A website without a strategy is like driving through the jungle without a road to follow - you’re bound to get lost before you get very far! After all, there is a reason for every website’s existence - whether it’s revenue or awareness - that justifies its existence. Defining the reason for creating your website is part of your business plan.

Recent European surveys have shown that top management in many large enterprises lack a clear e-commerce strategy. The majority of top managers are unable to make use of the online channel. Do you belong to that group? Read on to see if you are getting the most out of your Internet Marketing Strategy.

1. Monitor and measure

The most important part of an Internet Marketing Strategy is to implement tools that visualize your results and enable you to improve your website, products and services. If used correctly, measurement tools and techniques allow you to act on the results, instead of getting swamped by hundreds of reports.

• Web analytics
  If you choose only one tool for measurement online, make it a web analytics tool. Although other tools are important, the web analytics tool lets you identify success and problem areas on the website. If you do not have any experience with the field, start out by buying a book on web analytics and install a free web analytics tool like Google Analytics, Microsoft adCenter Analytics or Yahoo’s Indextools.
  Keep track of on-site behavior using your web analytics tool, and see where your traffic comes from using the referring sites report and keywords used in search engines to find your website. You can also learn where you are losing business on your website.
• Surveys and tests
  Perform tests on your website regularly. The free Google Website Optimizer lets you set up tests that identify which content or design on your website performs best. Add polls to receive feedback from visitors and let them comment on your blog (if you don’t have a blog, set one up on Blogger or Wordpress). Stay in touch with your users online, and perform offline tests regularly.
• Marketing Relationship Management
  Your web analytics tool will probably tell you all that is happening on your website (if implemented correctly). However, it may not tell you all about the display of ads on affiliate websites or strategic partners, or how they are performing. If you are pan-European affiliate advertiser, consider using a tool like the td Toolbox from TradeDoubler. On the other hand, if your marketing spans multiple channels, you should look into tools that can handle engagement mapping, like Atlas Solutions (owned by Microsoft) or Coremetrics. The alternative is building it yourself in MS Excel and manually updating the reports.
• Conversions and actions
  Your e-commerce system will tell you how many sales have been made, so keeping track of that is easy. However, monitoring all membership signups, newsletter signups, and other important actions on your website may not be as straight forward. Try consolidating all statistics in one place, even though you use different systems for your webshop, newsletter management, blogs, discussion forums and so on.
• Reputation monitoring
  Your brand is, of course, very important to you. To keep track of your brand being mentioned in various social media and in news on the web, use a feed reader to subscribe to news and RSS feeds. Then set up your brand search using MonitorThis and add to your feed reader (see this Problogger post for details). That will give you the benefit of getting updates everytime your brand (or other industry keywords) are mentioned on blogs, social bookmarks, news, or other social activities online.

Tip: Once you have analytics tools in place, make sure you never remove them when updating the website. One of the biggest mistakes in website management is that tracking codes get removed on updates. Don’t let that happen to you.

2. Website optimization

Optimizing your website is the practice of creating and optimizing pages and content on your website, with the purpose of reaching your business objectives like sales, customer satisfaction or membership signup. The purpose is to make the website useful to visitors while at the same time reaching your business goals.

• Web design
  Design for flow in your web design. Try to follow usability guidelines to the best of your ability, without compromising your business objectives. Your website’s navigation should be easy to follow, with short paths to all the content on your website. Do not hide information from your visitors - make it easy for them to discover the contents of your website.
• Functionality
  Make valuable functions available to your visitors. Listen to your visitors’ feedback and upgrade the functions based on their comments. By providing valuable functionality in your industry, you will get plenty of websites to link to you and thereby send you relevant visitors.
• Search engine friendly (technically)
  Use any of the many available free tools online to evaluate the search engine friendliness of your website. Your tags (<h1>, <title>, <meta>, and others) should be following available guidelines. Use resources like the Google Webmaster Forum (and other Google Webmaster resources), WebmasterWorld, SEO blogs like Matt Cutts, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, SEOmoz, Search Engine Roundtable, or Search Engine Journal, and use SEO tools to evaluate your site, like Ranks.nl, SEO Chat tools, SEOBook, or WebConfs.
• Valuable content
  As long as you have a strategy and know your target audience, you should be able to figure out what content might be valuable to them. However, you don’t always know which search terms your audience uses. Keep adding content to target your visitors’ interests, but do some research into what they search for. It will pay off. Sign up for a tool like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or WordZe, and check SEO Digger for keywords your competitors rank highly on. A longer list of tools is available from the TopRank blog. Create a plan for constantly and regularly adding new content to your website, that is valuable to your audience.

