strategy guide to internet marketing

8/14/2019 Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/strategy-guide-to-internet-marketing 1/35

Strategy GuideTo Internet MarketingIntegrate strategy, optimization and communications to drive bottom linebusiness results more effectively with your internet marketing program

Copyright 2009 StrategyGuideToInternetMarketing.com



StrategyGuideToInternetMarketing.com

2

Table of ContentsThe Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing Overview ……………………………….……………………………3 About the Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing ……………………………………………………………………4

Strategy Overview …………………………………………………………………………………………………………5 Measuring KPIs……………………………………………………………………………………………………………6Strategic Scorecard………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………… 7Customer Buying Process……………………………………………………………………………………………………8Brand Alignment …………………………………………………………………………………………………………9Internet Ma rketing Trends…………………………………………………………………………….…….…………………10

Optimization Overview …………………………………………………………………………….…………………….……… 11 Content Strategy ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……… 12Search Engine Marketing………………………………………………………………………………………………….…… 13Search Engine Optimization…………………………………………………………………………………………….. …… 15

Integrated Search Marketing………………………………………………………………………………………….……… 17Banner Ad Testing…………………………………………………………………………………………………………18Banner Retargeting………………………………………………………………………………………….……………….…… 20Email Optimization………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………21Social Media Optimization…………………………………………………………………………………………………23Landing Page Optimization…………………………………………………………………………………………….……… 25Forms and Funnel Conver sion…………………….……………………………………………………………….………… 27Surveys and Heat Maps…………………………………………………….……………………………………….……………28Call Tracking…………………………………………………………………………….…………………………….………………29

Communication Overview ……………………………………………………………………………………….………………30 Campai gn Management……………………………………………………………………………………………………31Marketing Report……………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………32Marketing Dashboard…………………………….………………………………………………….. …………………………3330 Second Ele vator Speech……………………………………………………………………….……………………………34

Wrap Up…………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………35




3

The Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing OverviewThe Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing was written by me to be an actionable, 'how to'guide to help fellow marketers and business people. Whether you’re a client -side, agency-side, with a Fortune 500 Company or a startup I've tried to include ideas that you can apply toimprove your internet marketing program.

To a large extent internet marketing is a misnomer. Digital, electronic, 'e', web, etc. are allused relatively interchangeably to describe this field in marketing. I had to pick one so'internet marketing' it is.

The Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing is divided into the following interrelated 3 topics:

Strategy - The internet marketing landscape has a seemingly endless array of marketingtactics to choose from. Defining a strategy for your marketing program is not as much aboutsaying "what" but applying a rationale to determine "why" one tactic is chosen over another.

Optimization - Every internet marketing tactic can be tested or optimized relatively easily (atleast compared to our traditional media counterparts). We'll review a number of internetmarketing tactics in the context of what can be done to optimize their performance.

Communication - Marketers are engaged in a ongoing battle for resources which includesmedia dollars to adequate staff to execute. By better communicating the results of yourinternet marketing program you'll gain visibility throughout your organization which can helpyou get access to more resources.

You can read the Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing in its entirety online or click on one ofthe links to download a FREE PDF copy.

If you enjoy what you've read be sure to share it!




4

About The Strategy Guide to Internet MarketingI've been in the internet marketing field for nearly 15 years and have served in a variety ofcapacities. I've launched start ups and have worked at Fortune 500 Corporations. Throughoutmy career I've purposefully maintained a broad skill set and thought that breadth ofexperience could be helpful to others. I wrote the Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing to bean actionable, 'how to' guide and I hope you use some of the ideas that I present here.

If you'd like to get some more ideas, check out my blog,PerformanceMarketingTips.wordpress.com

You can also drop me a note via email at, [email protected].

Thanks,

Greg Marta




5

Strategy OverviewLearn how to decide what tactics to use in your internet marketing program so that they worktogether as an integrated plan. With more and more options on the digital landscape youneed to block out the noise and use prioritization methodologies that pair the right internetmarketing tactics with your business goals.

Measuring KPIs - Define KPIs (key performance indicators) that are the most relevant to yourbusiness results.

Strategic Scorecard - Measure a variety of visitor engagement on your website to capture amore holistic picture of the value your website creates.

Customer Buying Process - Customers progress through Awareness, Interest, Desire, Actionand Satisfaction when making buying decisions and need appropriate digital touch points ateach step.

Brand Alignment - Brands lend themselves differently to particular marketing tactics so useones that are appropriate for you.

Internet Marketing Trends - Proven tactics will drive more marketing results than continuallysearching for the next big thing.




6

Measuring KPIsMeasuring the performance of your internet marketing campaign is essential to executing aneffective strategy. Defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to be tracked is paramountalong with the rest of your campaign strategy. Identifying the right KPIs and analytic tools inthe strategy phase lays the foundation for the optimization phase of your internet marketingprogram. Once you successfully capture the 'what', you'll have the necessary metrics to builda scorecard which will help provide sufficient data to analyze for reporting in yourcommunications plan.

Start by identifying and prioritizing you business goals – sales, brand perception, satisfaction,etc. Then define which metrics can contribute to the measurement of each:

o Sales - Total orders, net sales, gross profit, repeat purchases, promotion/couponredemption and purchase frequency are all metrics that can be used to develop KPIs totrack the sales results for your marketing campaigns. Sales metrics can be captured inyour analytics package but may also need to come from call center data or a backenddata warehouse if this isn't already integrated into your analytics tool.

o Brand Perception - Can be measured through engagement scores such as page views pervisit, online reviews and time on site which can be reported out of the box from mostanalytics tools. Interactive tools or interaction with Flash elements may be tricky butinvariably contribute to branding your site and worth the extra setup time. Surveys canbe deployed to measure attitudes and preferences of site visitors resulting from yourmarketing campaigns. This can be a useful tool to find out how your brand perceptioncompares to various segments of your website visitors.

o Satisfaction - Surveys can be deployed to site visitors to capture quantifiableinformation about their qualitative experience with your website or campaign. Email isa great tool for measuring satisfaction by being targeted at customers or other opt-insite visitors. These are valuable segments to analyze since they already have an affinityfor your brand.

