There is no getting away from the fact that there is a lot of information flying around on the internet and all too soon we could go into information overload. Something needs to be done to enable businesses to cope with it and not get bogged down.

We could go down the route of the Ancient Greeks as suggested by Mark Vernon in his “Ten ancient Greek tips for coping with our high-tech world” article for The Times. He has some good suggestions with number 6 about using common sense standing out for me.

Indeed, for businesses to be able to survive and thrive online, common sense is a worthwhile attribute.

However, one “Tip” I would definately have added would have come from Alexander the Great rather than Aristotle.

“In order to succeed you need to have a strategy” *

Alexander’s campaign strategies are still studied today. Not that I am saying you need to attack your competition with chariots, calvary and mass formations of troops!

Rather, in order to succeed online you need to plan. Create an Internet Marketing Strategy which will guide you through the information overload to achieve your business objectives, whether they be to increase sales or create an empire!

An Internet Marketing Strategy needs to be simple, focused on business goals, aligned with the rest of your marketing activities and measurable.

For help with creating an effective Internet Marketing Strategy you can contact the expert team at Rokk Interent Marketing.

*Rokk Internet Marketing

This figure has probably been calculated from the rough guide that a business should spend around 10% of their annual turnover on marketing and that as a website is important to the marketing of a business it should therefore cost 50% of the marketing budget.

This maybe the case, however spending 5% of your annual turnover to get the “look and feel” is not the right approach.

The right approach is to understand your target markets, decide on the key messages/propositions you want to present to those markets and which routes would be most effective in increasing sales.

More often than not, the major route to market will be via the web. If this is the case then it is important that these business propositions are in the forefront when designing & building the site. It is here that the “look and feel” is important to create an appropriate well designed site that entices the visitor to complete the desired “calls to action” such as contact the business, buy a product or book online…

The appropriate resources need to be put in place to market the site effectively. After all there is no point having a nice looking site if no-one visits to complete the call to action!

The effective marketing of the site would entail creating an Internet Marketing Strategy using tools such as SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media & Pay Per Click to drive the appropriate visitors to the site.

I think the question should be – “How much should a website and the effective marketing of it cost?”

The answer is still debatable. But a good guide would be if your business’ main route to market is via the web then you should invest appropriately and 5%-10% would seem reasonable if it brings in the sales.

1: Get Back to Basics

Understand who your markets are, what they want & what you have to offer them. By understanding what you want to achieve with your online presence you can then create a plan/internet marketing strategy to reach these goals

2: Have a plan

Some one said to me the other day “Fail to Plan – Plan to Fail” and with Marketing on the Web that is correct. With so much competition out there you need a roadmap to guide you through all the distractions and will help you focus on your goals.

3: Keyword & Competitor Research

Researching what keywords your potential customers will use to find you is essential. There are numerous free and paid resources online to help you do this.
Researching what your competitors and other people in your sector are doing will help in your plans to succeed. If they are getting better rankings in search enginge using good practices then so must you. Find out who are linking to them & try to get similar links.

4: Onsite optimisation

• Onsite Optimisation is basic but critical. If you don’t get it right you won’t succeed.
• Separate out different business propositions into their own pages to make it easier for search engines to index them properly.
• Have clear calls to action to your visitors are driven to complete your goal.
• Have compelling content that is updated regularly that will encourage return visits
• Optimise the page with relevant keywords from the top TITLE tag down through headings, body text and ALT descriptions for images.
• Maximise your internal link building to help drive traffic to the relevant parts of the site.

5: External Marketing of site

Once the site is ready then you need to drive visitors to it using all ethical methods possible both online & offline. Don’t try to cheat the search engines the consequences could be disasterous if you are found out!  Some methods of promoting your site online are:

• Link Building
• Paid Search/PPC/AdWords
• Social Networking
• Blogging
• Article Writing
• Online
  

Having a strategy to use the above tools will enhance the effectiveness of them as it will help drive relevant traffic to your site.

6: Review & Revise

Regularly review your progress towards your goals using Analytics and other measurements.
You can then tweak the implementation of your strategy to make sure you stay on track to maximise your web presence and increase your sales.

We hope you found these tips useful. In future postswe will be expanding on the tips further to help you understand how beneficial to your business web marketing can be if done properly.