3. Traffic optimization

Optimizing traffic to your website involves both increasing the number of visitors and the quality of visitors. Quality can be measured in the number of conversions, time on the website or any other Key Performance Indicator (KPI) you choose, but it is important to be aware of what constitutes quality to your business.

• Search Engine strategy
  Write keyword-rich content for your website that is optimized for search engines. However, remember to always make the content valuable to your visitors, like I mentioned above. Make the website easy for search engine spiders to crawl and index, even if your website is a Web2.0 site. Content that is only available in graphical format or can only be loaded through scripts should always be available in simple html/text format as well. Create your content for real users, but make it easy for search engines to read.
• Linking strategy
  A lot of times, a linking strategy is seen as part of an SEO strategy. However, by effectively building links to your website you will ensure traffic from multiple other sources than search engines. The Linking Matters website is a good place for starting out with your linking strategy. Other resources are The Link Spiel and the LinkJuicy blog.
• Social media strategy
  There are too many social media/applications/utilities/activities on the web to mention here. However, it’s time for companies to get in the game - it’s not going away. Personally, I use multiple social media, and you can subscribe to my lifestream feed as well, if you like. I have written previously about how to get started in social media, and how to use social media marketing. Other resources on social media are DoshDosh, Jennifer Slegg, and Problogger (on blogging).
• Permission marketing strategy
  Permission marketing is where you acquire permission to communicate to each person before you market to them. Permission may not have been given explicitly, but by subscribing to your feed (or mine), your readers allow you to communicate to them. Give your audience the opportunity to read your content where and when they like, by subscribing to your regular newsletter or to your RSS feed. Use a tool like FeedBurner to keep track of how many subscribers you have. And always give your readers permission to submit their feedback to you!

4. End user communication

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. - Ernest Hemingway

Communication is not meant to be just one way. If you are trying to communicate to your target audience, make it easy for them to communicate with you as well. Listen to what people have to say, and respond to their feedback.

• Contact forms
  Anyone who visits your website has to be able to contact you. That includes publishing your e-mail address, using web forms for users to fill out, shoutboxes, web support chat, and other forms of interaction. Act on the feedback - any opportunity you get. For every person that writes in, there are at least 100 others that don’t, who have the same issue, thoughts or problem.
• Blog comments
  Be accessible by letting people comment on your articles, both positive and negative. Remember to always reply to any comments that are posted to your blog. Unless your blog is as popular as Seth Godin’s, you will (and should make) time for interacting with the people that take the time to give you feedback.
• External communities
  You know that all your customers do not spend much time on your website (unless you’re Google). Go to where your customers are, identify the social media in your niche or industry and get engaged by posting comments, replying to feedback, giving (objective) advice and contributing to the community. Above all, stay committed. If you are monitoring social media (see step 1), you well notice the results from engaging in online communities.
• Ratings
  Ratings are quick and easy functions you can add to your website. It allows you to list popular content or products, which is good for capturing the interest of new visitors to your site. Lists are also good for publishing in social media like StumbleUpon or Digg (depending on your niche) and for search engine optimization. Ratings also let you identify which content and products are popular and which ones you may want to take action on.

5. Online marketing channels

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert Humphrey

Regardless of which online marketing channel you use, it’s about connecting with the consumer of your message or advertisement.

