The online marketing recipe

When you put together an online marketing plan it can be easy to get wrapped up in social media, it’s such a responsive and powerful way to reach people, but don’t overlook all the other online marketing tools.

Whether it's turning blogs into article or ebooks or planning an email campaign there are many ways of using the internet to reach potential customers.

These are just a selection of the online marketing tools and what they can do for you.

Social media:                  Step one is to know where your target market is most active and get involved in the same places.  Twitter is pretty general and will reach most people, Facebook is good for local businesses and for businesses where the customer is an individual.  LinkedIn is a business platform and the power is in the groups – the right groups!  Google+ is great for informative posts on a wide range of subjects.  Pinterest is excellent for products, especially attractive-looking items – don’t forget to pin your images from your website, not upload direct from your computer.

Blogs:                             Blogging is an excellent way of demonstrating your expertise.  You can blog on your own website or a blog platform (Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad) or as a guest blogger on other people’s blogs.

Email marketing:             Direct messages on a specific subject to an opted in list of people.  To do this you must have permission from the person to send them promotional emails.  If they’ve signed up to your list this is usually part of the ‘deal’, but be careful about people who you’ve met at networking events, a business card is not automatic permission to send marketing information.

Newsletter:                     There are good newsletters and bad newsletters!  A good newsletter has real value for the reader and they will want to read the next one as a result.  A bad newsletter is boring, usually all about the writer and has no benefits for the reader.  Always lead with value (tip – use your blog as a lead article see www.3andahalfsteps.com).

Ebooks:                         If you’ve written a few blogs around a single subject collate and develop them into an ebook.  You can either give this away or sell it – check out listing your ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle listings.  Being a published author is great for your reputation and gives you a platform to demonstrate how much you know about your specialist subject, making you an Expert.

Press releases:                Writing a press release about a new member of staff, an award or new premises isn’t particularly interesting – you need a real story to get an editor’s attention.  Successful press releases are interesting to the target audience of the publication so know you publications well and don’t just fire it at every publication you can think of.  Local press may be easier to get into, but may not be read by your target audience.  Choose your publications and then talk to the editor about what kind of material they like.  There’s no guarantee of getting published, but at least what you send will be relevant.

Audio and video:            YouTube is the second biggest search engine – and is owned by the biggest, Google!  That means that it’s an excellent place to be seen, so if you’re into video material get your videos on YouTube.  Just make sure that they are not just sales pitches, give people interesting and useful material.  One of the top search terms on YouTube is ‘How to …’!  Audio only is also useful so if you do podcasts – or could – add Audio to your website, newsletters, etc.  With the sophistication of today’s smartphones you have a built-in recorder in your pocket and can interview people, commentate on an event or simply record your thoughts whilst out and about. Check out AudioBoo.com for more on this.

Webinars:                       This isn’t for everyone, but if you are good at passing on your knowledge to people get yourself a captive audience by creating and promoting a webinar on your specialist subject.  You can use platforms like GoToMeeting.com or a Google Hangout to do this and you don’t have to do all the talking yourself, ask one or more experts in related fields to your own to get involved.

These are just the main online marketing tools – and you’ll need to decide which ones are best for you and which you want to include in your online marketing strategy.  Good luck!