Many businesses want to upgrade their websites to make them look better, more functional, maybe add a new feature or two, but few look to establish online campaigns. Just putting a new face on your website alone will not increase your business. Combining many other areas in Internet Marketing along with your website will. This is where the feeling of uncertainty is apparent among companies.

I have spent more than a year studying small business owners who constantly want a facelift but are afraid to go the next step to developing an online campaign. Is it fear of the unknown, is it negligence to find out, or is it simply they do not understand?

What does an online campaign entail? It includes a package of services that when combined are designed to target a specific market, brand your company, introduce a new product or service, increase sales of a specific product or service or all of them. These services fall into many different categories and must be addressed when designing an Internet Marketing campaign.

To make it simpler, I will break this down into categories; Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, Brandtelling, Mobile Media Marketing, and Website Optimization. All of these have to be designed to maximize your ability to create interest and desire to drive the prospective customer to act on your offer and create a conversion.

When we break this down, we need to also look at how we want our market to react to our offers. When designing our overall campaign, we must determine how we would like to implement three types of campaigns. First, we must address an Intention-based marketing strategy. This includes a paid and organic search marketing campaign as well as Search Engine Management strategies such as building links in and out of your site and with those who also have high value links; designing your site as well as your offers to attract prospects based on how they would try and find you; look at taking broad terms and searches and optimize them to create more conversions, this not only increases site visits but also minimizes your overall budget as these type of searches are relatively inexpensive. Use of day-parting, market segmentation, and optimization of time, location, and demographic targeting enable you to maximize your ROI in these types of campaigns. Our goals are to appeal to those who are looking for a solution and have already decided to take action if they find what they are looking for.

Another area is an Interest-based marketing strategy whereby you introduce a special offer or incentive. This type of campaign creates interest and is much larger than your intention-based marketing strategy. It is designed to create branding, raising awareness of your company, a new product, an innovative process, and raise this awareness of an offer to get involved.

These two strategies combines with SEO or Search Engine Optimization, allow you to build a strategic and effective marketing campaign that brings people to your “new” website that is designed to “give the people what they want” when they get there.

Finally, you must test your campaigns constantly to ensure that they are working. You will need to adjust them in design, distribution, and in content to see what works the best and if possible for less money. Establishing advertising and measurement goals at the beginning of each campaign will help you track the results and make timely adjustments.

I know this seems like a lot, but it doesn’t have to be. Hiring a company who has the knowledge and experience in designing and managing your campaigns can save you time, money and stress. The money you spend here can directly affect your overall revenue bottom line for the company. The Internet is where your market is, learn how to reach them, give them what they want, and let them do the marketing after that.

If you have an interest in online campaigns and would like to learn more about the various Internet Marketing strategies, contact me at Mobius Creative, and we can set up a meeting to discuss your Internet goals.

Tony Hudson – Mobius Creative