Before you start marketing yourself online, you should develop your online marketing strategy. But what should that consist of?
The first step to developing an online marketing strategy is to assess your current state of online marketing. What have you done until now and how has it worked out for you? Once you have a complete picture of your current online status, then you’ll be able to tell what has worked and what has not. You should move forward with a plan that incorporates what has worked in the past while incorporating new strategies for the future.
At a minimum, your online marketing strategy should address the following concerns:
- Website design and development – Does your website have issues? If so, are they hindering your ability to convert traffic to sales, achieve respectable search engine rankings, and promote your website through other means?
- Search engine optimization – Most websites still receive 80% of their traffic from search engines. You’ve got to include a search engine marketing strategy in your marketing plan.
- Social media marketing – Trying to market yourself online today without some kind of social media strategy isn’t making the most of your opportunities. You should have a social media plan.
- Paid marketing – Will you be utilizing paid marketing? If so, how will you implement it?
- Branding – What branding efforts will you undertake and how will it fit into your overall online marketing strategy?
- Analytics – You can’t change what you don’t measure. How will you measure the results of your online marketing and what will you do with the information you gather from your analytics?
Now is the time to develop an online marketing strategy. You may need to include more research and other strategic elements into your plan, but the above list should be your minimum, a fitting starting place.