Defining your true conversion rate for the sample KPIs defined above is key to benchmarking.Your true conversion rate is the rate at which your target prospects convert, not totalvisitors. This is more of a site wide marketing strategy but it will impact how you measureand report KPIs on your campaigns. In order to determine true conversion rate, first identifyall of the 'noise', and then subtract those visits from your total visitor pool before dividing byconversions. Visitor noise may include customer service requests or search engine spidersthat were never really prospects. Most analytics tools have segmentation capabilities whichyou can define based on actions taken on your website such as visiting a customer servicepage or logging in.

A gap analysis may be necessary to determine where your site needs improvement, as noanalytics platform can track all performance variables. Many supplemental tools such as heatmaps and surveys are relatively inexpensive and can usually be setup by adding a piece ofJavaScript to your website's footer. Tying together various databases can tell a more holisticstory and will involve help from IT. Involve any technical resources in the strategy discussionsof your marketing planning early so that they have the resources available to help with theintegration before you're in market. Use these resources to supplement your KPI reporting byadding greater depth to your analysis.




7

Strategic ScorecardIn websites that have multiple engagement opportunities, a scorecard can be essential tomeasuring the outcomes of your internet marketing strategy. Most sites are more complexthat a straight forward single product or single order scenario. Even direct response programslike SEM driven to landing pages will often have quantity, total dollar amount, and type ofproduct dimensions that can be measured by your web analytics tool. As a result, themeasurement of your marketing campaigns could be difficult making your bottom line resultsvariable. A scorecard is different than a dashboard in that a scorecard feeds into a dashboardas one or several data points, and a dashboard communicates many dimensions of yourcampaign reports.

An internet marketing scorecard is a holistic measure of engagement on your website. A leadmay be worth $100, interaction with a tool $20, sign up for your newsletter $5, a page view$1 and so on. When you add up the value of all of these interaction points across yourwebsite you will get a much more accurate read on the value of a site visitor coming from aspecific marketing campaign. Web Analytics tools, like Google analytics, let you trackmultiple goals across your site and assign a dollar value to each of them. The result is areport that shows the dollar value per visitor or segment for your entire site broken down percampaign with the ability to drill down even further.

The biggest challenge in defining your scorecard strategy is determining the dollar value forwebsite interactions that occur before ultimate conversion events. What is the return onyour investment? For example, how much is an email newsletter sign up worth to yourbusiness? In some cases it's possible to dig deeper into existing data, in others it comes downto an educated guess. Guesswork in analytics can be uncomfortable, but at some leveleverything that your business measures is backed by a host of assumptions. Consistency inassumptions and transparency about what they are when reporting your marketing campaignresults will go a long way. For example, if a lead is worth $100, an assumption may be that1% of people that enroll for your e-letter become leads.

Once these secondary conversion events start to get captured in your analytics tool andreported through an internet marketing scorecard, you can adjust the dollar values asfeedback and additional data become available. The goal is to identify all of the events onyour website that have a strategic benefit to your business and make sure that your internetmarketing program is positioned to receive the appropriate amount of credit.




9

Brand AlignmentBrand alignment can easily be misguided when developing internet marketing strategies. Inmany businesses the traditional advertising and marketing teams own the corporate brand.Despite the proliferation of internet marketing, it's still a relatively small amount of mediaspend compared to traditional channels. As such, there tends to be less than optimal brandfocus for the internet marketing efforts.

When evaluating different internet marketing strategies the first question to ask is, 'Does mybrand fit this channel? If you're a direct marketer, SEM (search engine marketing or paidsearch) programs would probably be a good fit for your brand because of the immediate,controllable and measurable results. If your business has a long complex sales cycle it maymake more sense to invest your marketing funds in developing rich organically optimizedsearch content. Banner ads have similar opportunities. Try retargeting banner ads for directresponse businesses and site sponsorship for branding purposes.

Social media is an entire channel in itself that may only have specific tactics that align wellwith your brand. Destination such as Facebook and Twitter are great for consumer facingbrands with frequent purchases. For highly regulated industries like pharmaceutical orfinance, it may be difficult to effectively maintain a social media marketing campaign.Mobile marketing can be most effective for businesses with widely distributed localrepresentatives, like franchises or field sales offices.

Various internet marketing channels may pose risk to your brand:SEO (organic search) – Limited control over what the search engines will display or howvarious keywords will rank. If content requires continuous editing, your risk accelerates.

SEM (paid search) - Broad match settings can help your SEM program to show up for a widevariety of keyword phrases, however, you'll need to monitor the referring traffic andmanage your broad match settings with negative keywords, to eliminate the risk of negativemessaging, such as "xyz brand stinks".

Display Advertising - Ad networks are great internet marketing tools because they have drivendown advertising costs and can provide wide distribution instantly. Depending on your chosenad network, your visibility to ad placement may be limited.

Social Media - Social media mandates transparency and with that necessitates fast reactions.If you place your brand on the internet, be prepared for feedback, positive and negative. Ifyou engage in a platform that gives customers a voice, be prepared to manage the feedback.




12

Content StrategyGiven the proliferation of content across the internet, including social media sites, contentstrategies span beyond single-point business domains. . While you can directly control all“official site” content about your business, it can still be externally influenced. A

comprehensive content strategy achieves 2 things on the internet. First, it's an opportunity topresent a compelling value proposition to your prospective customers which will impact sales.Second, it's ambrosia, or food for the search engine spiders. The internet is expansive andgrowing, so it's necessary to develop a content strategy that is focused and maximizes youroptimization.

A sample of the major content opportunities for your internet marketing program and theirstrengths and weakness:

o Corporate websites - can be a challenge to optimize for maximum internet marketingresults. This is because corporate sites serve many masters which can dilute the corebusiness driving content and messaging.

o Microsites are small, content focused websites which can compensate for some of thebrand and SEO limitations of broad reaching corporate websites.

o Blogs provide an opportunity for fresh, frequently updated website content. Theyencourage more of a dialogue than standard website pages which can be fairly static anda more personal voice that is generally not achieve through formal businesscommunications like press releases.

o Social Media properties such as Facebook and Twitter are brand building opportunitiesto create web presences with search optimized content and links back to your primaryconverting sites.

o Discussion Groups are participation opportunities. If your brand has a leadershipposition, share your point of view. If your other sites have valuable, relevant content tothe discussion add links where appropriate.

o Industry Publications or Industry Focused Blogs are always looking for content andwriters. If your business is well know or you've got some quality thought leaders. Whitepapers, articles, interviews and guest writing are all valid ways to general relevantcontent on the internet for your business.

