Online Marketing

A couple of facts about Online Marketing;

• It can make your business a lot of money!
• Online Marketing success doesn't happen over night!
• If you don't know your ideal customer you won't sell!
• If you don't know every step of your customers journey you are just hoping for the best!
• Most marketing campaigns don't work first time, it is through testing and optimization that success is achieved!
• There are tried and tested strategies, logic, frameworks and methodologies that shorten the route to success, but even these are not guaranteed! It is only when you put an offer to the market do you find out how it is received!
• The only true validation of your product or service is your audience!
• There is a difference between gambling and a calculated risk based upon a well planned and solid strategy - you need to know the difference!
• If you think you you will spend 100 to make 1,000,000 you are mistaken!

This is what leading U.S. Brands Are Spending on Advertising?

• Samsung Electronics – $2.41 billion.
• Alphabet, Inc. – $2.41 billion.
• Charter Communications – $2.42 billion.
• Ford Motor Company – $2.45 billion.
• Verizon Communications – $2.64 billion.
• General Motors – $3.24 billion.
• Amazon – $3.38 billion.
• AT&T – $3.52 billion.

If these organizations are spending this much money do you think they get everything right the first time?

You thinking your product or service is great, doesn't cut it in the world of online marketing so a really essential aspect of the process is to identify if there is already a demand for similar products in your area. Rarely will you have a product that is so new and radical that you have a complete "Blue Ocean" and usually there are similar(ish) products out there.

If there is a demand for these products there is likely going to be a demand for yours, so next we have to figure out how to get your product in front of the people who will buy.

Being "All things to all people" is a sure road to ruin in the world of online marketing!

It is essential that you identify your ideal customer and that you truly learn all you can about them! Only when you have completed this step will you be able to make your online marketing campaign work.

Your entire marketing campaign should be crafted so as to speak directly to this customer and connect with them on multiple levels.

Imagine a comedian doing their stand up routine during a funeral service - what do you think the response would be?

Picking the wrong place to show your ads is exactly the same thing! I don't think I need to say more..

In the real world not all people go to the exact same places and do the exact same thing and this is true for the online world. When you know your ideal customer, you will know where they like to hang out and what they are interested in.

A fatal mistake companies make is not understanding their customer, their likes, dislikes and where they like to hang out. They spend a lot of money advertising on the wrong platforms and think they have failed or that online marketing doesn't work, where in reality if they knew their customer and put their efforts into the right places their time and money may not have been wasted.

People take in information in different ways. Some like to watch video, some like to read and some like to listen. So what happens if we just use one particular type of medium and ignore the other two? We immediately cut our market by 66%.

It is important to consider all the learning styles when creating your online marketing campaign. Only through putting the offer to your market in the various formats will you understand what resonates most with your target customers.

No matter what product you are selling, unless the offer is right it will not generate any substantial amount of sales. This is why people like special offers, they make them feel...special!

Don't be misled by the "Early adopters" who buy anything, you need to craft your offer so that it really connects with your ideal customers and you can sell in volume.

How you position your offer is key! Don't sell the journey, sell the destination!

People buy based upon emotion and they justify the purchase with logic and you must connect your offer to your customer at an emotional level if you are to succeed.

Your customers journey to you as a business must bring them on the first type of journey and that is Know, Like and Trust. It is quite simple, people don't buy off people they don't know, don't like and don't trust!

The next part of the journey is your customers journey from where they are  to where you want them to be. From sitting on their couch flicking through Facebook, to your ad, to your landing page, through your funnel to your checkout, you must fully map out and understand this journey.

When it comes to E-Commerce we need to employ a similar strategy but in this case it will be focused around how we get our visitors to navigate our store to the products we want them to buy.

Driving traffic to the home page of your website is not a marketing strategy! 

There are horses for courses and not all systems are equal when it comes to online marketing, you need the right systems in place so that you can address all the requirements of an effective online marketing strategy. We can work with you to show you what we feel are the best systems based upon your business, your strategy and the products you want to take to market.

In marketing terms a funnel is not something you pour liquid through! It is a series of predetermined steps that you will bring your customer through that all have predefined outcomes or conversions.