• Affiliate marketing
  If you sell products online, or can relate revenue directly to actions on your website (see 1. Monitor and measure), affiliate marketing is one of the best online marketing channels, with a great ROI. Affiliate marketing lets you set your commission levels based on the order value of a sale, your defined value of a lead, or any combination of commissions for clicks, leads and sales. Incentivize your affiliates through the right commission, communication and creatives, and avoid these mistakes in affiliate marketing.
• Search engine marketing
  Most search engine marketing (SEM) is based on paying per click (PPC). This may effect your budget negatively if you don’t monitor and measure your results to identify your revenue generated through this channel. Use metrics like CPA (Cost-Per-Action) to evaluate the ROI on each keyword. Drop keywords with negative ROI and invest in the positive ones - it’s very much common sense.
• Ad banner campaigns
  Ad campaigns are best used for branding purposes. They place your brand on (hopefully) prominent websites, but often have a high cost - you normally pay per thousand impressions (CPM) or per click (CPC). The best performing ads are the ones that engage the viewer. Games, quizzes or other activities are beneficial for the click-through-rate (CTR). However, keep in mind that you set the right expectations for when the user clicks on the banner. Many times, the landing page is the website’s front page or another page, not related to the content in the ad. Make a microsite or a page on your website that lets your visitor continue the experience from the banner. Deliver on your promises.
• ‘Free’ traffic sources
  Of course, ‘free’ traffic is not always free, since they require some work, resources and (in some cases) licenses, but in this case free means traffic to your website that you don’t pay for directly. The best resource of traffic generation is your own mailing list or newsletter. It lets you build a subscriber list of people that are interested in your brand or products. They are the closest to buying from you, so treat that channel with high priority. Search engines, particularly Google, are driving the most new traffic to most websites today. Search engine optimization is a must for any company - I have collected a number of resources on SEO here and here. Directories like DMOZ and the Yahoo! directory have less and less impact on most websites’ traffic directly, but getting listed in directories helps your SEO efforts in most search engines. The increasingly important social media makes a big impact on traffic to a number of websites. I’ve written previously how to get started in social media. Start your blog, do your research, and get your audience engaged.

6. Customer retention strategy

Retaining customers is incredibly important, and should be part of any (e-commerce) Internet marketing strategy focus. Always include retention in your Internet marketing strategy, in what you monitor and measure and what you reward you team on. Acquiring new customers is 10 times more expensive than retaining existing ones.

• Newsletter offers
  When you get a new customer, offer to let them accept your newsletters with upcoming offers, product news and upgrades, and company news - in three (or more) different newsletters. As I’ve mentioned above, newsletters are a good way to communicate through a ‘free’ channel. However, make sure you communicate to the subscriber as an existing customer, not as a potential one. Your retention rate (remember to measure that) will be much higher if you customize your newsletter messages to existing customers.
• Blog engagement and readership
  Dedicate a blog (or a special section of your blog) to existing clients. Inform them of upgrades, get feedback on the use of your products and notify them of problems and solutions. Not only will this work towards retention, but it will build your image as a company that listens to its customers and acts thereafter.
• Website section for returning clients
  Provide a special section of your website to returning customers. Provide manuals and information, and give your customers special offers on related products, bundles or other offers.
• Special login zone in the website for registered clients
  When people buy from you, let them receive a login to your website’s client zone. This is similar to the above bullet point, but more specific, since it lets you keep track of which products the customer owns and target your offers to those products. Provide incentives (competitions, prizes et. al.) for your customers to actively log in and use the client zone, and list offers on related products to what the customer owns.

Resources and further reading

Creating an Internet Marketing Strategy is an extensive project, but the above should give you a good idea on which channels to use.

Here is a list of a few resources you may find useful, to continue reading.

Web Analytics

• Avinash Kaushik’s Occam’s Razor blog on web analytics. Avinash is one of the best known evangelists for web analytics.
• Eric T Petersen’s Web Analytics Demystified blog covers web analytics, usually from a different (competing?) perspective than Avinash.
• Web Analytics Association - become a member if you are a web analytics professional. The WAA has a number of resources on Web Analytics.

Web Design

• WebAIM Web Accessibility In Mind
• Blog Design blog about web design for blogs
• For functionality, look at the free tools provided by SEOChat for example. Very useful for visitors and it provides plenty of traffic for the website.

Search Engine Optimization

• Search Engine Guide - small business search marketing
• SEOBook has a great many resources on SEO
• SEO Theory takes a theoretical approach
• Jennifer Slegg blog on search engine marketing

Social media

• Problogger on blogging
• DoshDosh on social media
• Copyblogger on copywriting for online marketing
• Skelliewag tips for bloggers and web professionals

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Filed under: Internet Marketing