This week, special guest Andrew Laws joins us to talk about internet marketing.
So – what is internet marketing?
We use the phrase, internet marketing or digital marketing to explain a number of marketing methods and channels that we can use to promote a business. In summary, it’s a way of increasing the reach of your business message and finding new business.
What it’s not is a shortcut – you need to have to have your house in order before you start. Simply having a website, being on social media or sending an emailer is not going to be enough, It’s not going to work if you don’t already have a real business to drive people towards.
So what internet marketing channels can you use?
- Essentially if somebody sits down at google.com and searches for something that you sell, good SEO helps them find you ahead of your competitors.
- Then there is social media or social networking. So that’s LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. Paid-for advertising comes in the form of Google ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn sponsored content etc.
- Beyond that, we get into CRO (conversion rate optimization) – How many people are buying stuff? How many people are doing things that you want them to do? We can look at your website and figure out why that is (or isn’t) happening.
- We also have surveying, which is a bit of an old fashioned term. Just a survey sometimes can be one of the greatest things that you can do to build your market.
Some channels are more appropriate for certain businesses. Most good businesses have identified who their target customer is understand where they hang out eg. for wedding photographers, Facebook might be great. Think about whether you are business to business or business to consumer when considering which channel is best for you.
How do I measure what’s working?
Google analytics is important and is a free service. It can tell you how many people have been to your website, which pages they’ve looked at and where in the world they are. It might even tell you what hobbies they have.
We believe there are 3 things that anyone could do for themselves:
Run a good business. Internet marketing isn’t going to help you if you’re not already a profitable business.
Be a good business. Internet marketing will bring more people to your door, whether that’s your website or your bricks and mortar actual front door. If you don’t look after them once they’ve arrived, or if you don’t have methods in place to manage your leads then they won’t become customers.
Keep your message and your marketing consistent. This relates to everything from your logo to your landing pages, email signatures, websites and social media (everything that you can tangibly see).
Another free service from Google which everyone should know about is Google My Business, especially if you have a bricks and mortar presence. You can tell Google very simple things about your business so that when users search for your business online, they will see a little box pop up on the top right-hand corner that displays information about you. Such as, crucially, whether that business is open or not. We’ve all become a bit comfortable with assuming that Google knows enough about the world, to know whether places are open or not, but they guess a lot of this information. So if you want to ensure that the information displayed to the public is accurate, register your business.
Join us for our next 30 second read where we talk about managing your site and keeping it relevant. Or listen to the full episode on our Podcast.