The front end funnel may simply be to collect an email address or build an "Invisible List" on social media, but you need to understand what your conversion is and what purpose it serves in the overall strategy.

After you get the click, your future customers will end up on a page and this page must be created with one goal in mind - Get The Conversion!

If your page is confusing and your offer is not explicitly defined - you will lose money!

There is a logic and structure to landing pages and there are frameworks that you can apply so that you have a clear plan of what you want to achieve on this page. Also using a defined strategy within a framework allows you to look at each element of the landing page and optimize so as to increase conversions.

The ultimate goal of online marketing is conversions - simple, but what if you could increase your revenue by adopting a well thought out strategy that increases your average cart value (how much people spend) so that you increase your profits, your ads pay for themselves and you can scale!

Let me explain;

• Bump Offer - option to add an additional item to the order once the purchaser has entered their details.
• Up Sell - an additional product or service that enhances the benefit of the initial product
• Down Sell - an additional relevant product that is offered when a customer declines the up sell but is offered at a lower price point

An effective Online Marketing strategy should be created so as to build your list of customers that you can put your offer to for free!

Buying traffic is extremely powerful, but it comes at a cost, and sometimes that cost is significant!

The goal should be to build your list of customers that you own, that you can put offers to on a regular basis for little or no cost.

The concept of a Back End Funnel is often missed by even the most experienced businesses. A Back End Funnel is where you have acquired the customer and you bring them on a further journey where you introduce them to more of your products or services. This funnel is often the most lucrative of all!

With the correct systems in place it is possible to automate many aspects of the sales and marketing process. From you initial ads and your re-targeting strategy through to your sales funnel and onward to email automation that delivers content to your audience using logic that is based upon how they interact with your marketing sequence, it is possible to automate many of these functions.

If you plan your automation strategy effectively you can sit back and watch the numbers and optimize so as to increase conversions.

Online Marketing is like fishing, get the right equipment, pick the right spot and then it's time to fish. Your ads are like the bait to attract the fish, and your ad content is the hook, the click is the bite and once they bite your funnel is what reels them in - simple!

But sometimes your initial ad is simply to tease them, you want to get them to engage with your brand, business or offer. You want to increase awareness and add them to your "Invisible Audience" that you can target again with offers. 

Think of your Front End Ads as a way to get those in the crowd to put up their hand to let you know they are interested!

Once a potential customer has engaged with your content, then it is time to re-target them with ads that entice them back to your offer or lead them to further offers with higher value.

If you have ever clicked an ad and then visited a website and then saw a banner ad related to the first ad you clicked - this is re-targeting. When used effectively you can create a sense of omnipresence with your customer. Even if you are a small business you can have the appearance of a large enterprise through the effective use of re-targeting strategies.

Online Marketing is simply a numbers game and it is these very numbers that when used effectively will help you to optimize your entire strategy. From ad click through rates, page consumption, page conversions, average cart value, email open rates, email click rates and more, how your customers engage with you will all be told in the analytics and this is why it is important to have the systems in place to provide you with this powerful data.

If you don't know your numbers you are wasting your money!

Online Marketing is at the outset simply our best effort and what we "Think" the market will want and it is only when we put our offers to the market do we find out if we were right. Even with the best market research in the world we won't always get it right and that's a fact!

So we must stop taking it personally and leverage the analytical data and adjust accordingly, we need to look at each stage of our campaign and get away from the personal view of what we think is great. We need to be open to changing all the variables that make up our strategy.

The key is not to change all things at once and this is where the data comes in. If your campaign is set up correctly you will have data for every step, so break it down by numbers and adjust the appropriate step. Let me give you an example, lets say we have a 5 stage funnel, stage 1 is an ad and stage 2 is the landing page. If stage 1 isn't working will adjusting stage 2 help the process?

Break it down stage by stage and optimize, optimize, optimize!

When you have deployed your strategy, driven some traffic to your offer and you have analyzed a decent amount of data which has informed your optimization process the next stage is to re-deploy and do it all again.

It is this fine tuning of your targeting, your ad, your landing pages, your offers, your bump, your up sell, your emails and all other elements of your Online Marketing Strategy that will bring you closer to success.