The Top 5 Internet Marketing Strategies

We are often asked, as an Internet marketing agency, what are the top things you would recommend to drive real results? In this post, we discuss the five fundamental things that every business should do to drive leads, sales opportunities, and sales.

The five key areas include:
1.Traffic Generation (advertising)
2. Websites and landing page development
3. Automated email campaigns
4. Lead scoring, reporting, analytics
5. Key messaging, process mapping and content development

As you can see below, there is a framework that you can follow in Internet marketing to enable you to drive results by driving more traffic and converting more traffic into both leads and sales.

1. Traffic Generation
Traffic generation is your front-end advertising and we find that the majority of businesses focus primarily on driving traffic. Specifically, companies want to rank on page one in Google and other search engines, while driving immediate traffic through PPC (pay per click). Both of these channels make sense, but it’s important to use the right approach, whether it’s SEO (search engine optimization), PPC, or even offline channels, such as print and direct mail.

The key with Internet marketing is to think about it as building a complete campaign. The reason that we started this post by outlining the complete Blueprint of Internet marketing is to show you that there are multiple steps in a campaign that collectively drive the greatest results possible.

If you think about traffic as a simple way to drive visitors to your Website, you may be wasting marketing dollars and leaving sales on the table. Traffic generation is only half of the equation. Landing pages and your Website are responsible for maximizing the conversion of your Website and landing page visitors into leads.

2. Website and Landing Pages
To get the best possible result from your advertising dollars, you want to ensure that you are using the right landing page for the ad that you are running. For example, a print ad should go to a highly simplified landing page to maximize conversion. By doing this, you can achieve a landing page conversion rate of approximately 50%. In comparison, if you drove the same ad to your Website, you would achieve a maximum conversion rate of approximately 15%. Let’s think about this for a second. By using the right landing page, you can more than triple your leads and sales volume without spending more money on advertising.

While a simplified landing page does work well for your print ads, this type of landing page will not get approved by Google if you are running a PPC campaign. There are some key variables that Google looks for when determining if the landing page that you are driving your traffic to will get approved. They want to see that your site includes an about page, a privacy policy, terms and conditions, as well as a contact us page.

For many businesses, they choose to send the traffic to their main corporate site because it meets the requirements of Google. The problem with this approach is that your corporate site is not designed to maximize the conversion of Website visitors into leads. The reason why it does not maximize results is because there are too many pages and options for people, which suppresses conversion and results. It’s for this reason that you want to develop a micro site by product line. For example, we work with multiple spa businesses. Instead of sending their PPC traffic to their main Website, we developed separate micro sites for each product line. So, their hot tubs keywords go to a micro site dedicated to hot tubs. While this approach does not achieve an opt in rate of 50%, you will typically receive a conversion rate of approximately 15%, which is higher than you will receive on your corporate site.

While micro sites do serve their purpose for PPC campaigns and simplified landing pages perform very well for other campaigns, such as email campaigns, print ads and direct mail, a corporate site is important for SEO. It allows you to develop separate pages for your site, whereby each page ranks for a different keyword. The key here is that a Website is simply a collection of Web pages. Google views each page of your site as distinct pages that represent specific keywords. By building a site under a common theme, such as Internet marketing, you can rank for a multitude of keywords that are related to Internet marketing. The more keywords you rank for, the more traffic you drive to your site.

To maximize the conversion of your Website visitors into leads, develop separate, relevant offers for each one of your product lines, so that when a prospect enters your Website for a specific keyword, they see an offer that is relevant to the keyword they searched for. For example, you will notice on the Blueprint Internet Marketing Website that each product line has a separate ebook. There is one for SEO, one for PPC, and so on. While it may seem overwhelming to develop different offers for each product line, we typically recommend building your offers in phases.

The first phase is to add a single offer to your site that represents your business in general terms. For example, when we first launched Blueprint, we launched the site with an ebook on Internet marketing that could be placed on all of the pages. Then, over time, we added product line specific ebooks to maximize relevancy and conversion.

3. Automated Email Campaigns
Once you have maximized traffic to your Website and the conversion into leads, you are ready to take advantage of automated email marketing. Many people think about email marketing as outbound emails that are sent to a list. What we are referring to when we talk about automated email marketing is a sequence of emails that are sent to leads once the lead has been generated.

