Online Marketing 101

So you’ve started your own business or you’re a new marketing rep for a larger company and your assigned to market your product or service to the online world…great. Now what? Don’t start freaking out just yet; in this post I will cover the basic strategies that can get you off to the right start. Remember the first step in any marketing campaign is having a superior product to offer your customers (spend some time on this first if you have to). With online marketing campaigns the primary goal is to funnel potential clients (traffic) to a landing page (blog/website) using the strategies below:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – No one picks up that big yellow book on top of the fridge anymore! It is important to remember that search engines are the main utility that people use online, and if you aren’t on the first page in then people can’t really find you. The first goal in driving traffic to your landing page is to be on the first page of the major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) when people type in keyword phrases related to your product (ex. “blue sweaters”). Page Rank: Being on the first page is crucial because 98% of people will click on a link from the first page. If your business is located in one place and not just online, make sure to list your business on Google and Bing Places so people searching locally can find you.  Next, list your main website URL (http://www.bluesweaters.com) on the main 3 search engines here: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, & Microsoft adCenter. In order to implement SEO completely, you will need to know basic HTML or contact a local freelance developer using Craigslist. You shouldn’t have to pay them for more than 5 hours of their time if you know your keywords going into the arrangement. The main areas to include your keywords in are: Headings, Meta tags, Title Tags & Media (pictures and videos). The developer will know how to insert your main keyword phrase into these areas. More important than these tags is the domain name that represents your product (ex. www.bluesweaters.com) and the organic content throughout your website that mentions the keyword phrases. Something simple you can do increase you page rank is to look for popular websites to swap links with your website. Be patient, after implementing your SEO techniques it may take up to 3 – 4 months for them to take effect.
2. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – PPC is a very important and efficient way to get your brand in front of a targeted audience because you only pay host sites such as Google or Facebook when your advertisement is clicked. They both use a bidding system where you are able to bid on keywords and narrow by geographic areas. The first step is creating a Google Adwords account and a Facebook Page if you haven’t already. You will have to link them to a credit card and then you are ready to implement your campaign. It is important to narrow down the audience and length of your campaign to make sure it is relevant and flexible. You should strive to get your cost per click (CPC) lower as the campaign runs. Try running two campaigns at once and see which works best, this is called an A/B Test. Stay focused on what keywords can you use to achieve the most clicks in a week? The great thing about PPC advertising is that your ad might receive thousands of free impressions as you’re exploring which ads will generate the highest click-through rate (On average, you should expect less than 5% of the people viewing to click on the ads). Be sure to mention to your business partners or boss that these free impressions are generating brand awareness for the company!

I hope these primary strategies help you with your marketing campaign! Please stay tuned to the PSE blog for Online Marketing 102 coming soon.  You can read Sean’s Blog or follow him on Twitter !

Sean Simone
Louisiana State University