On this long weekend I am off to Goa with my family and friends. I am not the ones who will be sitting in front of my laptop day in day out and hunting for people to do business. Rather I’d choose a way to generate prequalified leads through an Auto pilot Google adwords program. So, while I am enjoying my weekend relaxing in those shacks next to this exotic beach, my online campaign is busy engaging potential customers across the world. When I come back to office on Monday I see couple of people who have contacted me and ready to hear more about our services and products. I get back to them. Take them through our company profile and after couple if emails and phone calls they become my customers. This is perfect example of doing smart sales which many successful businesses have started doing.
Online marketing give us a vast platform and right targeting tools/methods to reach out to our customers. However as we are striving to scrutinize this ever growing competitive markets, one has to remember things that go into a successful online marketing campaign. First let me list down couple of ways which can help you exhibit your products and services online
1. Search Engine Marketing or Pay Per Click
2. Search Engine Optimization or SEO
3. Social Media Optimization or SMO
4. Online Classified
5. Linkedin
6. Affiliation
7. Channel Partnering
8. Website
9. Email marketing
10. Newsletters
These are tried and tested methods to generate business. There may be other methods too however these are the most effective and result driven methods. I’ll cover each of these in my next post. For now lets see what goes into a successful online campaign.
Strategy - Plan this carefully as once you’re beaten down you may not try this again. Decide on one or more methods first. Then try to read or learn about these methods. You will find good books and online resources. Analysis the ups and downs of these methods. Come up with an action plan to execute this campaign with minimum human intervention and automated triggers. Write down steps involved in each method right from research, setting it up to actual results. Your content would be the salesman here. So work hard on it. Make sure that you have a Plan B in place just in case this doesn’t work. Have an action item to conclude with on each of these methods. For eg – If you are doing newsletters then leave a link which will take the readers to specific content. If its an SEO campaign then have a contact form/social media plugins on the landing page. Your entire strategy should be planned around this action item.
Identifying resources and Investments – Break the entire activity into steps. Identify each step in terms of the resources that it will need and if there is any monetary investments required. So before you start with your campaign you will have a list of all the resources required at every stage and approximate cost to make these resources available. You can use this cost to measure the ROI after couple of weeks. This will also ensure that you are using precisely the right resources and spend just whats required for the execution of this campaign.
Test Campaign - This is essential when you are doing something new. Using sampling methods you actually calculate the expected ROI in terms of numbers. Get all the resources ready and invest whatever is required to run a test campaign first. Test campaign will also help you in identifying the missing things and will uncover many hidden facts. By doing this exercise you ready yourself to run a full fledged sustainable campaign. So For eg if you are doing an Adwords campaign then just start the campaign with 10% of the actual budget and see the results. Map the Click through rate to the actual conversions.
Prepare metrics - Use a simple spreadsheet and put all the information like – resources, investments, Expected ROI, Break even point, Campaign life etc. For each methods the fields in this file would differ. Use all the values which will affect your campaign in this metrics.
Campaigning - Once you start the actual campaign make sure that you monitor it for couple of days before you can let it run alone. Intially you may have to be involved. Once the campaign is all set and is giving you the expected results then you can pull your hands out. Try to automate as much as you can. Dont make lots of changes in a short span of time. Make sure that you keep fine tunning the campaign at every stage.
Evaluation – Every change that you make should be recorded and compared to its counterparts. While the campaign is running make fewer changes to test it properly first before moving on to an alternative. Update all the information in the Metrics and evaluate your campaign in terms of expected and actual ROI. After evaluation you may decide to invest more into it, make changes to it or stop it completely. However I would recommended that try a method for some time before you give up on it. Try using different mix each time.
Not all methods will suit your business however you’ll have to try all of them may be to see what works for you and what doesn’t. So give it a shot and plan it perfectly to monetize your investments.
The red squares are the mentions I got from entire Twitter community.
Its is not showing all of the mentions I got from entire Twitter network.
