Why a Strategic Marketing Formula is Critical to Your Online Business Success.
First, let’s answer the question, “what is a strategic marketing formula?” Today more than ever, savvy company owners are beginning to realize the importance of online marketing for their business survival and success. Many even understand the more technical components involved with online marketing strategies & actually developing a strategic marketing formula. Without a defined strategic marketing formula, there is no plan, no blueprint, no step by step series of tasks to follow.
But the big picture often escapes the well-meaning entrepreneur, who falls just short of making the final connection needed to take their marketing efforts from good intentions to powerful results. If you think about it, it’s like working at a job but not sticking around to collect the paycheck. Collecting your paycheck is part of your strategic formula even though, in most cases, it's automatic. Doesn’t make much sense to invest your valuable time and effort without a complete plan or strategy, does it?
If you’re going to invest your company’s time and budget dollars into a marketing strategy, be sure to have a strategic marketing formula to connect all the pieces and push your marketing efforts over the top. There must be a collaborative interaction between all components of a marketing campaign, to make each one as powerfully effective as it can be. Even if you understand a formula is not set in stone, needs to be flexible and requires ongoing evaluation and modification, you must understand that no formula means no plan to adjust and evaluate. That equals "flying blind".
A successful strategic marketing formula boils down to 3 foundational elements: get found, convert, analyze plus all the elements that define these 3 elements as best you can.
To expand on these strategic marketing formula fundamentals...
Get Found – This is of course the most readily recognized marketing component. Anyone who owns a business knows that in order to generate revenue online, their customers must first FIND them. In the online marketing world, this is accomplished by search engine placement, blog popularity and wide-reaching social networking connections, among others. In my experience, one of the most overlooked element that fuels these components in the strategic marketing formula. This needs to be defined and created to get the best from SEO, blog & social media activity.
Convert – So you brought visitors to your web site, now you’ve got to convert them to qualified leads for your business. Window shopping is fine, but you eventually want your visitors to take action, (opt-in to your e-mail list, comment on your articles, and ultimately to buy). This objective is reached using many devices such as compelling promotional content, sense of urgency and call to action, to name a few.
Analyze – This is likely the most critical component to your online marketing formula – and unfortunately, the most often over looked. You must examine the activity generated by your marketing efforts, so that you can determine the strengths and weaknesses in your online marketing campaigns, and make adjustments where necessary. Without this all-important piece of the puzzle, you can’t get the maximum benefit of the aforementioned online marketing fundamentals. 
Any business coach will tell you that if you want your business to be successful, you must have a plan. You wouldn’t set out in your car to go shopping without first knowing where to find the store -- you could drive around in circles, wasting gasoline, wasting time, wasting energy – without ever reaching your target destination.
Running a business without a plan is no more productive than driving around in circles. And running an online marketing campaign without a strategic marketing formula is no exception to this principle. Your marketing plan is your blueprint for connecting all the dots – and making each one count.
When it comes to online marketing, it is unwise to “build the plane as you fly it”. For explosive success in any marketing endeavor, you must have a plan... a strategic marketing formula. Don’t skip on YOUR payday by dropping the ball at the online marketing finish line!
Summary: A complete & successful strategic marketing plan include a strategy that supports the efforts to get found on the major search engines, increase your readership through blog development and promote your message through social media platforms. Your strategic marketing formula then needs to include tactics and a method of converting traffic into leads. Finally, accurate evaluation and adjustments allow you to understand how well this startegic marketing formula is actually working & what level of ROI is being achieved.
Use our Inbound Marketing White Paper to help you understand this methodology even better:
