the prospect will remember the content experience about your brand and possibly buy from you when he or she is ready.

Print Advertising

Many businesses advertise in print but have no idea if the advertisement is working for them.  If you are advertising in a relevant publication, put a clear call to action on the advert and make this call to action accessible online via a unique landing page that you can link back to the advert.  This way you can measure it and work out if it is working for you.  Remember, you can't manage what you can't measure.   If you have a phone number in the advert, make sure it is unique so you can measure the results of the advert.  For many businesses, the main aim of print advertising is to build or strengthen brand awareness.  However, make sure that the reader can engage your brand online in a way that can be traced back to your ad.

Tradeshows

Tradeshows are still a great way to get your products and services in front of your customers and prospects and they usually offer up a great networking and learning experience.  Tradeshows work better for some industries than others.  There is a great opportunity to blend and integrate your tradeshow marketing with your online strategy. For example, if you are exhibiting or even just attending a tradeshow you should always talk about the event online before, during and after the event.  If you use LinkedIn, you can communicate to your connections that you are attending a particular Tradeshow. Make sure that you use your online PR, your blog, Facebook and Twitter channels to discuss your contribution to the event. You can use Flickr and YouTube to share photos and videos from the event.  When you meet people at the tradeshow, then make sure that you connect online to keep the relationships going after the event.

Direct Mail

Direct mail still has value in an integrated marketing plan. Similar to print advertising be sure to have a measurable call to action. Consider linking the call to action to personalized URLs or landing pages. This will allow you to measure the results of your direct mail campaigns very clearly with online interaction attributable to your direct mail campaigns.

So how are you integrating your online and offline marketing.  We would love to know, so please leave a comment below:

This post is part of the #JUMPchallenge, a blogging competition designed to raise awareness of how to join up online and offline marketing, launched to support Econsultancy's JUMP event.

 

Twitter has international marketing appeal

All types of businesses and general human interactions and activities are going global.  The use of Social Media and Social Networking platforms is growing exponentially. Twitter is a runaway success story and the success of this social networking phenomena called Twitter can be attributed to its global appeal. Twitter recently announced that its 20 billionth message or tweet had been posted.

The interesting fact is that the 20 billionth tweet was not written in English and shows that Twitter is now benefitting from a worldwide following. When you consider that the 20 billionth tweet is not in English, this fact help us to understand Twitter's growth.

Twitter really has taken off in the non English speaking countries and if you want just one example, look at how Twitter was hugely important during the disputed Iranian elections. It is the speed of Twitter and the ease of access to Twitter that is so important. According to Twitter, the landmark tweet was sent by a Japanese graphic designer in Tokyo. The firm said that around 12 per cent of worldwide tweets are now posted in Japan, which is the second largest national proportion behind the US.

So Twitter is an extremely powerful digital marketing tool because it has location based services and also Twitter has gone global so it is the perfect networking platform for small, medium or large companies who want to reach out  and engage with customers and prospects - locally or internationally.

The new world of Social Media is among the most actively analyzed, sometimes widely misunderstood, and at the same time, celebrated mediums affecting businesses today. Social Media  introduces new channels, processes and methodologies to drive and measure the sales of your products, services, and marketing. As such, discerning business executives seek direction to evaluate the opportunity costs associated with new media as well as establish the ROI of engaging in popular networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Read the full article

Facebook is still growing at a phenominal rate.  At the last count I read it now has over 500 million users and the projection is for Facebook to hit 1 billion is in the year 2012.  By any measure, this is serious growh and  is such a huge number that it is even more reason why your business can not ignore it. 

One of the most respected social media commentators  is Jeremiah Owyang.  He has just interviewed a dozen or so other Social Media thought leaders to investigate Best Practices in Facebook Marketing.  The result is a must-read and is titled " The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing"

Keyword research is probably one of the most important steps that you will take when you start work on your on site optimisation for your website. Keyword research, when done right, can have a dramatic effect on your website and can make it operate like a well oiled inbound marketing machine. Make sure you spend the right amount of time on your keyword research.

When done incorrectly it could cause you to miss out on very valuable web traffic which can lead to a loss in sales and revenues off your bottom line. In this post, I will recommend four helpful tips that could help you research relevant keywords to optimise every page of your website, before you have written your content. Do your keyword research before you write your content so that you understand your niche and competition better.

Here are four keyword research tips to help you isolate the most relevant keywords for your business

1. Thesaurus – An online thesaurus is often a great starting point. A major point in keyword research is the ability to find a variety of keywords that your target audience might use in order to find your products and services. A thesaurus is a great tool and can help you eliminate some of the guessing game from sitting there and trying to come up with variations of a certain keyword in your head. Don’t guess just use an online thesaurus and cut through the frustration.

