People associate online marketing with a series of promotional activities such as Adwords, search engine optimization or social networks. Simply put some ads or hire an SEO consultant that are already doing online marketing. But for professional online marketing is much more. It is a series of channels to reach the customer, and also a methodology, which should include analysis, measuring performance and results.
Let’s see some aspects of online marketing that should be basic, but very often completely ignored (even in large companies).
1. Know Your Customer
Are you sure that you know who your customers really are? Why do they buy your products? What is the competition? What they value, and what is actually required?
Speaking to the clients for information gathering, I do not mean to just obtain socioeconomic data, but the problems they have, constraints, resources available to …
According to the answers to those questions, we can group customers in a fairly homogeneous group, which we call segments (and the classification of customers into segments is called segmentation). Although the same product or service can be applied to all, each segment has its own problems and their own motivation, needs its own approach, independent of other segments.
For example, an English school can distinguish these customer segments:
• Adults who want to learn English for the first time.
• Parents of students who want their children to improve their English outside school.
• Companies who want to improve their business English.
• A transverse segment can be satisfied alumni, who have a high probability of further courses in the center.
Each customer segment requires its own analysis and differential exclusive treatment is required for each. Their motivation and their needs are different, give a different valuation about each product’s advantages, have different availability, decidedly different …
2. Differentiate
In online marketing, you can define your business in two ways: like the other (“me too”), or different from the others. If you are identical to the others, the client will not hesitate to decide to buy from you or from others – and this way the sale becomes a fluke. If you want to be different, you are giving your customers bad reasons to buy.
There are three basic strategies of differentiation:
- Being the cheapest : The main selling point is the price: if you can be the cheapest, you have much livestock. The problem is that any competitor can lower the price and force a price war. Only you can survive this if you have a real advantage that allows you to lower the price without eliminating your profit margin.
- Having something unique : If you have something that is genuinely unique and that your competitors can not imitate, you won heaven. It can be a patented, super-specialized product, a loyal, a national franchise or a brand.
- Be the best : If you are not the cheapest or you don’t have something unique, you just have to be the best. Luckily, there is no need to be the best at everything, but something that is always valued by the customer – and there are customers who value different things. You can have the best service, the best picture, best delivery, greater range, better documentation, constant renewal … Anyone you better to differentiate, whenever something important to someone.
And as I said at the beginning of this section, there is another strategy, perhaps the most common:
• Not having a strategy . You’re not the cheapest, nor have anything unique, or you are the best at anything … In these conditions, selling almost by accident , because the client was not smart enough to find a better provider, or because they did not value the offers that has received … Or because you do not care. Although you will not run out of customers by using this strategy, you will always be in a very fragile : Whatever cheaper, better or different, will easily keep your customers … And you cannot do anything.
3. Tell him about the solutions to their problems, not your products
The customer does not care who you are, what you sell, and the great battles you’ve won. The only thing that matters is how you’re going to help solve their problems, or to do so more effectively than now. First you have to make him see that you have something that may interest you (get their attention). If you get interested, then you will have the opportunity to talk about your product.
If the client already knows or are looking for a particular product type, being direct can work. But the problem-solution approach is always much higher than product approach.
One way to present information that works quite well is:
- Call your attention . It may be an advertisement on Adwords, the title of an email or an article, a press announcement …
- Already on your website, State up the problem and offer your solution , explaining why it is the best (in a way that is credible).
- Finally, you can now discuss the product : features, benefits, options, price …
4. He insists insists and insists
Even if your product is really fantastic, good to know by your client, and you have the perfect message, the reality is that your client is receiving thousands of impacts daily advertising messages that are competing with yours for their attention. People are protected from this barrage putting filters, barriers that permit focusing only on what you have a chance of being interesting. To pass this filter and get their attention, you have to insist: send your message over and over again, taking advantage of the characteristics of each medium, until the client realizes that there is something that might be interesting. It is that each client has many opportunities to see your message – if presented once, the probability is that it is not going to be seen.
Make no mistake, the emphasis is not the key – the quality of your product and the message is. If what you say is not interested, as you insist, I will ignore.
Nor is it to repeat the same message over and over again, like a parrot – that’s just advertising, and increasingly less effective.
You have to be present in the client’s environment , adding value, so go see that someone says something interesting. It may be advertising on Google – you get used to seeing your advertising when you go looking for what you need for your work. Search engine optimization can be – but for a wide range of criteria, not only the important ones. You may see comments, articles and news from you in doorways where it moves. Or you can point to a newsletter or your Facebook page – if you arrive here you have hit the jackpot, you have been given permission to speak directly.
Not worth to make an effort once, it quickly becomes irrelevant. You have to insist, choose the appropriate channels, and persist. In many channels (other than advertising) the effect is cumulative as your publishing and appearance, these channels become increasingly effective.
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