If you run a business, you know how important marketing is. It can make or break your business if you really think about it. Print media is still very much alive and thriving. All one has to do is look at all the billboards on your way to work. However, there is a much cheaper way to make your business known – online marketing tools.
Online marketing tools can be extremely effective in reaching your target audience and do not cost as much as other traditional marketing methods. That is why it is advantageous if you learn how to best utilise online marketing and keep your business ahead of the competition.
In this book summary, readers will discover:
- Why it is time to say goodbye to outdated advertising approaches
- The 80/20 rule
- Your unique selling point is important
- Make sure you have everything in order
- Get your content right
Key lesson one: Why it is time to say goodbye to outdated advertising approaches
Good marketing is crucial for any business to succeed. Traditional advertising strategies don’t work as well as they used to. Therefore, it is important to understand how modern marketing works. Marketing is no longer limited to radio, print and billboards. You need to be attracting clients to your business in the most appropriate way.
Did you know that 90 per cent of potential customers look online for products and services? The remaining 10 per cent found them on television or in newspapers. Thus, if you wanted to sell a particularly niche product and opted to go for a traditional newspaper advertisement, not only is the number of people you are trying to attract small, to begin with, but the percentage you would reach would be even tinier! Modern marketing is not only about attracting large amounts of people to your business but also about getting the right people to notice. Targeted marketing is extremely beneficial as it will save the time and money you would usually spend on mass marketing campaigns. This is referred to as direct response marketing.
Direct response marketing is the basis for online marketing and there are many strategies that can be followed to achieve it.
Key lesson two: The 80/20 rule
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It states that 80 per cent of your company profit comes from 20 per cent of your customers. That 20 per cent are your ideal customers. They are the ones who are loyal to your brand. So, you have to know who they are. In order to do this, track your sales for the last year or two. You can then record your sales and profit gained per product. This will enable you to identify the top 20 per cent of your products that bring in 80 per cent of your profits for your business. The customers that purchased those products represent your ideal customers.
Once you have a list of your ideal customers, start eliminating those that you know gave you a hard time. These are those customers who are particularly fussy or who always try to score a discount. They are not worth keeping on the list even if they eventually purchased a project. Your ideal customers do not need extra convincing. The last step in the process is to find out which marketing strategy or campaign was most successful with your ideal customers. This will give you a hint at what works and what doesn’t. You can try repeating the campaign to determine if you get consistent results.
In this manner, you can increase the number of customers in your 20 per cent, therefore increasing your profits.
Key lesson three: Your unique selling point is important
The unique selling point or USP of your product is what will attract customers. Therefore, you need to put time and effort into defining it. Start by writing down at least ten problems that your product or service solves. Then compare the list with your competitors. Does anything stand out? Does your product fulfil a need that competing products do not? This will give you your unique selling point. Your marketing should be based on this USP and should not change. You need to keep your message clear about your project and once you have defined your USP, you should stick to it to avoid customer confusion.
After you have defined your USP, you need to develop your pricing strategy. As your USP already sets your product apart from your competition, you don’t have to compete on price as well. Competitive prices only come into play if your product cannot be distinguished from others. So, ensure that the brand comes off as exclusive. Customers will pay more if they feel that your product is rare. Sometimes scarcity can even help you build an elite customer base. Therefore, it will pay to focus on quality as opposed to quantity of customers.
These tips regarding your USP will put you in a good position to start marketing with a clear message and purpose in mind.
Key lesson four: Make sure you have everything in order
The next step in your modern marketing strategy is to ensure that your website is optimised and user friendly. You need to make sure that shows up when customers search for your products. Thus your search engine optimisation or SEO needs to be impeccable.
To ensure that your website solidifies your brand message, you must work on its structure. Firstly, your website should have a homepage with links to other pages on your site. This will make it easy for customers to browse and find what they’re looking for whilst getting to know your brand. It is important to link all important pages to your homepage as search engines will not index a page more than two clicks away from your homepage.
You want your SEO to stand out as customers usually find websites through search engines. SEO is not just about keywords. It is also about the placement of those keywords. Primary keywords should be present in the meta description tag, header tags, image captions and the main text on your site. This doesn’t mean you can get away with just adding the keyword to these specific places. You have to ensure that they are used in relation to the text. Search engines are smart, they will pick up random use of words to boost SEO.
The other thing you need to learn about is pay-per-click advertising. You have to ensure that your keywords and Google Adwords are properly set up. In addition, when potential customers click on your ad they should be taken to a specific landing page. In fact, every Adword campaign needs a designated landing page. This ensures that customers clearly see what you are offering and are not distracted by anything else. There are many online services available that will help you with this. The best part about online platforms like WordPress and Medium is that they are dynamic and can be easily worked on. So, once you have your Adwords campaign running, you can easily check your traffic and campaign data to check if it is working. This will show you what you should use in future and what you should avoid. Analysing your data this way will make it clear which campaigns get the attention of your 20 per cent.
Key lesson five: Get your content right
When the structure of your website is satisfactory, you then have to determine what type of content you want your website to have. Content is important. You can’t just have endless amounts of information to show that your business knows what it is doing. You need content that is informative, interesting and attractive to your customers. They must want to read it. In addition, your content will be ranked by search engines depending on the keywords it contains. Poor quality content will put your website right at the very bottom.
In order to evaluate your online content, you can use bounce rates as a measuring tool. The bounce rate refers to the number of people who visit your website but leave before looking at anything else besides your website’s homepage. If you have a high bounce rate, that means that people are not reading your content and you probably will end up with a low ranking on search engines. Furthermore, if your content is good, people will most likely share it online. Thus, it is up to you to ensure that your content can be shared easily. Include sharing buttons and links you your social media pages which can help build a following. You can further share content on these platforms thus boosting your online presence and making your business much more popular.
These strategies are without a doubt, some of the best approaches to modern marketing. Just think about the brands you follow closely and how you feel about their content, websites and products. Is it all cohesive? Does it make the brand look attractive to you as a customer? When you have the answers to these questions, it is time to start working on your best strategy for marketing your business.
The key takeaway from 80/20 Internet Lead Generation is:
Traditional marketing techniques don’t always cut it in the modern world. Everyone searches for products and services online. This means that it will make good business sense to use this to your advantage. Understanding how online marketing works and how you can best optimise your website, content and branding are crucial to the success of your business. You have to therefore be clear about your product, its USP and your customers. Working with this in mind, you will find that you will save both time and money if you learn how to advertise your brand right and more importantly, to the right people.
How can I implement the lessons learned in 80/20 Internet Lead Generation:
Do not try to rush through the initial work. It will take time to identify your 20 per cent, to define your USP and develop your website. But if you put in the effort at the start, everything else will be a breeze. You will have everything clearly mapped out and all your campaigns will have clear goals regarding your target audience.