Content efforts must roll up to a larger content strategy that accomplishes the following:o Appropriateness for brand positioningo Optimization for search engineso Relevance for the audience

Review all of these content opportunities to build a comprehensive content strategy for yourbusiness. Not every opportunity will be appropriate tactic for your business, so be diligentwhen evaluating them. Once you've identified the best content opportunities, brainstormyour business' value add and resource allocation required for each effort. This will help toprioritize and build a timeline for the implementation of your content strategy.




13

Search Engine MarketingSEM (search engine marketing) or PPC (pay per click) has been a juggernaut on the internetmarketing landscape for nearly a decade. First popularized by GoTo, paid search gainedsignificantly popularity on Yahoo! in the early 2000s and exploded with the growth of Google'sPPC platform. Search engine marketing's popularity hails from the fact that with easy to useinterface campaigns were simple to setup, provided substantial reach, attracted 'handraisers', had built-in ad text testing tools, and with a little bit of code implementation couldtrack conversions highly accurately. These factors have made SEM the backbone of internetmarketing.

In order to effectively optimize an SEM program it's important to be extremely well organizedand this starts with setting up ad groups. Ad groups are sub-campaigns for your SEM programand are clusters of similar keywords. The benefit to clustering keywords is that it's a lotfaster to gain statistical significance if you're optimizing toward 20 similar keywords ratherthan at an individual keyword level. Ad groups can be anywhere from a couple of keywords togreater than one hundred. Each campaign can have many ad groups and it would make senseto have a separate campaign for each product or service. For a single product SEM campaignyou could have anywhere from a few to more than a dozen ad groups.

Once you've identified a rough outline of what ad groups you want to test in your SEMcampaign you'll need to start your keyword research. Google AdWords has a free keywordtool that will show different combinations of search phrases, make additional suggestions andshow relative search volume & competitiveness for the keywords. Based on these findingsyou’ll invariably go back and fine tune your ad groups.

Keywords will generally fall into three categories which will also help you to create your adgroup structure:

o Broad - Broad keywords are general industry terms that likely will attract potentialcustomer early in the buying process. As such you'll need to test broad terms carefullyas they may not have a positive ROI right away based on your marketing allowable.

o Long-tail – Long-tailed search phrases are generally 2-3+ word length combinations.They tend to occur at later stages in the buying process as potential customers alreadyhave product preferences. The deeper your keyword research the longer the phrases.It's not unusual for ad groups to have over a hundred long tail keywords. Although theymay not receive many searches the aggregated volume can lead to a successfulcampaign.

o Branded - Branded keyword search phrases contain your business or product brandname. Be sure to bid on these phrases to block out the competition but monitor theirperformance - you may already be getting enough branded traffic from the organicsearch listings.

Once your search engine marketing campaign has some results a best practice is to take thetop handful of keywords and manage them in their own separate campaign at an individualkeyword level. In SEM campaigns, the 80/20 rule doesn’t apply, it's closer to 99/1. Evenlarge campaigns can have 5-10 keywords that drive the majority of the results and needvirtually constant campaign management.




14

Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and bing have built in tools for testing ad text. It's easy tocreate several ads and test your creative based on clicks. While this helps to drive volume itmay not be best for ROI. If you have enough volume in your search campaign be sure to trackwhich specific set of ad text is converting once people reach your site. Remember, you onlypay when people click on your ad -you don't want a lot of clicks, you want a lot ofconversions. The most clicked ad doesn’t always yield the best ROI for your marketingcampaign.

There are several different campaign settings to test and optimize your SEM program. It'simportant to test many different combinations and even create mirror campaigns to test thesame ad groups or keywords simultaneously.

o Keyword Settings - These can normally be set for your SEM program at a campaign, adgroup, or keyword level.

Exact Match - will only show your ad for the verbatim phrase that you enter. Phrase Match - will show your ad to any search query that contains your keyword

phrase in the same order Broad Match - will show your ad to any search query that contains your keywords in

any combination Negative Match - will block your ad from showing up for specific search queries

o Day Parting - Allows you to determine which hours of the day or days of the week youwant your ads to show. Some products convert better at night, others may convert wellon weekends. If your budget is limited, it may be beneficial to start your campaign inthe mid afternoon so that you can extend the campaign through the evening hours.

o Geo Targeting - Shows your search ads only in the countries, state or regions that arerelevant to your business. Most search engines default to include Canada, which may ormay not be relevant, so check your geo targeting settings before launching your SEMcampaigns.




15

Search Engine OptimizationWhile there are a number of SEO (search engine optimization) best practices, the focus hereis primarily on the content optimization of your website. Content optimization is the mostsignificant factor in receiving high rankings in the search engines for your targeted keywords.Not only do the spiders like optimized content, but quality content will also encourageexternal linking which is the second most important factor in achieving high rankings in theSERPs (search engine results pages).

Here are the major factors for optimizing your website's content for the search engine spiderso URL - URLs can contain keyword phrases in several different areas. If there are clear

content breaks on your site, such as specific lines of business, a sub-domain containingyour search phrases would be appropriate. For different products or services, usekeyword rich sub-directories. Individual pages should have optimized URLs that aresimilar to the page titles.

o Page Titles - It is generally recommended that page titles be approximately 7-9 words inmaximum length with the primary keyword phrase occurring early in the title.

o Keyword Distribution and Frequency - Keyword distribution throughout your copy is canbe fairly simple. Your primary keyword phrase should appear in the first and lastsentences of the first and last paragraphs on the page. There is much debate abouttotal page length, but 200-600 words is an appropriate range. Keyword frequencyshould be between 3% - 6% with shorter pages (200 words) closer to 6% of keyworddensity.

o Anchor Text - Anchor text for keywords are helpful for the search engine spiders indetermining site content, which can have an impactful result on your website's searchranking. It's important to identify the most focused pages on your site for a specifictopic and then comb your site for opportunities to link to it.

o Meta Keywords - Meta content has less and less impact on SERPs and most experts wouldagree that meta keywords have little to no impact at this point. That said, metakeywords are still a best practice in order to cover all of your SEO bases. Anywherefrom 6 to 12 keyword phrases can be used that are derived from no more than 2basekeywords. In other words, pick 2 keyword phrases and write 2 to 5 additional variationsof each.

o Meta Description - The meta description may not help achieve high search rankings inand of itself. It is used often times by the search engines to display on the SERPs. Agood description can encourage click throughs and higher click through rates are oftenrewarded with higher ranking in the SERPs.

