So, this online marketing thing… It never really ends, does it? It’s a right pain.
If you produce toilet seats (and if you do, God bless you. We all need ‘em!) you’d probably rather put your efforts into turning out the very best bog seats than analysing campaign outputs and KPIs – and who could blame you?
So, as a consequence, a sizeable number of businesses do just that. For 60 hours a week, they turn our fantastic toilet seats, rugby balls and lightbulbs or serve cups of coffee, or offer legal advice or bookkeeping services and… they’ll do a bit of marketing, where they can.
Smart Insights recently produced some figures showing 46% of businesses have no online marketing strategy and 20% are marketing as a day to day or week to week operation because of time pressures – and time is precious.
Why Develop an Online Marketing Strategy?
So why bother with a digital strategy?
Well, 54% of your competitors have one, so that in itself should really make you sit up and think.
Also, a good online marketing strategy will bring insight:
It will help you to gain a greater understand of your customers’ wants, needs and opinions. It should also bring an understanding of the different types of customer you could have.
Your strategy will set goals and then detail the actions you need to make to take you towards those targets. It should also include a timeline for these actions and inputs.
It will also detail a method for measuring the results of your endeavours and also a system for adjustment, to optimise your results.
And these elements – direction + actions + frequency + analysis + optimisation = growth. You’re never going to grow much with off-the-cuff weekly marketing initiatives.
Not working to an online marketing strategy is like having a shop that sells fabulous, gorgeous things everyone wants but that only opens on Wednesdays. You’re missing out on a lot of business.
Further information
There are some great resources online that provide tons of information on digital marketing including :
… or you could give me a call on 08443 577 544 or drop me a line at stephen@orangecrushdigital.co.uk