Internet marketing strategy tutorial: Building an effective
Internet Marketing Strategy

For the sake of completeness, here are the components that a formal Internet marketing strategy usually consists of:
(The red ones are the ones that we'll discuss in a bit more detail below)

--- The business concept

Business concept statement
(A rough outline of your business plan)
Analyses of the industry
(Market research, customer profiling, competitors etc.)

--- The marketing strategy

Customer acquisition
Customer retention (more about customer retention)
Revenue model
Implementation specifics

The part about the "business concept" is included up there because you can only effectively market any product or service when you know who you're trying to sell to and how your competitors are doing it.

So let's begin there.

INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY: RESEARCH

Too many webmasters allow themselves to go haywire with fancy site design. Sure it looks great. Sure it enhances the credibility of the company, but if you're selling to a web-savvy type who wants-it-the-day-before-yesterday, she'll not hang around for all your beautifull graphics to load.

Here's a quick look at how small businesses can effortlessly improve through basic research.

The key to an effective Internet marketing strategy is to

k n o w - y o u r - c u s t o m e r !

The first thing you should do is customer profiling. It's not very complicated.

Picture your typical customer.

Male or female?
Poor, middle-class or filthy rich?
In a hurry or just surfing for bargains?
Web-savvy or over cautious?

You get the idea.

Click here for a more detailed look at effective customer profiling.

Before we go further, bookmark this page. I'll be sending you on a quick fact-finding mission around the web and I want you to find this page again when you're done!

All set?

Go to Yahoo! and do a search on the keywords you would enter if you were looking for your product. On the results list, click the top category - not the top site.

Now you should have a list of your main competitors. If the list is very long, drill down through the sub-categories untill you find a more focused list.

Visit those sites. Look at them from your customer's point of view. What are they doing wrong? How can you improve on that? Also learn from what they're doing right.

http://www.yahoo.com/

Go. I'll wait...

la-da-da... da-di-dadum...

____________
Welcome back.

We're almost done with our research section. Before we get to your Internet marketing strategy itself, we need to find out how people search and what they search for.

HOW PEOPLE SEARCH

We need to find out how people search because we need to optimize your site for certain keywords. That way it will rank high on the results list when someone does a search on the words you've targeted.

You might be surprised to know that most people don't type single words into search boxes - they type phrases.

Now you know something that many "Internet marketing pros" still don't.

Wouldn't it be great to see what people are typing into search boxes - in real time? You can!

I use a free program called GoodKeywords from Softnik Technologies. It really is a must have. Get yours here.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Keyword research is extremely important. A common mistake in search engine optimization is to optimize your site for keywords you THINK your customers will use.

That's just not good enough.

If you're serious about targeting the right keywords and boosting site traffic in the process, consider buying our Search Engine Yearbook. It will save you months of trial and error. Check out the table of contents on this page.

INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY: IMPLEMENTATION

Once you know which keywords you want to target, you have adjust your site so the search engine ranks your page well for those keywords.

Welcome to the wonderful world of search engine optimization.

We can't link to every search engine optimization resource here. We could fill a book with the links alone!

Wait - we did fill a book with the links alone...

The Search Engine Yearbook

It is filled to the brim with links to search engine goodies, tutorials, resources, charts, articles, publications, forums - everything about search engines. EVERYTHING.

ALTERNATIVE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

Many online businesses make the mistake of not extending their Internet marketing strategy beyond search engines. Once again, you have an advantage over them.

We have listed the ten most effective alternative marketing techniques for you. Here they are:

http://pandecta.com/sell.html

Internet marketing strategy tutorial: Building an effective Internet Marketing Strategy

INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY: IMPLEMENTATION

Internet marketing strategy tutorial: Building an effective
Internet Marketing Strategy