Having an effective online marketing strategy requires work to four key areas: – Content, Calls to Action, Traffic Driving and Website Design.
Once you have visitors to your website your content should give facts about your products, your customers, industry trends, industry research, Q & A's, tips and guides. The format can be varied such as white papers, customer testimonials, case studies, video, newsletters or press releases. Along with your Unique Selling Proposition your content must appeal to the visitor. It should:
- Be attention grabbing,
- Be interesting and valuable,
- Be credible,
- Create desire to know more and
- Compel your visitor to take action.
Creating "sales-free" content that educates your visitors is the primary way to get people to return to your website and recommend others as well. Some content that you can develop could relate to:
- Research Data: There are always searches for industry data. Surveys, studies and papers by experts in your field provide a rich source of facts that will bring visitors to you all the time and have them return for more. You also portray yourself as knowing the industry, the issues and the solutions that drive your customers' business.
- Education: Be a source of facts. You can provide your industry definitions, glossaries, presentations or links to other relevant industry sources such as government bodies and associations. The medium that you use can be video through YouTube, online seminars, online tools that the visitor can interact with such as calculators, PDF white papers and PowerPoint presentations.
- Product Overview: Walking visitors through an overview of your products makes it easy for them and conveys your message clearly. Use pictures, video and documents to make sure that your products and benefits are well understood. Compare tables can differentiate you from your competition. Graphs, charts and product snapshots will help your positioning and expertise.
- News: News about yourself is often not as important as general Industry news. Visitors are looking for independent, relevant material and bringing that together in a single area will be of value to your visitors.
- Case Studies: Highlight the solutions and benefits that you have brought to your customers through case studies and success stories. These can be very compelling if done with a video of your customer within the case study.
- Your Expertise: Question and Answers combined with Blogs and Forums can highlight your expertise. Q & A's should be able to cover not only your products, but a variety of industry topics and issues. Blogs allow you to interact with your customers and prospects giving them a direct response to the issues that they may raise. Forums too bring together many people with similar interests to discuss topics and issues relevant to them.
- Rich Media: You need to consider the behavior of all types of visitors. Some like to read, others prefer pictures, listen, watch a video or interact online. A variety of rich media can help you create your unique content, making it easy for your visitors to understand your message. Rich media may involve any combination of graphics, audio, video, animation and text.
- Interaction Devices: The visitor experience can be enhanced by targeted interaction. This can be a calculator, survey or questions that lead to advice – specific to your visitor.
- Special Offers: Knowing what your competitors are offering allows you to be different. For example if an offer of an analysis is being made by others, why would a visitor need a similar one? Be creative!
Not every internet researcher is ready to contact you or buy from you immediately. Content is King – keep updating it. Make your website content unique and give your visitors reason to return to your website with new, interesting and valuable content.