2. Competitors – Take a look at your competition and see what they are doing.  Look at what keywords they might be targeting to give you a starting point if you feel stuck in any way. I never recommend copying someone else’s approach but you should do some market research and look at keywords to get a better understanding of what your target audience and your competition is using on the internet to attract traffic.

3. Keyword Research Tools – Always use a keyword research analysis tool, such as Google Adwords or Market Samurai.  You should never  assume you already know all your industry keywords because you have been working in a specific industry for some time.  If you are too familiar with your industry it can often blind you to the real keywords and phrases that real people are using to search for your products and services.  There may be many long tail keywords in your industry that are being used on a daily basis that you are unaware of. Some of these long tailed keywords could be great for conversions because typically the end user knows exactly what they are looking for when they use long tailed keywords or keyword phrases.  These are very valuable

4. Be Strategic with your Keyword Research – When you start pulling your lists together be strategic but also be realistic. Take a good look at the search results for the keywords and keyword phrases you are picking and truly analyse whether you can compete against them or not.

Remember that keyword research is going to be the foundation for almost everything you do online as business in the future. Pick the wrong keywords and you will get the wrong web traffic which could cause you to operate at only half capacity and lose very valuable traffic.

 

Life in the Digital Economy, or is it the Social Economy, is not always easy for the leading technology companies. Even large corporations like Google do not always get things right and after a very much "stop and start" life, Google finally gave up Google Wave.  However, that is not their only failure.  Here is a light hearted celebration of some of Google's other product failures.

Infographic by WordStream Internet Marketing Software

Marketing is not a black art but like most business operations it is a process and should be treated as an integrated process and not as a set of one off unrelated activities. As marketers, we create the product, promote it, give it a price, and put it on the shelves. All the stages in the process are important and are dependent on each other.

The advent of the internet and digital marketing has changed some of the techniques and platforms but the process is still much the same.  Also, if done right, marketing is fun and so rewarding.  Everyday, we find out customers or consumers’ problems that even they are sometimes not even aware of and we look for solutions. Finally, we bring the solutions to their front doorstep - easy!

To be a successful at marketing, there are 5 things we need to do. We can't miss any of these out or do them in the wrong order or we will fail. So just in case, here’s the list of my five tips to make sure we stay successful as marketers:

1. Goals

There should always be a reason for everything we do and those are our goals  If you don’t have clear goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable and Timebound) then we are in deep trouble. Digital Marketing makes the setting of SMART goals easier.  We recently wrote a digital marketing post on why it is easier to set SMART goals in the digital marketing space. It may be starting up a Twitter page, or setting a low price for a product but we must know the reason why you are making that decision. And that reason is your goal. It should always be the starting point of any plan or decision. Keep reminding yourself of it and make sure you are moving in the right direction.

2. Strategy

How are we going to achieve our goals? We need to be very specific. When you think that a Twitter page would help you build an online presence, hopefully you just don’t say, “I will just set up a Twitter page.”  First and foremost, you must have a good reason to think that Twitter is the way to achieve your goals. Second, you should be thinking about the content you are going to put on Twitter to add value and engage with your Tweeps (your followers), the colours and images you would use to portray the right brand or image, etc. You go into the details, and think out of the box. Strategy also includes choosing the best medium to reach your consumers. Whether you are using traditional or digital marketing media, it is essential to integrate individual marketing efforts, and ensure consistency across all platforms through the process.

3. Tools

Marketers need the right tools to help them do their jobs. In our digital economy, our tools are getting more sophisticated and complicated so we really need to keep updating ourselves. We need to know what the latest tools can do for us and we need to understand them well to  find out what is the best. And that includes all the digital marketing media and platforms.  Recently at WSI, we have done several workshops for marketers, and were initially shocked by their lack of knowledge of the digital world.  As marketers, we can’t afford to be worse than consumers at the tools. Also, it is important to see how we can creatively transform the use of these tools to attract and engage with clients, consumers and prospects.

4. People

Consumer behaviour is one of the most interesting and important parts of marketing. If we spend the time and get to know people, we can give them what they want. Don’t assume anything about your target audience. Market research is key before you start working on your strategy. Communication is so important, we need to communicate in the right way and at the right time.