Although most sites are written and structured with organic search engine optimization inmind, it's still important to perform periodic site audits for 2 crucial reasons. First, searchengines thrive on page updates, placing higher values on your page. Secondly, mostcompanies add new content over time such as news, press releases, and updated productinformation. These items are generally churned out based on business needs. MaintainingSEO best practices may be difficult to meet the needs of the business. As a result, somecontent may not be optimized properly.

A number of changes by Google have started to impact search results beyond standard pagecontent. Universal search was released by Google, and now SERPs will contain local listings,news results, videos and images. Google has plans to include product listings complete with




17

Integrated Search MarketingThe integration of SEO (organic search engine optimization) and SEM (paid search or searchengine marketing) is important to maximize the impact of each and the overall performanceof your internet marketing program. In many businesses and interactive agencies there canbe little coordination between these two disciplines. This results in a lost opportunity sincetheoretically they both have the same keyword goals. The primary reason for this is that SEOcan be more art than science, since it's heavily content based and results can take may notshow up for weeks or months. SEM on the other hand is more of a direct response marketingtactic because campaigns can be launched quickly and results are measured accurately andimmediately.

SEM or pay per click search programs can provide 2 major values to your internet marketingprogram when well coordinated:

o SEM results can inform which keywords to focus your organic search optimization effortson. Once you do your keyword research you'll know what keywords people are using tofind your business's products and services. However, it won't tell you which keywordsare most effective at driving conversions for your business. Search engine marketingcan be used to validate your keyword focus and lay the ground work for your organicsearch engine optimization campaign.

o SEO efforts have several challenges. SEO results can take weeks or month to take hold,the final impact of results will vary and be difficult to estimate, and it's often difficultto determine precisely which activities led to you website's improved search results.Your SEM program can provide coverage for your target search keywords by filling inunmet gaps in your SEO program.

When looking at the total ROI of your internet marketing search efforts SEO can help togreatly boost ROI. When well executed, your website will rank well for many long tail phrasesthat can be overlooked by SEM. The results for SEO can be volatile, but are generally lasting.In SEM, your ranking lasts as long as your budget. With SEO your listings may rank well foryears, especially if you keep up with your organic search optimization efforts. Although thereare real costs in SEO, content optimization whether done internally or with an external searchoptimization agency, is generally less expensive on a per click basis which optimizes theoverall ROI of your search engine results of your internet marketing program.




18

Banner Ad TestingThe most important factor in the optimization of a banner ad or display campaign, as part ofyour internet marketing mix, is to test and optimize across several fronts. The performanceof banner ads will vary greatly from one design to the next, both in terms of the graphicaltreatment of the banner but also the size and placement within the publisher website. Thead network, ad exchange or direct banner placement will need constant monitoring. Finally,brand value must also be measured but can be difficult to attribute.

When creating banner ads as part of you r internet marketing campaign, don’t be too criticalof the storyboard development phase. Any good design concept should still be a solid testcandidate. Debating which design is going to be most effective is basically moot - yourcampaign response will be the arbiter of your banner creative. The key is to design ahypothesis that can create a learning from the test. Does a red background work better thanblue? Does the banner with a photo have better campaign results than the illustrated bannerad? Subtle differences such as the image of a woman with straight hair versus curly hairprobably won't produce significant test results unless you have a very mature marketingcampaign.

The placement of banner ad campaigns is also critical in your campaign performance. Theoptions for media buys have greatly proliferated for the last decade. As a result, prices havegone down and targeting has become more precise. Depending on the size of your targetaudience banners can be targeting on a category/vertical niche level and in many cases downto the site level. It can also be helpful to try a run of network banner ad campaign withseparate tracking. Often times the costs will be lower but more importantly the performancecan be higher. Studies have demonstrated that showing your target audience banners out ofcontext can be more effective than in context where there is more related clutter. Forexample, if you sell business services you may want to try the sports vertical market. Youmay be targeting a similar audience and have a banner ad that visually pops against the othersports ads.

Aside from the standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you may be tracking in youranalytics package, I suggest running on/off tests with your banner campaigns to help measurethe impact of brand value. Most analytic tools credit the most recent click with the sale, butmany times the banner ad can be the first click that one of your prospects takes in the buyingprocess. A possible solution is to test by running your banner campaigns in bursts for, –2weeks on, 2 weeks off. Measure the difference in performance between your search anddirect traffic performance. Some banner campaigns may contribute a 50% lift in performanceof the search campaigns, which would be completely missed if you're only analyzing yourbanner ad campaigns in the context of your primary KPIs. More importantly, withoutunderstanding the true ROI of your banner ads, it will be difficult to fully optimize yourmarketing campaign - some key banner ad channels may get turned off due to lack ofperformance by itself, versus assessing the integrated campaign.

Deciding the sequence and combination of items to test with your banner ad campaign ishighly dependent on your business model and performance goals. Optimization requires asequential plan with appropriate hypotheses. Communicate the test and key learnings tomanage business expectations. Remember that banner ads and placements are not createdequal, just because one banner ad underperforms on one ad network or channel doesn't mean




19

it won't be effective in another. Don't be afraid to dust off old ideas when you need todevelop new testing and optimization strategies for your banner ad campaigns.




