13 Point Digital Marketing Checklist as You Enter Year 2013

Wish you all a Very happy New Year!

As we enter year 2013, here comes a handy list of 13 points which you can have a look at while preparing your Digital Marketing strategy and plan.

Website

Is your website up to date to deliver the right message and converse with the audience? Website is the most crucial factor of your online marketing. All your efforts can fail if your website does not deliver the right message, is not consistent with your brand or does not align with other messaging. Remember, the website is not a stone. You can and should change it frequently. Make sure you plan for frequent website updates and conversations. Another most important point is to make sure that your website is mobile compatible. In 2013 you just can’t afford to not have your website visible on mobile

Online Marketing Plan

Start with making a plan. Plan making is not about sitting with a pen and paper. An impactful plan requires a thorough study and research aabout your target audience, their buying behaviors  their purchase cycles etc. Make sure you identify and plan the right mix of PPC, CPM, PR, Email Campaigns and social media to reach out to your target audience, connect and engage with them.

Collateral

Have a hard look at your collateral items (the brochures, flyers, corporate PPT etc). Is it high time that the collateral is looking ancient, mentioning incorrect or old facts and not consistent with your brand image? Your collateral should not merely work as a backup. It should be comprehensive, precise, clear and appealing enough to sell on its own.  Plan for phase-wise revision of that to keep it up-to-date.

Search Engine Optimization

Get together with experts and understand what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means – what it means for you. Don’t go for it just because everyone is doing it. If your business depending on ‘being found’ on search engines on first page, then you should definitely start the SEO efforts. 

Email Marketing

Undoubtedly, email marketing is one of the effective ways to connect with your target audience (if done in a right way). Formulate your email marketing strategy – whom do you want to reach out through email, what message you send across to them and how often would you reach them. Prepare an email campaign calendar and appropriately execute the same. Identify which means are you going to use to design and develop, send and track your email campaigns because all these factors are very important for successful email marketing. 

Social Media Plan

As Erik Qualman said “We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” So don’t join the social media bandwagon unless you strategize and have a solid social media plan. Know your social media objective, identify the platforms you want to leverage, formulate the message you want to send across on social media channels and have a rock solid execution plan. The worst situation you can be in is to have a plan, start your social media efforts and not sustain those because of faulty execution. Have a look at these 10 most commonly asked social media questions to get started.

Social Media Platform Selection and Strategy

Social media is not about creating a page on Facebook or creating a Twitter account. It is much more than that. You don’t have to be on Facebook or Twitter just because everyone is out there. There are hundreds of social media platforms out there. Identify the one most appropriate for you. Decide what is your communication strategy on those platforms because each platform requires a different tone and theme and you should adopt the right one.

Company Blog

Have you created blogging strategy for your business? Decide which blogging platform to use, which kind articles you would be posting, who will create the content, how often will you post, how will you ensure readership for your blog and how will you promote those. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most important platforms for professional networking and yet the most wrongly used on. LinkedIn usage in most cases is limited to business development teams or to recruitment teams. But do you know that LinkedIn offers Company Pages? You have a very good opportunity of creating company profile on LinkedIn, mention your products and services and also to engage with the audience through frequent relevant updates. Go ahead and explore that in 2013.

Thought Leadership

Do you think you know your area of business really well? Establish your though leadership in online space. Let the world know what you know really well. Establish a company blog, write guest articles on well-known websites, speak at conferences, conduct webinars or hold local events. All these are opportunities for you to share your knowledge and also to learn in the process.

Webinar

Technology has made it possible to connect with worldwide audience. Explore the world of webinars/ web demos. You can use webinars to let people know about your products/ services, share your knowledge on a particular topic or requesting your customers to speak about their experiences in interacting with you. Webinars are easy to organize and conduct, are relatively very cheap and very effective. Here is a checklist for you to conduct successful webinars.

Press Releases

Have you identified your press release strategy? Explore the exciting world of online press releases. Press release writing requires committed time and energy. Writing an effective and impressive press release requires business understanding, understanding of online space and knowledge of how search engine works so that the press release helps in enhancing the online brand. Prepare a calendar for your company PR, get well-written PRs out and enhance your online brand.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaigns

Various prominent search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and also other platforms like LinkedIn etc provide paid advertising programs also called as PPC. Under these programs, one needs to bid for competitive key phrases and keywords and substantiate those with a compelling ‘ad copy’ to drive high traffic to your websites. PPC program helps you generate instant traffic on demand while having full control on how much you want to spend almost daily. It’s a quick and effective way to generate right kind of traffic to your website and you need to pay only for the performance. If you think you are ready for paid promotion, you can choose to explore PPC campaigns and prepare plan of action for those. Make sure you regularly monitor the performance and tweak the campaigns for maximum ROI.

