Congratulations! You’ve just launched your new website and you are officially in business. Or are you? With over 2 billion websites online it’s going to take much more than just launching your new website to start making money.
You see, contrary to popular belief, if you build it they will not just come. In order to get noticed online you have to utilize various online marketing tactics. And in order for those tactics to be effective you must have a clear plan.
Here are the steps you need to take to create an effective marketing plan for your new website:
Clearly Define Your Goals
What is it that you hope to accomplish through your online marketing efforts? Are you looking to drive targeted traffic, generate leads, make sales or all of the above?
While it’s okay to have more than one goal, when you are starting out you need to prioritize those goals and focus on just one.
Knowing which goal you want to focus on will help you pick the best online marketing method to help you reach that goal.
Clearly Define Your Target Audience
One of the biggest mistakes new website owners make is trying to target everyone. Your return on investment will be much higher if you focus on targeting people who actually want what you have to offer.
But before you can target those people you must first identify who they are. Take a few minutes to figure out who your target audience is.
How old are they? Where do they live? Are they single or married? What is their income level? How much education do they have? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies?
Getting a clear picture of who your target audience is will help you a great deal when it comes time to pick which methods you want to use to market your website.
Decide The Best Marketing Tactics For Your Goals
Now that you know your goals and have clearly defined your target audience, the next step is to decide which marketing tactics you will put your time and effort into.
As you probably already know, there are literally hundreds of different tactics you can use to start driving targeted traffic to you brand new website.
Some of the most popular methods include Facebook ads, social media marketing, Youtube marketing, pay per click, email marketing, content marketing and search engine optimization.
While each of these methods can work together to send hordes of targeted traffic to your website, when you are first starting out you only want to focus on one. If you try to implement all of these tactics at the same time you will become overwhelmed and give up.
Ultimately the method you choose will depend on whether or not you have money to spend on advertising. In the next section we will discuss budget.
If you have no money to spend the best methods to focus on would be social media marketing, search engine optimization and content marketing. While these methods will take time to implement, if you are patient and don’t mind playing the long game you will see great results.
Determine How Much You Can Spend On Advertising
When it comes to online marketing it’s going to cost you in either time or money. If you don’t have a lot of time you will need to spend money on paid advertisement.
The great thing about paid advertisement is it allows you to get results almost instantly. And with the targeting options offered by Facebook you can get thousands of targeted visitors to your website for less than $5 a day.
However, if you don’t know what you are doing you could easily lose thousands in the process. That’s why it is so important you set a budget and stick with it. Start low and then work your way up as you learn the ins and outs of paid advertising.
In the beginning there will be a lot of trial and error which will inevitably lead to you losing some money.
The key is to discard the ineffective ads as quickly as possible. Keep the ads that work and continue to optimize them until they are giving you the best possible ROI.
Create Your Plan of Action and Execute
The final step in this process is to create your plan of action and execute. Your plan needs to be as detailed as possible. Write down the steps you plan to take and give yourself a deadline.
For example, if you will be doing content marketing schedule time for researching, writing and posting. Make sure you are consistent with your content marketing or it will be of no effect. If you can only post once a week that’s okay. Just make sure you post every week.
If you opt to use social media marketing you will need to plan out what type of content you will post and on what days and times will you post it.
The great thing about social media marketing is there are a ton of really great tools that can do the brunt of the work for you. You can schedule your posts in advance and that way you can spend your time focusing on other activities that will help your business continue to grow.
One of the best tools for scheduling social media posts is Buffer.com. Depending on the plan you get, you can add up to 2000 posts to your queue and they will automatically go out on the date and time you choose.
Besides posting you also need to make sure you schedule time for engagement. Social media is all about being social. If you aren’t interacting with your audience you won’t experience the true power of social media marketing.
When creating your plan you may feel a little overwhelmed. Just remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. You don’t need to try to do everything at once. The key is consistency. As long as you are following your plan and executing on it everyday you will start to see results.
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