20

Banner RetargetingBanner ad retargeting is a highly effective and complimentary internet marketing tactic tothe overall marketing strategy. The concept of retargeting is fairly simple. When yourwebsite receives a visitor an ad network cookie is setup on their browser. While they arevisiting other websites in the ad network, banner ads relating to your site are served to them.The ad network will recognize them based on the cookie that was set and will automaticallyserve them the banner ad of your choice.Banner ad retargeting is a complimentary optimization program, and not a primary internetmarketing tool, because brand awareness must pre-exist. Banner ad retargeting can be usedwith organic SEO driven traffic but is highly effective when paired with a paid search (SEM)program. In this case you have a pool of hand raisers that probably have already indicated aspecific product interest based on the pages they visited and are in between the Desire andAction phases of the Customer Buying Process. Banner ad retargeting gives you anothermarketing opportunity to reach someone in-market that hasn't purchased from you (yet) forwhatever reason.

Another reason why banner ad retargeting is highly effective is to re-engage visitors on non-product related sites and reinforce your brand, which makes your ad stand out. If you sellfinancial service products, you may do well on financial sites, but your banner ads may getlost in the noise. What if you could place your financial services banner ad on a sportswebsite? There's a good chance that your banner ad would standout against the sportsbackdrop and sports-related ads. Furthermore, you know you're marketing to someone who'salready exhibited initial interest.

A variety of banner ads become more effective with retargeting as well. Sequential bannerads tell a little bit of a story, where each banner builds on the theme from the previouslyshown banner. To tell your brand or product's full story may require more ads than usual.The other creative advantage is that you can test or promote different offers on the fly. Ifyou have a weekday promotion or an inventory overage, you can direct the message quickly,to a qualified audience with banner ad retargeting. This quick cycle time will allow you tooptimize your banner ad creative.

Retargeting does have a few limitations to consider. The first is audience size. In order forretargeting to be successful, it has to be scalable. Since you can only retarget to people thathave visited your website or landing pages, you'll need a relatively high volume of traffic tocreate a large enough pool of prospects to market to. Ad network reach also impacts theeffectiveness of your retargeting efforts because less reach keeps the retargeting poolsmaller. When planning your banner ad retargeting program it's also important to find outhow long the ad network will keep your cookie active for. Many ad networks cater to directresponse marketers and only have cookies with a short-term life, typically a 30-dayexpiration. In most cases, this is sufficient. However, I've worked with many B2B clients whohave long sales cycles and would be willing to retarget their banner ads for months on endwith persistent cookies to build up greater brand awareness.




21

Email OptimizationEmail marketing is perhaps the oldest tool in the internet marketing mix. Despite this, emailmarketing can be forgotten and often misunderstood. The evolution of email marketing hasled to 2 primary marketing applications; house email marketing programs primarily used forretention, and third-party email blasts for new acquisition.

House email marketing programs entail sending emails to your existing database. Ideasinclude opt-in thought leadership content like e-newsletters, e-promotions and follow upoffers or e-announcements to a customer database. In order to optimize email marketingprograms, a relevant house list is essential. Numerous studies have proven that consistency isessential to making it to the target’s in -box and getting read. Details in the subject line andwho the email is from should be as consistent as possible.

Third party email blasts can be sent as an exclusive offer, or as a sponsorship of someoneelse's e-newsletter. In most cases, there is a per address charge or CPM. Some emaildatabase vendors will work with you on a CPA (cost per acquisition) basis. It's important tounderstand the credibility of any third party email list and verify that they are CAN SPAMcompliant. An email sent to the wrong database could cause many problems for your brand.

Whether you're sending to your house list database or a third-party email database, be sure tocustomize your email send according the appropriate segments that are available in thedatabase. Over time your house list should contain a relatively rich data set and allow you tooptimize everything from frequency to offer on a segmented user, if not individual user basis.

General email campaign best practices include:o Keep the same From email address, alwayso Limit your creativity with subject lines, they need to be straightforward and consistent

from email to email limit to 50 characters do not include the word "free", or other overly promissory words limit punctuation including exclamation points

o All content in the email should be above the fold for offers, scrolling is permissible inemail newsletter and other content rich emails

o Always have a text back up emailo Include a link to allow recipients to opt-out of future emailso The best days to send are on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Email testing and optimization ideas include:o Subject Lines - Once and effective subject is determined it's a good idea to stick with it

for the long haul.o Content - HTML emails can be either A/B or multivariate tested similar to landing pages.

Test candidates include images, headlines, offers, copy, calls to action, etc.o Send Times - Try sending your emails at different times between Tuesday and Thursday.

Depending on your product and audience first thing in the morning, lunch time, orevening may be most effect for your email marketing campaigns.




22

Although email was prevalent prior to the world wide web, don't take it for granted as aneffective internet marketing tool. Be sure to include a progressive testing and optimizationprogram as part of your sustained email marketing program.




23

Social Media OptimizationSocial media marketing programs can be amongst the most complex of all internet marketingchannels. The landscape of social media is highly dynamic; an effective strategy is often aunique strategy. Due to the fact that social media is user- and community- based, its’ growth

is organic. It will always be a challenge to determine when to deliberately insert a corporatebrand into the conversation.

Prior to engaging social communities, it's important to understand who can best representyour brand in the social media communities. If your brand has a mascot that is recognizableand closely tied to your brand identity, then a social media campaign based on your mascotcan be an effective way to personify your brand. If you don't have a highly recognizablemascot, it may be more appropriate to leverage social media to personify your brand orproducts. Some businesses have a highly visible CEO, thought leader, or endorsement figure.Their point of view can be brought to light more readily with social media. In other cases,grass roots efforts and employee-based campaigns could be most effective. Ultimately, acombination of all of these strategies could be very effective at promoting your brand, but itwould make the most sense to pick one, rally your business behind it and see it through.

Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are all effective social marketing platforms. For your initialreach into social media, depending on your goals, it may be beneficial to start small, trackthe results and feedback before committing to larger platforms on multiple sites. Unlikemore traditional internet marketing strategies, social media campaigns pose greater riskbecause they have more delicate exit strategies. Like any business venture, success withthese tools is not guaranteed.

