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12.01.08 Combining Internet Promotion With Social Experience  By Lee Odden The thing about internet marketing is that there is no "one right way" to solve a single problem. So much of the advice and commentary about content optimization for search engines at conferences and on blogs is tactical. Five tips for this and 10 ways to do that. We do it too, because people that are new or just dipping their toe into the stream of internet marketing knowledge need information packaged in an easy to understand and actionable format. Between the changes and improvements that happen on search engines, adoption of new web technologies/applications and changes in the way people use search, tactical advice can get outdated pretty quickly. I've been thinking lately about how managing long term search marketing programs can be tricky with all that change, but a strategy that focuses on a model of "Listen, Learn, Change and Grow" can make a big difference between long term success or failure. 1. Listen: The very first thing a marketer needs to do with a new internet marketing project (especially SEO and social media marketing) is to listen. Depending on your perspective (agency or client side) it will be critical to perform discovery tasks and probe for realistic goals, target audience characteristics, competitive landscape and messaging guidelines. The trick is that while many people looking for help with improving search based lead generation and sales will tell you about their situation, goals and challenges, it takes an experienced marketer with excellent listening skills to decipher what that information means and to ask questions in order to construct a strategy.
A basic example is when someone asks for specific services like SEO or social media marketing. It's the responsible thing for the marketer listen and pick up on the motivators to be so specific and also to ask, why? Why SEO, why social media? What are the specific goals and how will you measure them? What is the time frame, what are the resources available to reach those goals? Who are the influencers within the organization that you'll need to win over for proper implementation and what is the reporting structure upstream in order to evangelize and promote success within the organization? Listening is key to discovering the viability and relevance of a particular marketing channel as well as the resources to ensure it's success. Too many SEO consultants take on projects believing the client knows what's best for themselves. The reason to hire a consultant is that they bring expertise and an outside perspective to the situation and challenge existing processes to reach goals. If current processes and knowledge worked so well, there would be little reason to bring in an outside consultant. 2. Learn: A natural progression of listening is to learn about the uniqueness of the situation and what that means for constructing a strategy. Learning about the situation to be solved for a search based marketing effort involves everything from an audit of the web site: keyword use, code/server issues, internal and inbound links compared to the market, industry and competitors. Reporting mechanisms need to be clearly defined for the scope of the program and it is absolutely critical to take benchmark measurements as soon as possible. Even in somewhat ambiguous situations, it's important to have measurement and data collection in progress. That translates into web analytics, social media monitoring, sales channel analytics and anything that works as a proxy to desired outcomes like web traffic, RSS subscribers, white paper downloads, webinar sign ups, etc. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Lee Odden is President and Founder of TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog marketing and online public relations. He's been cited as a search marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering daily news, interviews and best practices. |
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