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Have you started incorporating online marketing into your media mix for your 2012 marketing plan? Do you even have a 2012 marketing plan? Hopefully you do and hopefully you understand that even though traditional marketing tactics may still work for your industry and customers, it’s time that you started embracing online marketing. If you don’t you’ll be left behind your competition.

We’ve talked about developing a keyword strategy in other articles. But I want to reiterate the importance of how your customers and potential customers will find you on the Internet. Thus keywords will bring better quality leads and thus higher quality customers to your website. Make sure you test and analyze how effective different keywords are. In other words, which keywords are drawing visitors to your website? It doesn’t do any good if you’re getting visitors who will never purchase your products. So, make sure you are targeting the correct eyeballs. There are all sorts of keyword websites to help you select the correct keywords for your industry. You may not always fall on page 1 for every keyword so try to choose a phrase or the appropriate words how your customers typically will search for you.
Create a list of 3-5 keywords to start and then run some tests on them. You won’t find a perfect match every time, but keep trying and you’ll find the right fit. Then design and optimize your website around your keywords; but don’t stuff those keywords too often or the search engines may pass you by.
Optimize your website by including the keywords in your page titles. Make sure your titles are less than 70 characters long. That is the ultimate size so your titles will be seen in Google search results. Place the keywords close to the beginning of the title, if possible. Make the titles readable for visitors to your site. Put your company name at the end of the page title unless you are a large company and your name is is your brand. Also use different page titles for each page. This gives you an opportunity to target different keywords. Also make the titles like a blog page with dashes between the words rather than slashes. This helps the keywords stand out to the search engines.
Apply a 301 redirect for your URL. If you have changed your website it will redirect your customers to the new site. Specifically have a 301 redirect from yoursite.com to www.yoursite.com.
Don’t use images excessively. Content is king. Yes, you can demonstrate your product via an image but don’t overload your website with images. If you do use images, make sure they have ALT Text associated with them. This will help the search engines index your site. And don’t use Flash on the home page. This also will deter the search engines from indexing you.
Extend your website registration from one year to two years or more. The longer the expiration date the more valid your website appears to search engines.
Convert those visitors to leads and those leads to prospects and those prospects to customers. Decide on a compelling offer, create a call-to-action on a landing page and provide a sign-up area so that the visitors can respond to your offer. Then test, measure and refine the process.
If you don’t already have a blog, start one in 2012. They are easy to set up and maintain. Write content that is relevant to your prospective customer base. But if you start a blog, make a commitment to write, at a minimum, one article per week. You probably already have tons of content in-house that you can repurpose. And, just like a landing page, don’t forget to create compelling offers.
Promote the content of your blog via social media. Have you signed up for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn yet? If not, you should get started. Social media can have a very powerful effect on your company’s image awareness. Don’t be afraid to set up an account and try it. You’ll learn as you start posting articles, responding to your followers, and perhaps even stopping bad publicity before it goes viral.
Next week’s article we’ll address more ways to grow your business in 2012.