Starting the Dialog » Innis Maggiore

Mappting Your Position on the Digital Spectrum

Keyword: Selling

assets

To this point, your web assets have most likely been fairly static — what we call brochure-ware. The goal at this step is to move your site to a sales tool with opportunities to learn about those engaging with your web properties. Consider adding:

Marketing/Promo Landing Page(s)

Promo landing pages and sites are perfect for capturing customer information. Contests, sweepstakes and other promotional tactics drive users to these types of pages for the very purpose of a value exchange, providing you customer data you can use to cultivate the relationship.

Value Exchange(s)

A Value Exchange is required when you want to gain information on the user of your digital property. Typically, a form is presented to capture that information prior to granting access to a particular section or specific content on your web property. Getting user data is tough because we all hold onto it so tightly. But given the right value exchange, users are typically open to serving up limited information.

Lead Form(s)

Lead Forms are very similar to value exchanges, except that you aren't giving anything up in return. These tend to be simply Contact Us forms or Technical Inquiry forms. Users are raising their hand and providing their information so you can follow up and convert the lead to a sale. If you use a lead form(s), it is critical you have a workflow that ensures someone from your organization is following up efficiently and effectively.

Key question: How are you tracking your offline marketing tactics? Are you doing a value exchange when you offer promotions, discounts, or otherwise? Are you using just a basic contact form or segmenting your forms based on products/services?

marketing & sales

Organic search is wonderful but there are many additional digital ways to market and sell. If you are ready to increase your lead funnel, then you should be using one or more of the following:

Paid Search (aka SEM)

Paid Search picks up where SEO leaves off. Sculpting every page of your digital property for SEO is still critical because it benefits your Paid Search efforts. But building page rank can take time, and if you don't have that time, Paid Search (e.g., Google AdWords) is an immediate way to auction for the top few positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Email Marketing

Email Marketing remains one of the top digital marketing tactics you can deploy. Despite new channels in digital marketing, the highest response rates and sales continue to come from email campaigns. Things to consider: effective architecture, responsive design, trackable analytics and integration with a CRM.

Banner/Display Advertising or Remarketing

Banner Ads, when used for brand-building, are a great digital marketing tactic. They are used less frequently now because marketers expect higher click-thru rates. But most banner advertising happens in the context of relevant content, not direct marketing channels. If you accept brand-building as a vital tactic, banner ads can be highly effective in display or remarketing channels. Compared to print display advertising, digital platforms offer better geo-, demo- and psychographic targeting.

Key question: For many competitive keywords, Google's organic results typically start at position #5 - can you afford to miss traffic from the first four positions? If you are gathering customers' names and emails, are you communicating with them digitally? Does your brand need some additional exposure with digital brand advertising that's highly targeted to those already showing interest in your product?