A corporate blog is normally the first social marketing tactic that internet marketers consider.A corporate blog requires resources and should be a longer-term initiative. A corporate blogcan be a great way to create a dialogue and more personal voice for your brand than moreformal channels like press releases. Having a blog on your website that hasn't been updatedin several months can be a brand killer. Bloggers will interpret the lack of updates as "thiscompany doesn't care" or "my opinion doesn’t matter”, “they are not responsive”, etc…

Rather than using corporate blogging as strategy for your social marketing campaign, try otherblogs or publisher websites. If you have a point of view and industry insights, you may beable to write a post or series. Most blogs and publisher sites are hungry for content, so theright one should be receptive. Plus, the external links from these established websites will bemuch more effective at driving visitors to your website and provide more SEO value.

Discussion groups and forums are effective means of reaching your audience in a socialcontext on the internet. Although these marketing opportunities have existed since thecommencement of the internet, don't under estimate their ability to finely target meaningfulinfluencers in your brand or products’ space. It's important to commit your participationlonger-term. An effective strategy to leverage forums and discussion groups would includeresearch on several, followed by participation in two to three. Rather than being activedaily, try setting aside 30 minutes at various times each week when you can participateactively.

In order to have an effective social media optimization program, rigor on the analysis is key.




24

o Check referring website data in your analytics package to determine which social mediawebsites are creating the most value. The number of referrals is important but alsoevaluate based on engagement metrics like page views, time on site and your website'sconversion events.

o Google has several tools. Link: is a way to check for backlinks to your website. Alertsare easy to setup and will let you know when your get a mention in news, blogs oranywhere on the web.

o Yahoo! Site Explorer has some tools that can also track backlinks and provide insightsinto who's linking to your site.




25

Landing Page OptimizationThe goal of landing page optimization programs is to create a consolidated and focusedexperience for your website visitors from your internet marketing campaigns. Fundamentally,websites are too broadly focused in an effort to server a variety of visitor types. By focusing

the content and limiting navigation options, landing pages tend to produce much greaterresults for internet marketing campaigns, especially for direct response campaigns.

A more straight forward user experience also makes testing a little easier on landing pagesthan on websites. Key performance indicators are usually limited to 1 compared to multiplesuccess events that may need to be tracked through an analytics tool on your primarywebsite. In order to optimize the conversion rate on the landing page marketers have 2fundamental testing options; 1) A/B testing and 2) multivariate tests.

A/B testing (also known as cell testing) is the oldest form of testing known to marketers. It’snot as innovative as some new techniques, but it can still be the most effective tool foroptimizing landing page performance. A/B tests can contain more than 2 landing pagevariations or recipes, but the more recipes you test, the larger the sample size. It's importantto start with a hypothesis and develop 2 (or more) significantly different experiences. Thiswill help to create a greater variance in your testing results which will gain statisticalsignificance sooner and create key learnings. For example, rather than testing an image of aperson with brown hair versus a person with light-brown hair, try testing a woman versus achild. Once you learn which type of image works most effectively it's easier to test additionalpermutations of your landing page.

Multivariate testing is a newer testing technique landing page optimization. Multivariatetesting monitors multiple elements on a landing page simultaneously. Most multivariatetesting platforms will dynamically create your landing pages once the required assets areuploaded. Multivariate testing platforms are based on one of two distinct testing methods -full factorial or partial factorial.

Full factorial multivariate testing is similar to creating a large A/B/X test; it's essentially lotsof variations. Many systems will use an algorithm to help determine the best combination andthe interaction of different page elements. The primary advantages of full factorialmultivariate landing page testing are greater accuracy in reporting results and understandinghow landing page elements interact. For example, an image with a blue sky in thebackground may hurt the performance of a blue submit button because there isn't significantcontrast between them. Tested independently both elements may be superior, but incombination, they hamper your landing page's conversion rate.

Partial factorial multivariate testing has many different algorithms, the most famous beingthe Taguchi method. Partial factorial multivariate tests only show a limited number ofrecipes or page combinations. It uses an algorithm to estimate the optimal winningcombination for your landing page. The advantage of partial factorial tests is that statisticalsignificance can be reached more quickly than full factorial multivariate testing platforms.The primary disadvantage is lack of accuracy. Since the winning recipe may never have beenshown, it’s impossible to know for sure if it's really the winner. There is also no way toaccurately measure the interaction of page elements with partial factorial testing.




27

Forms and Funnel ConversionThe optimization of forms and funnels on your website is the next step in the testing andoptimization process, after the landing pages have been optimized. Landing pages initiallyhave the greatest impact on your internet marketing campaign's performance because theyreduce bounce rate, among other things. In other words, your website could have the best ofthe best (forms, funnels, product shots, special offers, etc.), but if visitors exit quickly, yourinternet marketing budget is lost.

Forms are typically the final conversion event - at least of this session. Your website's visitorsmay abandon or convert based on the slightest factors. Here are some A/B and multivariatetesting candidates to aide the optimization of your website's forms:

o Navigation - By removing the navigation from your form page visitors may become lessdistracted and convert more efficiently. However, they may also require additionalinformation or become disoriented without your website's standard navigation.Therefore, test!

o Required Fields - Different labeling can effect your form conversion rate. Red generallystands out, but what if you have a website that is heavy in red? Are the labels bigenough, could the font be italicized, etc.?

o Number of Fields - Generally a reduction in the number of fields increases conversionrate. For lead gen websites this may not be worth the drop in quality. For paymentforms a generally accepted principal is to have only essential information - not the timeto ask for enewsletter opt-ins.

o Submit Button - Size, color, shape, call to action, positioning on the page. Test awayand never assume that it's obvious.

o One Column or Two - Some websites perform best with one column of form fields even ifit means scrolling. Others do better with two columns above the fold.

The optimization your website's conversion funnel is essentially like testing several forms. Allof the above holds true with 2 significant additions. First, use your web analytics package todetermine the drop off points that are the most impactful. This analysis will help toprioritize your test candidates. Second, depending on how long your process is and thematurity of your testing and optimization program you may need a testing platform that willwork across multiple steps in the process. Bare in mind that multi step funnel optimizationwill require significant traffic for even basic A/B tests so keep the tests small and know yoursample size.

Form and funnel conversion rate optimization and testing can be very impactful on yourwebsite's bottom line. Unlike landing page testing there may be technical requirements andchallenges to setting up tests on your website's forms and funnels due to website security.Therefore it makes sense to reach out to IT early and often in order to support youroptimization implementation initiative. If you conduct landing page testing first, it may behelpful to share the optimization results with the executive and IT team to help prioritizeitems to get your form and funnel testing program launched.




