30 July 2010
, Author - Allan Kent
“Crouch, touch, pause, engage” – sound familiar? If you watch rugby then you’ll recognise these as the instructions the ref gives to control the scrum.
On a similar vein, “Connect, engage, convert” are the necessary guidelines for effective online marketing!
Let me explain a little more. To be effective, your online marketing activities need to reach the people who are likely to do business with you – your Target Audience. Your online marketing therefore needs to come to their attention – the ‘Connect’.
‘Connect’ - How can you ensure it happens? Basically you’ve got to do all you can to drive traffic to your online presence, generally a website or a blog. A huge percentage of business (online and offline) is initiated through an online search, typically through Google. So, it’s important that your site is easily found for the most obvious search terms in Google. The most effective long term method is through search engine optimisation (SEO). This involves making sure the site is structured in such a way that Google can readily index it, and that it contains sufficient reference to the search terms being used so that Google feels the site should be presented to the enquirer. Obviously this is a very simplified explanation of SEO, but hopefully the concept is clear.
Another way of utilising the search engines is through paid advertising, ie Adwords or sponsored links. Basically this is simply paying for your listing to be displayed in Google searches rather than relying on it coming up naturally, or organically. This tends to be a more expensive option, especially long term, though it is still effective as you only pay when someone responds to your advert or listing, i.e. when they click through to your site. Hence the reason it’s often called Pay Per Click or PPC advertising. What other form of advertising is so measurable and direct?
Behind these, the fastest rising method now is through social networking, utilising tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linked-In. In essence social networking is like standing on a soap box and talking to an audience. Obviously, at first you talk only to people you know, but providing what you have to say is interesting or relevant, more and more people will become interested and your social network and connections will grow through viral marketing.
‘Engage’ – Social media can certainly play a part in the Connect phase, but importantly it can also play a crucial role in the Engage phase. Standing on a soapbox, whether in reality or metaphorically is OK for getting initial interest, but to keep the audience’s attention requires engagement. This comes about by introducing topics that personally involve the audience i.e. talking about their needs. It also comes about through allowing them to ask questions, making comments, even disagreeing with what you are saying.
If you are not using the external tools mentioned, you can still utilise social networking principals on your own site. Encourage feedback through Blogs or forums, post questions on your site with the means to respond, publish these results and audience comments, include user product reviews of your products etc. The greater the level of audience engagement, the greater the energy or ‘Buzz’ - a perfect foundation for the:
‘Convert’ – The ultimate sales and marketing goal! The definition of convert will differ between organisations. Commonly it is the making of a sale, but it could be to sign up members to a petition (For example Greenpeace), to get people to visit a store or to sign up to a data base – typically a newsletter.
This Convert stage happens after the other two phases have brought the message to the right people and then engaged their interest enough to facilitate the positive action step being taken – the conversion. The two things this last phase require, without exception are – The Call to Action (The strong suggestion that the visitor should take action), and the means to do so - for example a buy now button, a newsletter sign up form or a map of how to get to the location.
So, look at the way you are doing things with your online marketing. How well are you performing at each of these stages? If you’re not performing at each stage well enough, your marketing, will like a poorly set scrum, potentially collapse in on itself!
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