5. And everything else

As marketing consultants or marketers, our days will be very varied.  We can be promoting caravans one day, and beer the next. You can’t sell anything or persuade anyone if you know nothing about your product category or the people using it. You can’t just know about marketing, you need to know about cars, cosmetics, camping and everything else. So it is an opportunity for life long learning!

Here at WSI, we are a pure play marketing company that focusses on digital marketing to work with our clients to help them leverage the power of the internet to increase sales, reduce costs and make operational efficiencies in their business.

Have you ever wondered how Google works...well here it is in all its glory!

Infographic by the Pay Per Click Blog

I met someone today that is starting out in a fairly niche retail business and she asked me "Why should I put my business online?" - shock/horror!

So the short answer I gave her was that by putting her business online she can avoid the overhead involved in setting up a real world high street business.  No need to get an overpriced shop front, buy shelves, fill it with stock, pay local authority business rates, employ staff, etc, etc.  I recommended that she could  put some of that money into a monthly adwords budget to get totally targetted traffic to her offer and if she could get herself a really well designed and optimised site or landing page(s) where she would be  good to go straight away.

The other major difference that I pointed out between online and offline businesses is that offline you set up and hope that you get the footfall to wherever you were able to open up. Online you can create the footfall so all you need is a good offer that somebody will respond to.

Seems obvious to me but lucky for her she has a rich daddy (unlucky for him) who is funding her but I am not too sure how much unnecessary expenditure he wants to incur!

Anyway, if anybody reading this post wants help with setting up a targetted website for a new or current business then just get in touch with our digital marketing team and tell us what you are looking for and what you expect. You will not be disappointed.

I think this has been my shortest blog post ever :)

Press releases should form part of every business's strategic digital marketing and online PR mix. Therefore, you need to make sure that your efforts are well spent by ensuring your press release has every chance of being published on the sites that you post to it to. Writing a press release that does not attract attention and get published is like writing a letter and forgetting to post the letter. When time is money, this is just a waste when you could be doing something else more productive.

Here are my top 10 tips for getting your press releases published:

1. Make sure the press release title has some form of time related information
Your press release should  talk about something that is current i.e. your press release titles should be specific to the present and not generic. The more time dependant the better. e.g. John Smith's Camping Center Launches September 2010 Charity Sale to Support the Children in Need Campaign.  This is a good title, as there is a time dependant element here because we are talking specifically about September 2010.  If you can include the actual day and time of the event then even better.

2. Try and make the title ‘event based’
As in the previous paragraph, the title of your press release should ideally focus on a specific event that is happening or planned to happen that you want people to know about and the body of the release should clearly describe the event.

3. Do not use FREE in the title
The inclusion of Free in the title usually signifies to the press release reviewer that your press release is spam and not a great news item for their site and will probably not get listed. Avoid at all costs!

4. Do not ask a question in the title of your press release
If you ask a question in your press release it can look like an article rather than a press release. If this is the case then post the article on an article site. The reader of a press release site is different from that of an article site. Press releases are factual and event based, with readers looking for up to date information. On most press release site you will need to substantiate any facts or claims that you publish in your press release

5. Make sure your title does not read like an advert
If your title says something like ‘£5 off this weekend at John Smith's Camping Center’ then that is not going to get past the reviewer. You need to make it more relevant and put in more of a story.  Try and give the ‘reason why’ it is happening.

6. Make your press release location specific
Give your press release FOCUS by mentioning the location that your press release is relevant to. This makes sure that the reviewer knows that this press release is relevant to their traffic.

7. Make sure your press release title has more than 20 characters
Short titles usually indicate short and badly written press releases and so the reviewer might just give up at the title. However, don't go to the other extreme.  For example, super long titles either, anything over 150 characters is way too long and will probably get you left unpublished.

8. Avoid offensive material
It may seem obvious but most sites will not post releases referring to pornography, gambling, racism or other offensive topics. Most press release sites use Google adsense to generate some of their revenue and so are bound by Google’s terms and conditions which do not allow adverts to be placed on sites with such content.

9. Make sure you understand and stick to the accepted format of a press release
Make sure you read the guidelines for the press release site.  Usually these include the requirements for Title, Introduction, Body and then About us section.  Many press releases don't have the ‘about us’ section of the press release. This is not a reason for instant deletion but it doesn’t look professional. In a previous blog post we posted about the importance of standardising on a  "boiler plate" or "about us" section for all your press releases.

10. Finally, spell check and get someone to proof read your press release
It may seem obvious but press release reviewers will review your press release carefully. A press release reviewer will delete your press release if the grammar is poor or if it contains spelling mistakes and errors.

Contact our digital marketing practice to help you with your business press release