There are many different tools you can use in an online marketing campaign. Although you could consider each of these to be a separate marketing channel, truthfully they all work together, complimenting each other to drive more and more successful results. Before you consider any approach to online marketing, it’s important you consider what objectives you want to achieve and therefore which of these platforms are appropriate – otherwise you may invest heavily in something that never delivers a return.
So what makes a great online marketing campaign? The list below outlines the questions you should be asking about each of the tools you have at your disposal.
Your website
- Can Google read your website? Does your site architecture naturally promote core services? Do you use structured data to deliver information in a search engines can understand?
- Keyword review: Are you positioning yourself correctly and targeting key phrases that are both achievable and capable of driving traffic?
- Content: Does the content on your website naturally support a wide and diverse range of key phrases, including those you wish to target? Is your content grouped into a logical structure that will enable Google and users alike both to find their way around, and also to built a huge list of non-target ‘attracted’ key terms?
- User journey: Once visitors arrive on your website, are visitors encouraged to take appropriate steps through your website or left to figure this out for themselves?
- Calls to action: Even if you guide users correctly through the website, are your conversion points readily available and intuitive?
Social
- Are your social channels appropriate interlinked so people can find them?
- Are you on the right social platforms?
- Is the frequency and manner through which you communicate with your fans and followers appropriate or is it likely to result in people unfollowing you?
Mobile
- Is your website responsive? Does it scale down for all resolutions? Does it work on all the gadgets you use?
- Even if your site scales well, do your calls to actions remain effective? Is there still a cohesive user journey?
- What about apps? Is it time to move beyond the confines of a website and start distributing you content via apps?
Paid Adverts
- Are your organic keywords too competitive? should you try buying placements instead?
- Where will your audience go online? If you’re B2B, maybe you should place your adverts using Facebook?
- Are you B2C or dealing in recruitment? What about LinkedIn?
- Or perhaps you want to appear on a lot of different yet appropriate websites – what about the Display Network?
- Will your customers convert in one go or do they need to be coaxed back on to your website more than one time? How about remarketing?
Voice search
- Do Google, Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Bixby et all know you exist?
- Are you being found found the right queries?
- How do you measure performance?
Email Marketing
- Are you talking to the right people? Where did your list data come from?
- Are your emails targeted and personalised, relevant to each recipients interests?
- Is your email designed to render correctly in the most appropriate email clients?
- Are your calls to action present, relevant and working?
- What about frequency – how often until someone gets fed up with hearing from you?
Tracking
- Are you using an analytics package to monitor how many people visit your website
- Are you monitoring interactions, goals and conversion points?
- Can you correctly attribute which offline orders happen as a direct result of your online activities using mechanisms such as call tracking?
- Are users getting lost at a particular point in your website? Are users searching for a product you don’t stock but could?
Data analysis and visualisation
- Do you have data on how you perform for all your online platforms?
- Are you able to correlate this data, to visualise it and identify patterns, influences and trends?
- Do you really know how you are performing online, beyond what Google Analytics is telling you?
If you think of your online presence as divided into separate entities, you’ll receive a fragmented view of how these platforms and services link into one another. Specialists exist so they can explore a subject in incredible depth, but you should still retain an awareness of how everything is connected. The list above just shows a few basics – but these are also some of the essential mediums to consider when planning your internet marketing strategy.