Prioritize Your Online Marketing with This One-Page Chart
Online marketing has gotten WAY more complex in recent years. Have you noticed?
Partly that’s a function of how much the Web has grown. The Web’s a bigger place today — more people online, more websites, more indexed pages, and more competition for getting found online.
Also, we’ve seen an explosion in new tools, Web services, social media sites, and techniques for online marketing. Each one involves a new learning curve.
We are bombarded with so much information and so many choices that it’s hard to sift through. It’s all too easy to get sidetracked on high-hype, low-value activities.
My latest column at the OPEN Forum blog provides a simple, one-page chart for prioritizing your online marketing activities. Try it and tell me if it helps clarify your approach to online marketing.
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Anita,
I am so thrilled to see website in the middle. SO many people take this for granted.
It’s at the CORE of your entire online marketing strategy.
This chart is perfect for someone just starting out with getting their business online. It keeps it simple and straight forward. It will give them a good idea of where to begin and where they need to move forward to. I agree, Shama, the website is the most important place to start.
Anita,
I like the chart. You did a great job of making a complex subject make sense I’ve been using a much more complex version to show my clients and now I will send them here to look at this one.
Thanks,
Doug
Nice chart Anita. I like simple, linear images that provide direction.
To answer your question about freelance or independent professionals, I’d add article marketing in the second circle and move blog into the inner circle with the web site (hopefully they already are combined). Then I would prioritze social networks over a lot of the other outer ring activities. As service providers, we have to build our personal brand and help prospects determine our expertise. Getting this information out into the network is important to making this happen. The good news is that once the profiles are set up with the blog feeds, it’s more or less automatic. It’s finding the right ones in which to participate that is important.
This circular flowchart makes perfect sense to keep a perspective on how many directions are available within the marketing umbrella.
A friend of mine is now working with a personal coach who, among other things, helped her create a similar chart to determine what to do on her own and what to outsource.
Great visual, Anita.
This is a great summary for small businesses. If we know our customers well then the selction of which tactic to use becomes a little easier and the same goes for knowing what our marketing objectives are. The only other suggestion is perhaps have the customer at the centre and then the web.
Hi Debra, article marketing is definitely something to consider. And I get what you’re saying. It’s almost like there should be different versions of this chart for different types of businesses.
Susan, there’s a lot to be said for having the customer at the center, although I was trying to focus on activities. But of course the customer should be at the center of everything.
And Shama, Amanda, Doug, Shirley — thanks for the encouragement. I was a little worried about over-simplification. But it’s a practical way of addressing online marketing.
Anita
I really like this Anita. It makes it easy for folks to understand how important it is to create your own web properties under your direct control (websites, blogs, etc.). But it also illustrates the groweing importance of joining the ongoing converstations taking place where the people already are congregating. And how using multiple channels and formats helps create more engaging ways to extend conversations and build more meaningful relationships.
What will be intersting to see is how your diagram evolves over time as new tools and activities come at us. How will it look in a year’s time?
Great illustration of our marketing tools. It’s really clear to prioritize them that way.
I have found Twitter to be exceptionally helpful for marketing (if used properly) and in building your network. For me, it’s even a notch higher in effectiveness.
And that’s where I happened upon you…and now follow you. (Nice to meet you.)
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Nice chart!
I have business contact who has specialized in online marketing for a long time. He has created a system of 10 different points: http://www.tiometoder.se/ (“TenMethods”)
Domain Name Strategies.
User- and Search Engine Friendly Web Design.
Copy writing.
Linking Strategies.
Search Engine Positioning.
Online Advertising.
Network Marketing / Affiliate Marketing.
E-mail Marketing.
Customer Relationship and Interactivity.
Internet Traffic Analysis.
I like the image, and how it demonstrates the importance of a website still as the hub of activity for small business owners. I’ve met quite a few recently who are using just twitter, or just facebook, and don’t really understand that you need a main “hub” to drive your traffic to and convert into sales.
The best advice is to always submit quality articles that are free from grammar and spelling errors. The article directories will delete your content if it has errors.