Add to this: New social media sites spring up seemingly weekly; new search engines pop up dang near biannually. What worked a year ago suddenly stops working today. And the list goes on.
It's a mad, mad SEO world out there now, folks. You'd better believe it. Now, more than ever, Internet marketing strategy is all important. Get your strategems wrong in the beginning, and forget about any decent conversions, rankings or ROI at the end. Now, more than ever, goals and objectives must be clearly defined, feasible, proven, achievable, and time-tested.
Additionally, in order to compete, IMs must become more mathematically knowledgeable than ever before. We must truly understand things like ROI, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), confidence intervals, A/B testing. We must master the realms of probability and ratios. And, in the age of semantic web and social media dominance, we must return to the era of gathering increasingly sophisticated market research.
Increasingly success in SEO is becoming more dependent upon quantitative metrics; success now relies more on science and experimentaton, less on chance, keyword density, and simple link building.
Given all this, how do you devise a sound Internet marketing strategy? We've asked this question in a previous post. Now we must ask it again.
*What Is the Master Objective?
You've got to ask your clients this. And they've got to be able to supply an answer more specific than, "We wanna be on page 1 in Google for all our target terms." In the olden days of SEO (3 years ago?) this was a legitimate answer. It was easier then to know what needed to be done to get that Page 1, 2 or 3 ranking for this or that keyword phrase.
But not quite so now. Now, with the advent of Personalized Search algos; the segmentation of search results into their own departments where rarely the twain shall meet (e.g., Web, Video, Image, News, Blog, etc.) - each with slightly (or not so slightly) different ranking algorithms; now with a more ubiquitous employment of IP and behavioral SERP display; now with not insignificantly differing algorithms for Local Search Results than for the main default search results; changes in the nofollow rules and PageRank sculpting; you get the point.
These changes have forced us as search engine marketers to seriously evaluate and rethink, if neccessary, our client's SEM goals and objectives. These monumental changes have forced us to force our clients to answer the all-important question: What is your primary objective with respect to Internet marketing? What, utimately, do you want to have happen?
What are your goals, and are their results measurable, not merely achievable?
*Remembering the Bottom Line
Business is business. And every business has to be concerned with its bottom line. Without this concern, there is no more business. Period. No more business means: no more website to do any SEO on.
Thus it seems to me, the most crucial question to ask is: What is the objective? And it also seems to me that there is really only one answer to this question: to generate more leads, clients and revenue.
Now, this seems a tautologous statement, you say. "Isn't is obvious," you reply, "that the main objective is generating more business?" Or, as we black folk are wont to say, "I see yo' lips moving, but you ain't sayin' nothing!"
Oh? I'm not? Then why do we as pro marketers continue to implement strategy and practice tactics which betray the fact that generating more clients is NOT really our objective?
*Internet Marketing Is Really About Leads and Conversions
But I digress. The point I'm trying to make is this: Internet marketing is really about nothing more - or less - than generatng qualified leads who have a higher probability of converting to customerhood than not. That's it. THAT'S the ball game. He who does this well, stays in business (on the Internet, at least). He who does this poorly, does not.
Now, if that is the main objective, the question then becomes: How do I, as an Internet marketing consulting, best utilize the Internet, with all its power and technology, to accomplish THAT sole objective for THIS particular client?
Answer that question, and you win. Checkmate. Touchdown. Goal. Game, Set, Match.
*But How?
Here's what our research and experimentation indicates:
Obejctive: Get more leads, clients, revenue
Goals:
A. Lead Generation
1. Use our branded RSS/social media lead generation tools, which generate 1-3 qualified leads per week.
2. Use EBay to generate an email list of "hotp prospects
3. Create a Facebook Page for our client and launch an engagement ad campaign to garner followers (another word for "follower" is ... "qualified lead")
4. Have a developer build a FaceBook app for the client. This will generate regular users who can be marketed to by e-mail. (another word for "regular user" is ... You guessed it ... "qualified lead")
5. Use LinkedIn internal search to find people and/or businesses who need our client's services (This is actually easier than it sounds)
6. Create engagement objects (i.e., enter-your-name-and-email-to-get-something-free forms) to generate an email list of prospects. (another word for prospects is ... Do I sound redundant??)
7. Along with #6, strategic SEO. The purpose of SEO is now moving away from "rankings for the sake of rankings and (stinky) traffic" to "rankings for the sake of ...." Fill in the blank. You guessed it: qualified leads. There's no point in ranking #1 for a term, getting 1 million (uninterested) visitors by virtue of that term, and getting no prospects (or leads) to convert to new business. We must break out of the "old paradigm" of "get-a-high-ranking-to-deliver-massive-(crappy)-traffic". Rather, we must start inching our way towards the "New Web 3.0 paradigm": "get-a-high-CONVERTING-strategically-evaluated-ranking-to-deliver-QUALIFIED-LEADS."
...and last, but certainly not least ...
8. PPC Advertising
PPC advertising still has a good ROAS (provided you ad manager knows what she's doing.) With Google's improved keyword suggestion tools, augmented demographic-based targeting, and improved Content Network system, it is now a bit easier to predict conversion rates and better target ads. Despite the naysayers, web surfers are still clicking those ads.
B. Getting More Clients
1. Acknowledge that getting more clients starts with getting more conversions
2. To get more conversions, you need a data architecture that doesn't merely convey useful information, but that LEADS the website visitor TOWARD a action.
3. PPC still is most effective here. Don't neglect it.
C. Generating more revenue
1. This will happen as A and B happen
2. But generating more revenue is about more than just getting more clients. The really savvy Internet marketer will see the website ITSELF as a monetization vehicle.
3. Here, e-commerce comes to the fore. Nowadays, there should be no website that doesn't have SOMETHING that can be purchased directly off the site. Even if it's something that only costs $1. This web based product, when tied to a lead generating engagement object, has the potential to make money WHILE AT THE SAME TIME producing a potential repeat customer. A white paper to download, a CD to purchase, some collected research to disseminate, adspace to sell, any of these types of products can be monetizable, scalable and lead-generating.
Welcome to the new Web 3.0 marketing. Are you ready?
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