Welcome back!
Previously we have looked at our framework for planning and implementing an Internet marketing strategy, we’re going to look at the first section and ‘define our online opportunity’. This section of the process is concerned with discovering more about using the Internet for marketing purposes to fulfil that opportunity.
This initial stage of the process is similar in developing any business strategy; recognising the overall objectives of the company. We then build objectives that outline the goals of our online plan, while retaining a perspective on those overall goals. In doing so, you will achieve an overall marketing movement that drives your products or services forward in concert across all vehicles.
Business objectives
What are your business objectives? How do they relate to your offline marketing plan? Ensure that everyone (including yourself) is crystal clear on the direction in which the company is travelling. Without knowing where your business objectives lie, you’ll have a hard time getting your online efforts to support and benefit any marketing activity you’re engaging in.
For example, if your company plans are to grow into a younger market in the next quarter, this needs to come into play within your online marketing too. Everything should act together, especially with the fast changing nature of the Internet; it can be used as a proactive tool in your market. Additionally, Internet based objectives should support business objectives and vice versa.
Online objectives
With a clear picture of your general objectives you can now begin to formulate your online goals. These objectives should be measurable and based on numerical metrics. Therefore, rather than setting an objective as “Increase revenue”, clarify it more concisely. For example “In 12 months, the website should be generating 40% higher revenues from 100% of digital channels”. You can then break this down through your online channels giving a much more comprehensive, manageable and accurate measurement of overall performance. This allows you to accurately monitor ROI and campaign performance.
The important part here is that of credibility and base values. Although an extreme example, let’s refer back to the 40% increase in revenue: 40% higher than what? Which digital channels? What targets should those digital channels have? Is 40% too high for 12 months? Are your individual channel targets optimistic or pessimistic? These are questions that need to be answered to make sure that the campaign is realistic and executable.
Evaluating performance
Decisions will obviously have to be made on various as aspects of the campaign as it runs. Therefore, you need the tools to collect and analyse the data that results from the campaign so that you can successfully make those decisions. As well as this, ROI assessment and proactivity in terms of amendments also demand a reliable method of monitoring.
Ensure you have a web analytics configured on the website. You need a package that is reliable and provides a thorough set of tools and reporting structure so that you can manipulate data and present it as you require. Revenue tracking, conversion and goal tracking will also be made possible through an analytics package enabling accurate monitoring of all your data.
Other areas of consideration should be your CRM system. Does it tie into your website? Do you have a digital bridge between your stock control system and the website? What infrastructure is in place throughout the customer buying experience and what touch points do you have to monitor and collect data? If you have a telephone number for sales on the site, you may want to consider using a unique telephone number or applying a tracking package to collect data on leads generated from the website. Although not directly related to the web medium, it all comes back to managing the leads and transactions that may result from your website. Obviously, more information means more advantage, be it within your marketplace or within the company.
Assessing the marketplace
You should already have a strong idea of how well and where you are positioned in your market. You need to take a fresh and clean view of your online marketplace as the lay of the land may not be quite as you expect. Remember, search marketing (driving those visitors to your website) is centred around keywords. Check the keywords your site is likely to draw in visitors with and find out who your competitors are online. You may be surprised to find that you will be battling with suppliers and other intermediaries to gain market share on the net.
Personally, my preferred method of assessing a marketplace position is to use the well-known and used PESTLE analysis in combination with SWOT. Using these two in tandem will give you a strong idea of the macro and micro Internet environments you are going into. You can see new opportunities and threats, assess resources, competition and other online variables that may be at work including legislative and sociological factors and apply these tools to individual channels. This will give you excellent intelligence to mould your Internet marketing campaign to become more and more focussed.
Obviously, a strong knowledge of your target market and demographics is also required. Remember, depending on your current offline market, you need to think about the effects this will have on it entering a new medium. For example, if you are a business that currently trades closely with an elderly customer base, they may not be as willing to go online to engage with your brand as much as a younger audience may be. Something that is quite often overlooked and may be worth considering is what percentage of your target market has access to the Internet?
Now you should have an excellent understanding about your online market place, potential customers and your originally identified opportunity. Now we have to decide on the methods of implementation to get your message out to that audience and start bringing in the traffic.
We’ll be discussing choosing the strategic approach next week.
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