How to Take the Confusion Out of Internet Marketing

Marketing Strategy Tips for the CEO

SEO, PPC, email marketing, retargeting, social media, content marketing, video, mobile ... Internet marketing presents so many options that companies often become tentative and confused about what to do, how much to spend doing it, and how long to stick with it. Since it's hard to be successful when you question every move you make, how do you make the confusion go away?

The answer is quite simple, actually. Start with the desired result and work backwards. Simple and obvious as this is, a great many companies fail to approach their marketing strategy from this direction.

Suppose your goal is to sell more Wonder Widgets to Wisconsinites. Before proceeding, it will be helpful to add a bit of detail -- for instance, sell 1000 Wonder Widgets to 500 new Wisconsin customers by December 31, 2014.

Once a clear goal has been established, it becomes much easier to evaluate Internet marketing options, because you can now evaluate them in context.

Social media, for example, is hard to size up without a context because the tendency is to fall back on personal bias -- social media is cool, social media is a waste of time, etc.

In context, social becomes much easier to evaluate. Do Wisconsinites hang out on social media? Which platforms? Are there enough of them on those platforms to reach a critical mass of leads? Does their behavior on those platforms suggest they would be receptive to Wonder Widget promotional activities?

Along the same lines, context helps enormously when considering paid search (PPC) and organic search (SEO) options. Once you've identified relevant Widget keywords, you can evaluate whether there is enough search volume in Wisconsin to justify a campaign. If search volumes are low, you can shift to consideration of local search options -- of which there are many.

The point is, if you have a destination, you can plan an efficient route to get there. Without a destination, you're going to waste time and gasoline driving around in circles.

Start with specific goals, prioritize them, and work backwards to determine the most promising Internet marketing options.