Five Golden Rules of Successful Online Marketing

If you’re running a business of any kind, it’s likely that online marketing holds massive potential for boosting your sales and taking you to the next level. It can be a minefield though, and it’s often difficult to even know where to start.

Here, we’ve outlined the five golden rules of successful online marketing to help you to focus your activities.

Have a detailed plan

If your marketing plan doesn’t get much more in-depth than just ‘spend half an hour marketing the business’, you’re going to face problems. Without a targeted approach, you’ll essentially just be wasting your time. Instead, sit down and consider what you want to achieve from your marketing, and the tools that are available within your budget. Picking just two or three areas to focus on will be much more effective than dipping in and out of lots of various methods.

Set aside time to review your goals and achievements

Without regularly reviews of progress, you have no idea whether you’re on the right path. Set aside a few hours once a month to review your progress and try to establish which of your efforts are bringing the best results. Use tangible measures such as increased sales, enquiries, and customers, then go a step further and consider how you can improve again. Your marketing should be constantly growing and evolving.

Know your target market

This one may seem obvious, but it’s something that so many business owners fail to consider. It’s the very first thing you should consider before taking any action, and it’s essential that you get it right. Once you’ve profiled exactly who you’re targeting, everything else becomes much easier. So, imagine for example, that you sell HR consultancy services to medium sized businesses. That’s great, but you need to delve deeper. Who makes the decisions about HR in the business, and where can you reach that person? You might then decide that they use LinkedIn to research their options, and ascertain that the professional social network could be a great place to reach out to them.

Recognise that you can’t do it all alone

Unless you have enough resources to appoint a full-time marketing manager, it’s likely that you’ll struggle with time. Putting it off because you’re just too busy is an easy trap, but it means that your business will never grow any further. If this sounds like you, consider bringing in some flexible help. A professional SEO company, for example, could get you ranking on Google while you focus on other tasks. It makes sound business sense to outsource the tasks that you don’t have time for, or just lack expertise in.

Don’t keep jumping ship

Success rarely happens overnight. The problem that most business owners encounter is that they don’t give their marketing tools enough time to pay off before moving onto the next one. Take social media, for example. Just like in the real world, it takes time to cultivate relationships using social networks. Realistically, it could take months before you start to see the rewards. Once you’ve chosen your tools, give them a fair chance before deciding whether they’re right for your business.

Following these rules, you’ll find that your marketing becomes much easier and much more effective. Have you been struggling with the promotion of your business? Which of these tips will you find most useful?

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This article was brought to you by Ruth Hinds on behalf of WebSearch SEO. WebSearch is based in London and offers risk free, ‘pay on results’ SEO services including link building for online synergy and success.