Web Marketing Principles

These web marketing priciples are in no order as they're all interrelated and very important. This is not a finite list either. If you'd like to understand more please call us on 0191 250 4530 or arrange to come to one of our Internet marketing workshops.

Who should you target?

If you're looking to promote your website to generate traffic, or run any marketing campaign in fact, you need to consider 3 target groups. "Searchers" - who are online and actually looking for services like yours; "Passers by" - they're online but going about their own business, buying things and maybe searching for other services; and finally the "At Home" (or business) group, who are not online at all, but who still need to be told about your online business or service. Each of these groups need a very different type of targeting and this involves an integrated campaign approach. Taerting

Often when you talk to web marketers, they're only interested in the Searchers, because they're the easiest to target. At MBL Solutions we're marketers first and formost and we know the value of integrated campaigning. We always consider all of your target groups.

The chicken or the egg? When should you develop your SEO strategy?

Most typically we are asked for help after a website is designed, built and is already proving a disappointment. Don't worry, we can still fix that circumstance! However, you should really design and build your website after devising your SEO strategy and with it in mind. More than ever (since Google Panda) the actual design of your website affects your search positions. And it's always been the case that your keywords need there own pages to be optimised effectively.

So the egg should come first.. or is it the chicken?

The oldest trick in the book. How do you choose your Keywords?

Well, if you're a naughty SEO agency then of course you will choose keywords on the basis of what you know you can win for the client, regardless of their value. Which is a shame because the selection of the right keywords is the key starting point. It's also a marketing more than a technical exercise.

We use a range of software tools and lots of experience to select keywords on the following basis:

What are the objectives of the site
What are your competitors doing
What are the industry norms
How is your site performing now
Which keywords provide the most traffic
What are the TRENDS for keywords
Which keywords can we realistically win based on the budget allocated

And we'll let you see our thinking so you know how we made the right selection.

Is there anyone out there? Develop your web presence

Your web presence is the sum of everything that you do online. If you do nothing you have no web presence, if you just have a website (even an optimised one) you have a small web presence. Web presence has a value but it is hard to be specific about it. When you meet someone who we think has "presence" they impress you, they may have scale in some way, they get noticed, they should carry respect. That's what we're after online.

We want to develop web presence for our clients and the results are measureable in terms of:

SEO - online activity separate from but associated with your website adds to its authority and therefore its success in search results
Accessibility and message - by providing many more touch points and the opportunity to talk to different groups in more relevant ways will add to your power of communication.

Web presence is now one of the key added values of many Social Media activities for many businesses.

Integration, data capture and the halo

For all of the above reasons it is vital to develop an integrated marketing approach (this does not mean expensive necessarily). Regular dynamic messaging, using offline as well as online, choosing the right channels for the right business, focusing on data capture**, and then relevant targeted ongoing communication (the marketing halo), always reflecting where the prospect might be in the decision making cycle. Remember, people don't want to buy all of the time, they need to go through clear stages on the way to the sale.

**Good data is the Holy Grail for marketers. If you have good data about your prospects and customers then you are in control of the ongoing communication. Is this is key objective of your current site?

Measure, improve, measure.

Plan how you intend to measure all of your marketing in a meaningful and valuable way. Measurements are valuable when you can use the results to improve your marketing or your website. Useful measurement includes creating measurable goals on your site and using analytics tools effectively. Not sure how? Give us a call on 0191 250 4530.