28

Surveys and Heat MapsAside from standard analytics tools there are three key analytics tools that providemeaningful user experience and optimization insights - heat maps, surveys, and videos ofuser’s interactions with your website. The best part about these types of analytic tools is

that implementation is typically simple JavaScript in the page footer. Costs vary, but basicpackages for heat maps, surveys or user interaction videos start at roughly $10 per month.Furthermore, agreements are generally month to month, offering limited commitment andrisk.

Surveys provide two key types of user insights. First, quantifiable preferences around theirexperience on your website or dimensions of your brand attributes. These insights areespecially valuable when comparing major website updates like redesigns and brandinginitiatives like new internet marketing campaigns. Second, they provide the opportunity toget open ended feedback which often times can be more valuable than the quantifiablemetrics. Sometimes it just takes one person's open honest feedback to connect the dots onwhy users take certain actions on your website. There are several things to be aware of withsurveys:

o Surveys are self select with an inherent sampling bias. The survey results can belimiting, but appreciate the fact that data with some skewing will likely take yourwebsite optimization farther than just winging it.

o Surveys can become lengthy, quickly. Stay focused. An optimal survey length is 6-8questions, resulting in a high completion rate.

o Statistical significance can be challenging to reach and is dependent on response rate,the length of the questions and overall completion time. Estimate upfront what isstatistically significant and be ready to tweak your sampling once the survey is live.

Heat maps capture x,y coordinate clicks on your website, depending on the tool that you usetied to success events. Heat maps can help to optimize your website by pointing outproblems and opportunities with:

o Form field interaction is important to be aware of because they usually occur at criticalpoints in your visitor's experience.

o Images and graphics may not be clickable and can distract your website's visitors.o Interaction with page elements or tools can help to measure their effectiveness at

engaging visitors.

Video taping a visitor's session on your website is similar to conducting a private focus group.Some tools will allow for segmentation based on user behaviors like success events, time onsite and pages visited. Be careful not to over-emphasize observed results from small samplesizes.




29

Call TrackingThe emergence of VOIP (voice over IP) technology has arrived just in time for internetmarketers. "But I'm only responsible for online sales"? Wrong, as internet marketers we'reresponsible for driving business growth. Whether it's through a website or a phone call,internet marketing can drive the conversion event - especially now that call tracking allows usto easily measure it.

Many companies offer VOIP-based call tracking. Essentially, VOIP is an internet-based callingsystem, which eliminates traditional “long distance” calling at an economical rate. As such,the cost to make toll-free calls is low, the cost to rent the toll-free number (and cover someinfrastructure and profit margin for the vendor). Because VOIP is web-based, tracking isalmost natural which provides rich analytics data and opportunities to optimize yourcampaigns.

Once you setup a few toll-free numbers to your call center, the internet marketingapplications for call tracking are plentiful. Here are some ideas:

o Landing Page Testing and Optimization - Integrating toll-free tracking numbers intomultivariate or A/B landing page optimization tests will paint a much clearer picture ofa specific recipe's conversion rate. It can also be helpful to try different sized phonenumbers and on/off A/B landing page tests. Try to keep your landing page tests assimple as possible because integrating the call tracking data may require a little mathdepending on your testing platform.

o Banner Ads - Try incorporating your phone number into banners to see if you can getcalls prior to the click. Much like the landing page testing example above, use calltracking to evaluate the true effectiveness of your banner ad creative.

o Ad Text - Reminder, in your paid search program, you pay for clicks, not calls. In otherwords, integrating toll-free tracking numbers into your Google paid search ads is freeadvertising. Any return on free media will boost ROI.

o Email Creative - Tracking numbers can be integrated into your email creative in analmost identical fashion as the landing page testing above and most testing andoptimization platforms integrate perfectly with HTML emails.

o Affiliate Marketing - Providing a handful of exclusive tracking phone numbers to youraffiliate marketing partners will give them a great resource to work with. Remember,affiliates can work for anyone so if you make it easy for them to work with you.Providing them with resources and ideas will help you to get the most out of youraffiliate marketing partners.

With call tracking, you're probably best served to have many numbers than ones that are easyto remember. Many vendors won't offer toll-free numbers that translate into a word, brand,or action, ex: 1800-Contacts. Call tracking vendors will let you select from a pool ofnumbers so you should still invest some time to find the ones that flow a little better (havethe same number repeated many times or a more familiar sequence).




31

Campaign ManagementCommunications plans for internet marketing programs need to have the ability to bebackward looking. There are many levers that can be pulled in the process of campaignoptimization and while some of the changes have an immediate impact on campaignperformance, some can take weeks or months. SEO (search engine optimization) and bannerad retargeting can have significant lag in being recognized due to campaign changes.Creating a campaign log to help support the communications plan for your marketinginitiatives is essential.

Logging campaign changes is helpful in 3 ways:o Recurring Campaign Reports - Reporting trend lines are effective at highlighting

campaign growth over time and the continual value add of the internet marketing team.Adding call outs for significant changes that proceed significant jumps in campaignperformance help to build value in the internet marketing team by adding color to theircontributions.

o Executive Questions - It's not unusual for executives to look back at historic results andask strategic questions. As such, they'll come back months down the line and want toknow 'why'? Executives move quickly and will expect you to have the answer at handand a campaign log will allow you to find the information quickly.

o Institutional Learning - Campaign logs can capture valuable best practices for aparticular business which creates 'institutional learning'. Institutional learning is whatcreates lasting competitive advantage in the marketing place. A proprietary way ofdoing things transcends any one campaign or marketing professional.

It's not essential to document every minor campaign change - for example updating a bid on asingle keyword. Keep the campaign log limited to the items that have a legitimate chance tomove the needle for your campaign results.

o Campaign Launches - new promotions, new marketing channelso Creative Changes - new banners, removal of banners, changes to ad texto Site Updates - new content, SEO changes, multivariate or A/B testso Media Changes - changes in banner placement, changes in ad groupso PR - search optimized press release launch dates, news article publication dateso Other Internet Marketing Changes - directory submissions

Since you're creating a campaign log, don't get frustrated if you don't use the informationroutinely. Maintaining a marketing campaign log is a habit which may seem fruitless now, butcould prove to be critical for your communication plan.