What is on your checklist for this year? 

Yes! The Dots Do Get Connected

It wasn’t an easy decision to leave the company where I started my career, worked for more than 10 years, climbed the ladder from Trainee to Vice President and most importantly, where I learnt lots and lots of things.

But there was something from within which was calling and I needed to be outside of what I was doing to understand that calling. So finally after a long vacation to Europe where I got to spend some quality time with myself, Midas Touch was born in August 2010. Why the name Midas Touch? Well I wanted the name to specify the benefit our customers are going to get and ‘Midas Touch’ says it all :- )

I personally enjoyed every single day of the last year, thoroughly enjoyed the thrill and learning experience. Got a chance to work closely with various business owners and to be part of their journey - start-ups as well as established enterprises. Every aspect, right from convincing stake holders about starting with social media, defining the complete internet marketing strategies and getting on to the ground level of actually ‘doing’ things (rather than giving directions on how to do those) – all the aspects were equally fascinating.

My priority has always been providing quality output. To achieve this, I decided to partner with experienced and established firms and people for specific things which require expertise such as graphic design. While I enjoy training and mentoring people, I realized that at least in the first year, I can’t afford investing much time in that. This strategy paid off really well. Customers got the quality output while I could focus on things which required attention.

I decided to focus in Indian market to start with and I think that turned out to be a very wise decision. The market has changed a lot, businesses have now started appreciating the power of internet marketing, ready to adapt social media in their marketing strategies and are willing to explore this new world of digital marketing. I myself witnessed a tremendous change happening over the last one year. Personally I enjoy being part of something which is just starting off and is growing :-) So it is fun to be part of this change.

Being on my own also made me do lot of things which I always wanted to do but did not for one reason or the other. I always wanted to author a book and last year it finally materialized with consistent persistence by a good friend, Vishal Mehta (CEO of IDYeah Creations) . I co-authored ‘Are you Socially Shy?’ with him. This book describes how business owners can start using six popular social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YourTube, Blog and SlideShare) for their businesses.

Last year I was also invited to write for Technorati. Technorati is an online publication that boasts a community of over 1000 handful writers who share news, trends, opinions and reviews on various topics. It was a high motivation point when one of my articles on Technorati was tweeted about more than 300 times on a single day! Comments like “When is the next article coming?” from my blog readers make me write more regularly on the blog as well :-)

Well, does this mean I slog for like 25 hours a day? Not really. In fact, I am getting to spend more time with my family and have learnt to utilize my time more effectively and efficiently.

As Steve Jobs said, "You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever........." and I think I am able to connect the dots :-)

7 Internet Marketing Strategies which Work

Once you are convinced about online marketing and are ready to start your efforts in that direction, below are some of the online marketing strategies which have worked for many brands. Of course, you will need to tweak your strategy based on your offering, target audience and target geography. But these can help you get started and establish a strong base.

#1 Website Design, Development and Analysis

The first and most important item in your online marketing efforts is a ‘good’ website. By ‘good’ website I mean a website which boasts of quality content, has clear navigation, is easy to follow and gives relevant information – quickly. Implement tracking mechanism in your website so that you know details like who is visiting your site, which all pages are being viewed the most, how much time users are spending on your site and so on. These details will help you enhance the website and offer better experience to the visitors.

#2 Search Engine

Get your website ranked in major search engines through search engine optimization (SEO). For SEO to be effective, you need great website content. So invest time and efforts in creating good content.

#3 Social Media Marketing

You cannot shy away from social media. Get yourself on relevant social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Communities), build a steady fan following, educate and engage the audience. This can take you a very long way in terms of both qualitative as well as quantitative ROI.

#4 Email Marketing

Learn to use email marketing effectively. Define your email marketing objective, design a good email campaign, build an opt-in list to which you can send the campaign, track the campaign and analyze the results for better targeting next time.

#5 Online Press Releases

Write and publish online press releases. These press releases help you promote your brand, establish a strong online presence for your brand and also help in your search engine optimization efforts.

#6 Article Marketing

Invest serious time, efforts and talent in writing great articles. Make these articles educative, thought provoking and interesting. Publish these articles on article websites which will help you establish your thought leadership in your area of business.

#7 Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Once you are conformable with your online presence, you can invest in PPC campaigns (like Google AdWords, Facebook Ads or LinkedIn ads) to bring in quality visitors/ leads to your website. Remember though that running PPC campaigns is a specialized skill, so do get some expert help for this.