Strategy is a plan that defines the ways to attain objectives and goals. The objectives of an entity define what the entity wants to achieve, whereas strategy spells out how to achieve those. Hence before framing strategies it is a prerequisite to define the objectives. Internet promotion, due to its many advantages, is increasingly being included, by business entities, in their overall promotion strategy. Like all promotion plans internet marketing plan is also allocated a budget.
The digital strategy includes domain acquisition, website(s) design plan and marketing plan; the implementation of digital marketing is done through SEO, PPC and Social networking. Few tips of implementing digital strategy can be creating professional groups like LinkedIn group, publishing content on niche blogs, creating videos for You tube, writing on industry issues, writing online press releases, running contests, blogging, building a network on Facebook and advertising on twitter. Implementation of digital strategy needs to be backed by a well thought content strategy. Content should be developed keeping in mind the needs and preferences of the target audience and should be interesting. Internet users are users who typically search for information, learn, share, research and shop. Different types of content is needed to cater to these different types of internet usage, for example, advertisement content can have catchy one liners, sales promotion can announce benefits and discounts, whereas research content needs to be informative and interesting. Content can also be enhanced by using graphics and audio visual aids. The entire content strategy aids in developing the brand.
One of the many advantages of internet promotion is measurability. Implementation of strategy will yield results, and these results should be measured periodically and compared with the goals and targets, for monetary goals, the results can be compared with the investments made. If the results are favorable, then present strategy should be continued and further strengthened; however, if results are not favorable or lacking, then one or more of the strategies should be revised. Changeability and manageability is another advantage of the online medium of promotion. No other medium of promotion allows such ease of introducing changes.
The effectiveness of online promotion can be gauged by data and source on visits, bounce rate, pages per visit, search keywords, traffic from search engines, enquiries and sales. Such data can be tracked by setting up analytics account such as Google analytics account through main Google account. The data so obtained can help in analyzing the number of visits attained, the sources from which these visits were generated, the number of visits converted to sales etc.
