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Do You Employ Strategic Internet Marketing - Or Are You Just Blowing Smoke?!
Think, Write & Retire! www.ThinkWriteRetire.com Strategic Internet marketing is back in fashion. What's funny is that it never was out of fashion! In biblical times, David dramatically felled the giant Goliath. David was the weaker, less armed contestant. Yet he emerged a popular winner. It happened because he was strategic. Commonsense may dictate that the company or business with more assets, more capital and more people behind it should always emerge on top. Reality is different. We all know of online businesses that burned through piles of cash and then downed shutters when nothing seemed to work out for them. And we all know of inspiring online success stories built purely on the back of strategic Internet marketing. The big question you, as a business owner or entrepreneur, must ask yourself before you follow a certain path or think of investing into specific marketing programs is this: Is my Internet marketing strategic? Strategic Internet Marketing Case Study #1Let's take the case of an online start up in a competitive niche, seeking to dominate the search engines for terms that are unimaginably difficult to rank on. They hire an SEO specialist or firm to help them out. At the first meeting, when the business owner talks about ranking #1 on Google for a particular keyword phrase, the search specialist invokes the strategic Internet marketing mantra. Step by step, the expert guides his client's team through the basics of devising a winning strategy. He explains what a niche website is, and how it is different from a broad non-niche arena. He talks about how tough it can be to rank well on certain high volume keywords - yet how profitable it can be to rank on others with far lesser search volume, but higher buying potential. He talks about building a website focused on keywords that are researched keeping in mind their ideal buyer's psychology. The strategy obsessed specialist then explains keyword research from a different and unique perspective - that of a client with a problem desperately in search of a solution. He explains how getting inside a prospective buyer's mind, correctly identifying their needs, matching them to ways in which the business can help, and then bringing about a happy union between customer and company is the highest form of effective search optimization. "You're not optimizing your website for search engines," he'll explain. "You're optimizing your website for the people you want to attract to your business". In other words, if you employ strategic Internet marketing, you'll be laser focusing your SEO efforts on reaching only the best qualified prospects for your business. These are the people who will easily be converted into buyers, who will happily spend money with your business because you're giving them the best value, and who will keep coming back to buy more from you over time. And then, lest you're in a rush to get started, the SEO expert tells you about the downside. That there's competition. And that there are ways to make it practically irrelevant - by going against the grain, refusing to follow the herd, and by keeping a client's needs firmly at the center of your strategy. Stuff like page rank or domain age will no longer seem appealing or important, unless they fit the overall big picture strategy. Your advertising will no longer be 'shotgun' but turn into 'sniper' fire, designed to reach and appeal exclusively to your most ideal customers. Your target market itself will become clearly defined and denominated, so that you'll be able to speak their lingo, use language and terms that touch them deeply, and offer solutions to unvoiced problems they've been battling and seeking relief from. That's essentially what strategic Internet marketing is all about. It goes deeper and further than mere tactical execution of a plan - and drives at the root of a successful approach to reach intelligently determined goals of a business. Let's look at another example of how strategy can seem counter-intuitive, yet end up making a winning difference. Strategic Internet Marketing Case Study #2Affiliate marketing is a form of Internet marketing which involves paying partners a share of revenue generated through the affiliate's marketing efforts. Typical payouts for referred sales might range from 5%-10% for physical goods to 50%-75% for digital products. In a marketplace like this, a company following strategic Internet marketing can enter and quickly upset the status quo to attain a dominant position simply by offering 100% affiliate commissions to partners - or even more! Sounds crazy, right? Well, it's crazy like a fox! What a strategic Internet marketer may have figured out well in advance is business metrics like life-time value of a new customer. Let's say 20% of all new customers who buy a $37 ebook are likely to order a $197 program from the same vendor. Then an Internet marketer who has crunched these numbers knows that the value of every new customer the business acquires is not $37 - but $76.40 (because 1 in 5 will buy the more expensive course). Even if this business gives away all their front-end profit as commissions to partners, they will end up making a $40 profit per new customer! And that's not counting any more future sales from this database of customers, or the growing asset value of a business built around this audience. Once again, being strategic about Internet marketing enables the business to behave in a manner that might seem unconventional, even unbalanced, to someone on the outside - but that makes perfect economic sense to anyone within it. Being strategic about your Internet marketing is not difficult or complex. It boils down to understanding some basic concepts, knowing vital statistics about your business, and being willing to experiment and measure results before making suitable changes to achieve incremental improvement. So if you're ready to make a difference in your business, get out there and get working on your winning strategy!
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