Ten Laws of Online Marketing

Here are some steps each website owner should take to ensure that your website is running at its full potential. Make sure you are not losing out on leads due to poor planning and implementation.

1. Define your target market: international, national, country specific, state specific, local or a combination thereof.
   a. Percentages of the market in each category
   
   
2. Decide on the purpose of your website.
   a. Provide information
   b. Sell products and/or services
   c. Company or product branding
   d. Generate leads
   e. Other
   
   
3. Establish a monthly or yearly budget for online marketing.
   
   
4. Develop a twelve month online marketing plan.
   a. Adjust your marketing plan approximately every month based on web traffic and your conversion rate.
   
   
5. Designate a point person in house to be responsible for plan follow-up and monitoring progress.
   
   
6. Establish a relationship with a reliable, experienced outside resource (web design, SEO or marketing firm) to partner with to help and assist in implementing your online marketing plan.
   
   
7. Properly optimize a new website or restructure an existing website for optimization and integrate or add all the appropriate online marketing features and functions necessary to go along with your online marketing plan.
   a. It’s important to create an online sales and marketing tool versus just a website.
   - Consider the sales and marketing elements first, then design the website around them.
   b. On your Home Page you must describe exactly what you do and what separates you from your competition.
   - “Why should anyone do business with you?”
   
   
8. Make sure you have a comprehensive web statistics program in place to track your web traffic.
   a. Create a Ground Zero Report to use as a base reference for your online marketing efforts.
   b. Check your web rankings regularly.
   - Alexa ranking
   - Google page rank
   - Link popularity
   - Search engine rankings
   
   
9. Make sure you have a plan to track your conversion rate (sales, leads, requests, etc.) based on the amount of web traffic you are getting.
   
   
10. Check your statistics and track your conversions on a regular basis to analyze how your website is doing.
    

NOTES:
1. The online marketing process is an ongoing and dynamic effort. There is no “magic bullet!” It’s like “paddling a canoe upstream, if you stop you go downstream real fast!”
2. Make sure your online marketing efforts are properly coordinated with your offline marketing efforts.