Create a Strong Marketing Strategy for Your Website

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If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. It’s an old saying that rings true in today’s high-tech times. If you don’t have a strategic focus for your marketing campaign, an ultimate destination in mind, then how can you know that what you’re doing is working?

Just like creating a flyer printing campaign or a TV commercial, your website needs a strong marketing strategy to succeed. With the right vision, customer, and brand definition in mind, you will be much better able to choose the right avenues for marketing and overall successfully create and test a website marketing campaign that grows customers.

Establish a Vision

The first thing any strategic initiative calls for is a broad vision around which goals and tactics can be built. You don’t want the vision to be so broad that the goals are impossible - “The best-selling widget ever built” - nor do you want something boring that won’t energize and inspire - “To sell widgets to our North American customers in a timely, and cost-effective manner.”

Give your company a vision that gets them excited about your products and services, but that can also be broken down into tasks, goals, and achievable outcomes. Once you have cast the vision, then you can start studying the customers.

Knowledge of Target Consumer

Do you know who your clients are? Understanding your target audience is the next step to strategic marketing excellence. When you have a firm grasp on what your product is saying and whom you want to reach out to, you can start researching the areas that will attract the consumer’s attention.

Know what your target consumer wants to gain from your product. If your company’s intention is to benefit the environment, you will want your product to clearly represent this concern. If you want to show the benefits of your product in the home, make sure that the product symbolizes the home environment. Once you realize what attracts your target consumer, you are ready to come up with an angle in the marketing department.

Your customers will answer every question you have about what channels to use, how to brand your products and services, and what price points to sell. But you can’t discover these critical components without a deep understanding of your customers.

Brand Clarity

The concept of brand clarity refers to the idea that your target audience knows exactly what your brand represents in terms of value to them, price, and where they can get what you have. Your brand identity needs to be clear, which will make promoting your product or services more efficient and effective. For example, if your target consumers are mothers, then make sure your advertisements to appeal to this specific group. Research their likes and dislikes and make sure your images and/or messages appeal to motherhood. Life is hectic and you want your consumer to, with the greatest ease, find and choose your product.

Brand clarity extends to the quality of information you present both in marketing efforts and on-the-shelf or online product display. If a consumer has to do too much of their own research into the benefits of your product, you risk losing their interest. Shelf/ online product appeal is the quickest way to land your product in a shopping basket.

Marketing Channels

Once you have cast a vision, researched your target audience, and established a clear brand; then you can start looking at the proper marketing channels. Are your consumers solely online or can you reach them offline as well? Your company’s advertising presentation will vary accordingly, but you can adjust to both outlets. You want to draw the attention of the consumer with catchy product names and design. Less is often more, so do not overwhelm your design scheme with excessive words and labels.

Get straight to the point. You can end up spending too much time and money on branding without seeing any benefits. Start simple with a catchy phrase and color scheme. Once your product begins to sell, you can add more depth to your branding if needed. However, consumers appreciate a product that does not feel the need to overwhelm them with pushy catch phrases. A quality product will bring the customer back for more.

Finally, make sure when choosing the right marketing channels for your marketing strategy that you start with the most important ones. For instance, have you properly optimized your website for search engines (SEO marketing)? Have you set up social media pages, such as Facebook, Google +, Twitter, Pinterest, and more? Is your business on Google Maps (if appropriate)? Have you submitted your website to search engine directories and started building backlinks to your site? And don’t forget about PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, affiliate marketing, and more. List all of the necessary marketing avenues you need to take, then build a hierarchy of tasks to get done and give them goal dates for completion, keeping in mind that many strategies will overlap.

All-in-all, a strong marketing strategy for your website is necessary for making sure your campaigns are not a waste of your time and/or money. So, grab a pen and paper and start planning so that your website marketing is that much more likely to accomplish the goals you have in mind.