Take a Cue – Plan your Online Marketing strategy by using a mix of different promotion techniques

by Avneet

One of the best piece of advice I can share with businesses/individuals who are about to (re)start promoting their online properties is – “Do not put all your eggs in one basket.”

Each technique of promotion be it Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Link Building, Pay Per Click (PPC) management, blogging, content syndication, banner ads, podcasting, Social Media Optimization (SMO) etc. has it own unique advantages and has certain shortcomings too. Understanding ‘what works when‘ is crucial and helps in setting the right expectations from your investment. No ‘single‘ technique alone is supreme. There are of course instances when one promotion technique would bear more results or be more effective than the others. For eg. during peak seasons, carefully stepping the gas on PPC spend would be a good investment, in order to capitalize on the buying potential of that limited period.

However a solid online promotion plan will utilize the strengths of each of these techniques and reach a fine balance which allows optimum performance.

Get the right mix for your business! You will, however, need to factor in some important variables like budget, time by when results are expected, resources available, past history of the website, current rankings etc. in mind as well.

Some companies/ business owners get this right from the outset, but most have a “piece meal” approach towards online marketing – starting off with one or few services/tools and then moving on to the others.

This usually results in dissatisfaction, frustrating results, mismatch of expectations and most importantly ‘losses in terms of opportunity costs’. This is precisely why it is vital to take the time to understand the different tools that are available for your site’s long term promotion and use the right mix. The decision to invest in ‘all’ or ‘some’ of these would of course be subject to your various internal factors, but understanding the dependencies of the different marketing tools and also their unique strengths/weaknesses is vital in strategy planning.

And of course, don’t forget the two other important laws of successful online marketing and branding:
1. Persistence
2. Patience – lots of it 🙂

If you can’t execute these strategies on your own, hire a competent Internet Marketing firm which can do this effectively for you.

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One Reply to “Take a Cue – Plan your Online Marketing strategy by using a mix of different promotion techniques”

bborges says:

September 15, 2007 at 8:20 pm

I agree with your advice, especially the last two points: persistence and patience. I always recommend having a one year view on web marketing plans. Measuring results is important, and when you have a one year view you can track the return on investment with more clarity and decide how to prioritize the mix of web marketing activities for the next 12 month cycle.