your website is the hub of your marketing strategy
DESCRIPTION
Your website is the key element that ties your marketing activities together. Place your site at the hub of your strategy and select the best tactics to add into your marketing mix.TRANSCRIPT
Resolve makes websites and web apps that help you reach your business goals.
599 Third Street, Suite 301San Francisco, CA 94107
USAPhone: 510 568 8840
R E S O L V ED I G I T A L
Top Floor, 209 Tuam StreetCentral City, Christchurch
New ZealandPhone: 027 259 3450www.resolvedigital.com
Your website is the key element
that ties your marketing activities
together. Place your site at the
hub of your strategy, and select
the best tactics to add into your
marketing mix.
An effective marketing strategy helps your business find potential customers (outbound marketing) and makes it easy for potential customers to find you (inbound marketing).
Which tactics are best? Since few businesses have the resources to do it all, the guiding principle is to be where your customers are. So you’ll want to select the specific tactics that are most appropriate to your target market.
You should be actively engaged in at least one element from each category. Ideally you want to create links between the various tactics so, for example, your blog post is mentioned in your email newsletter, Tweet, LinkedIn profile and Facebook page, then submitted to one of the article distribution sites for maximum results.
Is your website the hub of your marketing strategy?
1. Publishing & Link-building
By creating and publishing articles with your target market in mind, you build credibility and authority in your niche. At the same time, you’re generating links and increasing your site’s visibility. Here are the top sites to consider.
Ezine Articles My articles on web design and optimization
Expert authors reach millions of readers & publishers and generate in-bound links.
eHow.com
How-to articles and videos created by professionals and users covering a broad range of topics.
Squidoo
Write and publish your own overview page called a “lense.” Share your expertise, get found, get followed, grow your influence.
Online PR
Press releases distributed online raise your profile on Search Engines and news sites, helping you reach potential customers.
2. Social Media
Social media allows your business to interact with potential customers in new and exciting ways. The key word is “interact.” It’s a conversation, not a monologue. If they engage with your social media campaigns, prospects are more likely to trust you and do business with you.
A social utility that connects people, upload and share photos, links and videos.
YouTube Check out our website evaluation seminar video
Upload, tag and share your videos.
Twitter Follow me on Twitter!
Social networking and microblogging service.
LinkedIn Check out my LinkedIn profile
Registered users can maintain a list of people they know and trust in business.
Yelp
Members rate everything from restaurants to doctors.
599 Third Street, Suite 301San Francisco, CA 94107
USAPhone: 510 568 8840
R E S O L V ED I G I T A L
Top Floor, 209 Tuam StreetCentral City, Christchurch
New ZealandPhone: 027 259 3450www.resolvedigital.com
3. Social Bookmarking
Share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks. The resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that link to them. The links can increase traffic to your site and raise your search engine rankings.
Digg
Discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest sites to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by users.
Delicious
Tag, save, manage, and most importantly, share web pages.
StumbleUpon
Using ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality, Stumble helps you discover great content you might not find using a Search Engine.
4. Search and Pay-per-Click
Since the majority of web traffic comes from “organic” search (with most of it from Google) it pays to optimize your site for your most important keywords. It also makes sense to consider these other Search-related tactics.
Pay-per-Click (PPC)
The fastest way to get listed and the only way to buy a spot on page #1 with Google AdWords.
Landing Pages
Absolutely necessary to optimize your PPC campaign. Also works well for trade show and email marketing. Hubspot has some great free resources on landing page optimization.
Directories
There are thousands of them, some free, some paid. Yahoo! Directory (at $299 annual fee) is the most expensive and the most important.
599 Third Street, Suite 301San Francisco, CA 94107
USAPhone: 510 568 8840
R E S O L V ED I G I T A L
Top Floor, 209 Tuam StreetCentral City, Christchurch
New ZealandPhone: 027 259 3450www.resolvedigital.com
5. Real world tactics
Even in a digital age, real world marketing tactics still make sense (well, at least some of them do). The big change is that now your real world marketing is designed to point people to your online presence.
Word of Mouth
Where do you go first when you receive a personal recommendation for a product or service? To the web of course! Word of Mouth is familiar, trust-worthy, and timeless. Visit the WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association for resources.
Trade Shows
Your website and landing pages can promote your trade show attendance and help attract prospects to your booth.
Direct Mail
For some small businesses, direct mail is still and important part of their marketing strategy. Linking your direct mail to your website helps bring your prospects one step closer to a conversion.
6. More online tactics
These don’t fit neatly into the categories above but they should definitely fit into your marketing mix.
Blogs Check out our blog, I, Resolve
Setting up a blog in WordPress is easy. Keeping it current isn’t. If you have the time to write and promote your blog it can be the most effective inbound marketing tactic.
Email newsletters See a sample
Email isn’t cutting edge but don’t discount its ability to connect with your clients and prospects, build loyalty, and drive traffic to your site and blog. We use Campaign Monitor and have set up HTML newsletters for several clients.
Webinars
Decide on your target audience and the content that would appeal to them. Have a plan to promote the webinar, rehearse and test. Send an email follow-up with a link to view the video.
Next steps
Call us toll free at 888 832 0781 to talk about how to optimize your site so it maximizes your marketing muscle.
Resolve Digital is a web design and development firm with offices in San Francisco CA and Christchurch New Zealand. We create effective, visitor-focused websites and web applications in Ruby-on-Rails.
599 Third Street, Suite 301San Francisco, CA 94107
USAPhone: 510 568 8840
R E S O L V ED I G I T A L
Top Floor, 209 Tuam StreetCentral City, Christchurch
New ZealandPhone: 027 259 3450www.resolvedigital.com