The Power of an Interactive Marketing Plan
We hear a lot about search engine optimization (SEO), social media, blogs, content strategies, local mobile and pay-per-click (PPC) these days. Everyone seems to be telling you that you need one or more of these, and they might be right. How do you choose? Here is the answer: an Interactive Marketing Plan.
You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint. You wouldn’t invest in a startup without a business plan. You shouldn’t jump into marketing your business or organization online without developing an interactive marketing plan to guide your investment. Simply put, this interactive marketing plan details all of the strategies, channels and methods that you will use to promote your business or organization online and how you will monitor the process to see if you have succeeded or not.
Developing this plan isn’t rocket science, but it does require some research, careful thought and a healthy dose of experience. When we develop these for our clients we typically go through a few phases:
Conversion Goals
What are you trying to get your visitors to do? For a medical practice it will probably be calling or emailing to schedule an appointment. For a online retailer it is likely a placed order.
Market Research
Who else is offering similar services or products? How are these people marketing themselves? Where are they located?
Target Identification
Who is your customer? Where do they spend time online? How do they make decisions about the services they use and products they buy? Who influences them?
Marketing Mix
What mix of interactive marketing techniques will reach your target audience before your competitors do? Which of these techniques will get you to your conversion goal? Here is where our staff’s experience comes into play in a big way. We can produce an effective marketing mix very quickly without the trial and error of trying every technique available.
Monitoring
How are the various techniques in the marketing mix performing? Which ones are reaching the conversion goals the best? One of the great things about marketing online is that there is usually a great deal of data to help you make good decisions. Make use of this!
Continuous Improvement
Our goal here is to invest resources in the very best producing techniques and to cut the ones that aren’t performing. Unfortunately, this is where 95% of people fail and where most of the marketing budget is wasted.
Tired of burning through your marketing budget and not seeing results? Give us a call at 800-610-7044 or email [email protected] and let’s get a interactive marketing plan together for you. We’ve been at this since 1999 and we’d love to put our experience to work for you.
