eMarketing Strategy

How to create competitive advantage in today's crowded eMarketing landscape

The world of online marketing (or what I prefer to call eMarketing) has changed immensely over the last few years. From the early days of email and search marketing pre 2000's to all the new developments in social media, mobile marketing and location based marketing over the last 5 years. This is both exciting but at the same time overwhelming especially for new entrants into the eMarketing industry and business owners (both small and large) whose full time job is not always marketing. So in this blog post we are going to look at three key considerations to creating an effective, well oiled eMarketing Strategy in today's changing digital landscape. 

Creating a ‘well designed' online brand presence

In today's social world it is no longer just about having a website it is about having a full and complete online presence both on your own website and the numerous other social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. Unfortunately most businesses have not even moved past the first step of having an effective website, which really is a crying shame. By creating a strong online presence through the use of good design, a strong USP (Unique selling proposition) story and on-going communication with your target audience you will create a major competitive advantage by staying top of mind of your customers.

You will also notice that the above is so much more than simply having a nice looking website and Facebook page. It is so much more strategic and on-going than one time design events as it is a process whereby you continually engage your target audience under the framework of the brand you have designed.

This leads nicely onto the next point of:

Content Creation should be your primary focus

In the past there were sneaky tricks and tactics that could be exploited to make a quick buck or two using various strategies. This is no longer the case due to two main factors of increasing competition (rate of new blogs being created is staggering!) and increasing sophistication of large online companies such as Google, Facebook etc.

So the key after planning out your online brand presence is deciding on your content creation schedule which should include a combination of both free and paid content. Free content includes things such as blog posts, podcasts and my free reports, which I give away from this website (available top right) and paid content includes items such as books, courses, software and services such as I provide to my coaching and agency clients.

Once you have decided on the type of content both free and paid it is important to decide on a content schedule for example how many blog posts will you post per month and what is the pipeline for additional paid products that you can up-sell clients on.

The next step is content syndication  

Once you have decided on your brand presence and content schedule the next important point is effectively syndicating content. By syndicating I mean distributing your content both free and paid to well known platforms that can allow your message and brand to be seen by a larger audience.

Let's have a look at some examples

If you have a blog and are writing great quality articles related to your industry it would be a sin to only leave that content on your own blog you would want to distribute in one social media (like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin) and other web properties such as Blogger, WordPress.com, Squiddo and Hubpages to name but a few. The key though is to make sure that all these web properties link back to your main branded website to get the best effect.

If you are creating audio you could again syndicate this as a podcast and publish onto iTunes and your own website. If you wanted to take this a step further you could have the audio transcribed and then you potentially have whole series of blog posts that you can syndicate on the above websites mentioned. Possibilities are endless.

Final example includes video where using the same approach you could create both a podcast and blog series through transcription. You could then again syndicate the content using all of the above websites plus the video networks like Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion etc.

Sidenote: We have a service where we can distribute you to 17 of the top video networks, which you are more than welcome to contact us about.

Don't do it all yourself

This is arguably the secret ingredient for all small businesses wanting to become larger businesses. It is especially true in the area of eMarketing as there are so many skills that need to be learnt and understood to be successful. So you need at least two people apart from yourself.

A trusted eMarketing advisor. These are people you pay to offer either completely managed eMarketing services like Paul Therond and associates or simply requesting ‘when needed' coaching to yourself and your in-house team. I would recommend for eMarketing coaching to be effective to have at least 2 strategic sessions with a quality coach every month.

The second thing you need is a personal marketing assistant. This could take a variety of forms but is important to have assistance in the area of marketing because there are so many little tasks involved which add up to quite a mountain when creating an effective marketing strategy.Possibilities here include up-skilling existing members of your staff to take on marketing responsibilities, hiring interns and work experience candidates and even hiring virtual assistant in other countries who are significantly more cost effective. The key though is having point number one in place of a trusted eMarketing advisor who can guide you and your team in the best processes to successfully implementing your marketing strategy.

Finally you need a System

If you have not already got a sense for this while reading this short expose 🙂 on eMarketing strategy there is an immense amount involved to creating an effective marketing strategy in today's competitive and changing landscape. It is this fact that causes the main reason for business failure, which is overwhelm and lack of focus on the key areas of business growth.

This is why when you are planning this critically important area of marketing your business you will need a guide to walk you through the process of creating a system. Not a huge to-do list but rather a system with a clearly defined outcome and steps that your team can work on but also highlights and plays to your strengths as the business owner or marketing director. By doing this you are ensuring that potential overwhelm and lack of focus is minimised and that you able to get more done in less time, which is really what we all want in business. 🙂

I hope you have enjoyed this longer than normal post but I really feel quite passionate about all these changes to eMarketing Strategy and would love to hear your thoughts and comments below as there is just so much more that can be said.

P.S: If you have not done so already please accept with my compliments the FREE special report on “The top 5 mistakes businesses make when advertising online” plus a free gift of Local SEO Power worth $47. This is available top right on this website.

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