We recently worked on a project for a client where we tripled lead volume on their Website. This actually created a problem for them because they did not know what to do with all of the leads. What you don’t want to do is call on all of the leads because many of the leads are simply not sales ready. Instead, you want to establish a relationship with your prospects and desire for what you have to offer. Fortunately, there are different automated email marketing campaigns that you can use to achieve this.

One campaign approach that you can use is an automated webinar. The second campaign option is the use of drip marketing. The third option is the use of a multi-video sequence that builds desire and relationship over a sequence of emails and videos. The fourth option is to develop a survey campaign that provides value based on the answers that your prospects provide. Some of this may seem overwhelming, but these are tried and tested campaigns that have worked across multiple industries.

Below you will find an example of a simple drip marketing campaign. As you can see, the lead is generated through different channels using the right landing page type. Once the lead is generated, a sequence of emails are sent out that build a relationship with your prospect. Not only should you develop a relationship and desire with your audience, but you also want to create a sense of urgency to get them to take action. If you have a low-cost, entry-level product, you can drive prospects directly to a landing page with your sales letter or sales video on it to make the sale.

For more complex offerings, you may want to drive your prospects in store or to speak to a consultant, depending on your business. For example, for one of our clients in the spa business, we developed a sequence of emails and videos that show prospects how to select the perfect hot tub. When a prospect believes that you are credible and desires what you have to offer, many of them will still be on the fence when considering if they should actually buy what you have to offer or not. To overcome this, you want to send a second sequence of emails that create a sense of urgency. An effective way to create a sense of urgency is by pressure stacking. Pressure stacking is a process of sending out a sequence of emails that stack promotions, making it increasingly more difficult for prospects to sit on the fence because they don’t want to miss out on your time limited offer.

4. Lead Scoring, Reporting, and Analytics
Once you are driving traffic to your Website and landing pages, maximizing the conversion of visitors into leads, and using the right email marketing campaigns for your business to convert leads into sales, you want to scale your business. Remember we were talking about the problem that our client experienced by having too many leads? The solution to this problem is lead scoring. There are several email automation systems that provide lead scoring out of the box. Leads are scored on two sets of criteria. The first set of criteria is the information they openly provide. For example, their location, job title, and the size of company that they work for. This information would typically be captured through Web forms on your Website or landing pages.

The second set of criteria is the actions that prospects take. These actions include the pages they visit on your site, the number of emails that they open, and the emails that they click through on. You also want to track the number of items they download as well as the type of items they download.

By looking at both sets of criteria, leads can be scored based on both sets of variables. The call strategy of your sales team can then be based on the lead score or actions of prospects. For example, for one of our clients, a high value activity is when prospects attend a webinar or sign up for a free 30-day trial. These prospects are scored highly for these actions and are placed on a priority calling list, so they are contacted very soon after attending a webinar or signing up for a free trial.

Reporting is just as important if you want to scale your business. While it is great to have a powerful internet marketing campaign in place that gets results, you want to track each step in the process, as well as how each and every ad is contributing to the overall performance of your marketing. This is how you build and grow your business over time.

5. Key Messaging, Process Mapping and Content Development
The foundation of your marketing is great content. To write engaging content, you have to ask yourself the right questions. These questions should help you understand the emotional drivers of your target audience, such as their desires, fears, frustrations, and obstacles that stop them from making a purchase.

Once you understand their emotional drivers, you can write engaging content that makes your prospects feel that you understand them. Have you ever read content that makes you feel emotional and like the business truly understands what you are going through? If so, this did not happen by chance. The business that providing you with engaging content took the time to understand the emotional drivers of their audience, which resulted in great content.

By understanding the emotional drivers of your target audience, you will know what your offers should be, what your website should communicate, and what your email marketing needs to communicate to get a response from your audience and overcome their objections.

Moving Forward
If you are looking to get more out of your Internet marketing, take the time to do the five things that we have outlined. Ensure that you have developed each traffic generation channel with a campaign-based mindset, using the right offers and landing pages to maximize conversion from Website visitors into leads. Take advantage of email marketing automation to develop a campaign that is predictable and gets results. Utilize lead scoring and reporting when ready to scale your business over time. To ensure that your content engages with prospects, take the time to truly understand what drives your audience and ensure that your marketing clearly communicates to them. You don’t have to do all of this at the same time. As a matter of fact, we typically recommend developing your Internet marketing in stages, so you can take the time to optimize each step.

If you have any questions at all, leave a message below and we’ll get back to you.