Clearly, there are a great deal of tactics to consider when designing the right online strategic marketing plan for your project.
It is not uncommon for people to feel completely overwhelmed as they consider which tactics to include in their plans and what the proper mix of the selected tactics is bound to produce the best results.
Rest easy, however, that this is a common sentiment.
Even Interactive Professionals, who do this work day in and day out, can struggle mightily with how best to accomplish their client’s goals.
For those who are just diving into the fray… just beginning to learn about the Interactive Disciplines, it is well enough to consider that most non-interactive folks don’t even know what to consider… or have any real concept of what SEO, SEM, PPC, In-bound Link Building, Content development might be.
So consider yourself ahead of the curve…
The following is a cheat-sheet synopsis of the more comment online marketing disciplines… what they are, what they seek to do, and what you can reasonably expect when considering them in context with one another.
|
Strategy |
Rationale |
Expense Frequency |
Relative Cost in Dollars |
Relative Cost in Effort |
Cost of Inaction (opportunity cost of doing nothing) |
Impact Horizon |
|
| PPC Advertising | Increases Quantity of Leads via Increasing Site Traffic via Paid Inclusion in Search Engine “Results” | Ongoing Expense | High | High | Variable | Immediate | Though relatively costly, can garner immediate results in terms of traffic. However, the moment you stop advertising is the moment you stop benefitting from PPC. |
| Link-Building | Increases Quantity of Leads via Increasing Traffic via Increasing Site’s rank in the Search Engines | Periodic Expense | Low | High | Variable | Long-Term | Can be regarded as an advertising cost, especially for directory listings that need to be renewed. On the other hand, many links are a one-time investment, requiring no annual subscription fee. |
| Onsite SEO | Increases Quantity of Leads via Increasing Traffic via Increasing Site’s rank in the Search Engines | Periodic Expense | Moderate | High | High | Long-Term | Requiring time and patience, but delivering long-term benefits in the form of increased traffic and liberating you to some extent from the expense of ongoing PPC advertising. |
| Lead Capture Optimization | Increases Quantity of Leads via Improving/Including On-site Lead Capture Mechanisms | One-Time Expense | Low | Low | High | Immediate | When compared to PPC and SEO, LCO is an extremely low-cost endeavor which can increase the amount of leads harvested from a website exponentially. In addition, LCO is similar to PPC in the sense that results are instantaneous. It is dissimilar in that it is not an advertising expense, and does not include ongoing recurring costs. |
| User Path Optimization | Increases Quantity of Leads via Improving the usability of a site, guiding specific types of users to specific calls-to-action | One-Time Expense | Moderate | Moderate | High | Immediate | In some cases only nominal changes are required. In other cases, the necessary remedy may be revamping the entirety of the site (a new site altogether). Nevertheless, a site which is nonsensical to visitors or even marginally difficult to navigate or make sense of from the visitor’s standpoint can impede profits in untold ways. |
| Cross Promotion | Increases Quantity of Leads via Increasing Site Traffic via Inclusion in ongoing advertising outlays | One-Time Expense | Low | Low | Variable | Immediate | Simply the “art” of maximizing your site’s exposure via already paid-for channels, such as newsletters, business cards, on-hold messages, voicemail greetings, email signatures, invoices, and the like. |
| Increasing Sales Conversion % | Increases Closing percentage of Leads | NA | Moderate | High | High | Mid-Term | The analysis relating to diagnosing where problems exist and the effort it takes to remedy them can require a good deal of time, effort, training, and discipline. However, the costs associated with doing nothing in this regard are often significantly higher than taking action to correct a less-than-optimal situation. In this sense, one should consider this an ongoing internal project. |
| Increase Net Profit per Transaction | Increases profit | NA | Low | High | Variable | Mid-Term | Also requires a good deal of analysis, from personnel to sales methodology. In some cases, the time investment is minimal. In other cases, the exercise can reveal massive inefficiencies. |
| Decrease Expense per Transaction | Increases profit | NA | Low | High | Variable | Mid-Term | Increasing Net Profit by another name |