32

Marketing ReportsCreating an executive summary or internet marketing update routinely will answer questionsbefore they are asked, as well as showcase analytical rigor. This is an important aspect ofthe communications plan because it needs to be educational, rather than just informative.It's easy to assume that others in the organization especially senior leadership understandinternet marketing. Mostly, general managers rely on subject matter experts for suchinsights.

When putting together marketing reports, be concise and relevant. Extensive spreadsheets,charts and graphs may be too overwhelming and better served as an appendix. It's easy to adda lot of clutter to reports over time -ne time requests get included regularly by default, moremarketing channels open up, etc. Weekly communications need to be impactful and providefour key items at a glance:

o Data - the primary KPIs usually including metrics like total sales, increase over theprevious week/quarter/year, spend, etc.

o Highlights - identify the big movers (good or bad) or new opportunities and tests tofurther optimize your internet marketing campaign performance.

o Context - what else was happening in the environment like campaign changes, newoffline advertising, changes in the fulfillment process, competitive moves, etc.

o Analysis - attempt to answer why there were changes in the marketing campaignperformance since the last report.

If you already have a weekly marketing report in place and don't think it's worth the time torethink what you are communicating, try not sending it for a week. If no one notices, youshould consider redeveloping what you're communicating and/or moving your marketingreports to a monthly schedule.




33

Marketing DashboardDashboards can be an important part of an internet marketing communications plan. Oftentimes marketing dashboards can be created in your web analytics tool. Depending on thecomplexity of your business, data may have to be pulled from other sources and merged inexcel or a database program. Dashboards aide marketing communications plans by providingquick, at a glance, view of campaign performance. Snapshots over time, say a week, can beincorporated into weekly executive reports.

When creating a marketing dashboard it's important not to make them look like realdashboards. The analogy has evolved and data visualization of your marketing campaignresults can be most effectively communicate with some of the more standard reporting toolssuch as pie charts, bar charts and line charts. Don't worry if these aren't quite as eye-catching as something like a gage, we're trying to effectively communicate marketingcampaign results.

Dashboards are generally reserved for the items that need to be monitored closely. Theytend to be top level reports. For example, the day-today results of a specific keyword in anSEM campaign would probably not be actionable, but the daily comparison of Google versusYahoo! could provide valuable insights into how your marketing campaigns are performing.

Data visualization can sometimes be challenging because there are so many options. 2strategies can help get your marketing dashboard to the next level:

o Pick up a few books on data visualization and creating charts and graphs. Most booksare graphic intensive and can be scanned quickly to provide you with some ideas. Payparticular attention to learning which metric or dimension is best displayed by whichgraphic. For example, if you want to show the performance of Yahoo! Vs. Google overtime, use a trend line. Try a pie chart if you need to communicate results over ashorter period of time.

o Leverage some creative expertise. Your marketing dashboard's layout and color scheme,when done well, will create a professional presentation. Take your ideas to a graphicdesigner or someone in a creative area. They often have a sharp enough eye that theywill be able to pull together the pieces of your dashboard in a matter of moments anddeliver a result much better than you can do on your own.

When incorporated into periodic reporting, dashboards will need some analysis to be providedin order to help make sense of the data. A common mistake that internet marketers canmake is to assume that because everything is simplified into a straight-forward graphic, thatpeople will understand what it means. Brief bullet points will go a long way incommunicating campaign results. Despite all of the automation that is available, don'tunderestimate the value of the human touch.




34

30 Second Elevator SpeechA 30-second elevator speech is essential for the success of any internet marketingcommunications plan. As an internet marketing professional, you're in competition forresources from all over your company - especially the traditional media people. As a result,it's important to not only justify, but promote, your internet marketing results throughout theorganization. The focus needs to be on bottom line business results with no fluff and limitedratios (%). The 30 second speech will need to be fresh and change routinely - quite possiblyweekly.

The premise is to arm yourself, your boss, and the rest of your internet marketing team witha quick snapshot of the recent wins. The purpose of the 30-second elevator speech is to beable to communicate with other departments and the executive team quickly. Many of themdon't routinely have time for a great deal of details. Unfortunately, most weekly status ormarketing reports go unread or are glanced at unless something specific is needed. At yourbusiness there are many demands for the executives' attention and they want to be in theknow. Most importantly, they're responsible for setting the budget - so it's critical that yourinternet marketing work stand out.

The communication must be prepared in a written format and formally sent out.Additionally, it needs to be written in a manner that is easy to read and articulate in a spokenformat. There's no room for romance copy in a 30-second elevator speech, only facts. Aneffective format has one summary sentence of recent activities and a maximum of 3 bulletpoints in non-sentence format. Some detail oriented marketers may have difficulty with thebrevity, so it may take some practice. If you only had 30-seconds each week with your boss,what do you want them to know? Remember, if you have more to say, include it in yourregular status report or as highlights when you deliver periodic analytics report.

There is competition within your business for various resources, including the marketingbudget. It's important to recognize that not everyone understands internet marketing.Communicate concisely, and often, about bottom line business results. For example, 'thisweek we reduced cost per leads by $10', 'the new website optimization program will generate$150,000 in revenue each year', etc. The 30-second evaluator speech should be sent to allof the stakeholders and will arm you and your internet marketing team with quick factoids tostandout within your business.




Wrap UpThe ultimate goal of your internet marketing program is to drive value for your business andbe accountable for the results. This requires a methodology for defining strategy, a desire tocontinually optimize the results of your campaigns and tactics and the discipline to sharethese results with others in your organization on a routine basis. Strategy, Optimization andCommunication work together in a comprehensive manner to ensure internet marketingsuccess for your business.

After completing this strategy guide (or at least skimming the sections that are most directlybeneficial to you) be sure to do 2 things. First, apply what's been said, even if it's just 1 or 2new nuggets of new information. Second, be sure to share it with others by sending them acopy of the PDF or a link to this website.

strategy guide to internet marketing

Documents