Why You Need An Online Business Strategy

You have a choice when it comes to doing online business marketing ... you can either ignore it, delegate it, or you can abdicate it! ...

One of the ironies of making so much information on ways to increase web traffic, get higher search engine results, improve sales conversion, etc. so freely or inexpensively available, is that most people not only find themselves nowadays drowning in an ocean of data, misinformation and hype, but also struggling to make sense of all this overwhelming and time-consuming information.

The truth is, most businesses simply don't have time to become expert online marketers AND also run their business at the same time. Both of these areas require a great deal of expertise and a significant investment of time, money and effort in order to be successful.

To grow any business online successfully, for example, requires a great deal of expertise in areas like ...

• Knowing how to research the market, how to convert this research into a cost-effective plan for building, growing and expanding your business online, and when to implement the strategies in the plan that will help you achieve specific goals.
• Continually researching and testing new methods to drive traffic to your site.
• Continually researching and testing ways to convert visitors into new leads and sales for your business.
• Knowing how to promote and market yourself successfully online.
• Being able to quickly assess which online marketing activities are opportunities worth pursuing that are going to help you achieve your goals, and which will potentially turn into costly and time-wasting distractions.
• Knowing how to test, track and measure your performance online, so you can improve on the strategies that are working and eliminate those that are not. 
• Knowing how to research and ethically "spy" on your competition - what they are doing and how they are doing it.
• Keeping up with new technologies, trends, methods and techniques that will help to position your products and services ahead of your competitors.
• Knowing how to leverage and automate your business processes online to save time, reduce costs, better manage your infrastructure and improve the quality of your customer service
• And so much more ...

So ... how can you develop the online marketing expertise required to ensure the survival of your business in today's ultra competitive landscape AND still find time to run a business that probably takes up more time already than you have available?

The answer is ... you can't! Not if you're trying to do this all by yourself.

You have a choice when it comes to doing online business marketing ... you can either ignore it, delegate it, or you can abdicate it!

Realistically speaking, there are very few businesses today that can ignore having an effective online presence and survive, let alone thrive. This, then, leaves us with the other two options.

Many businesses and companies think they are "delegating" their online marketing responsibilities when they employ SEO agencies, internet marketers, and sometimes even members of their staff to create the desired results. 9 out of 10 times, however, chances are that the business owner or company manager has just "abdicated" this vital and important area of their business.

Here's the reason why ...

Let's say two competing small businesses attend an internet marketing seminar, where they are shown how "blogging" about their business on a regular basis can increase visitors to their site and lead to more sales of their products.

Both businesses decide to set up a business blog as part of their online marketing strategy.

Business #1

Business #1 wants to save money, so they consult with a friend, who advises them to set up a free blog at Blogger.com. They then ask their web design company to add a link from their website to their new blog. In the meantime, they are approached by an SEO company, who guarantees to improve their Google rankings and sells them a low monthly cost SEO package. Included in this package is a commitment to supply the business with a number of SEO optimized articles that they can add to their blog each month. The SEO company creates articles and blog posts cheaply for their clients by outsourcing the content writing to freelance writers in developing countries.

Business #1 now has a business blog and content to post to their blog on a regular basis.

Business #2

Business #2 did not start their online marketing with a blog. Instead, what they did first since they were just starting out, was to invest a little money into doing online market research about their business, to get a better idea of which niches in their market are worth pursuing, how much it will cost them to increase their market share in these niches and which methods will yeld the best returns on investment.

They then used this research to create a strategic online business plan. This plan not only included using a blog as a strategy to help them grow their business, but also a recommendation that they create their blog on their own domain and have it configured so that the blog automatically notifies search engines as soon as new content is published.

Additionally, the service they used also provided them with a "blog content blueprint", specifying exactly how they should structure their blog for optimal search engine ranking, the exact keywords and keywords phrases they should create their blog content about, and how to set up a system that will help them monitor the behaviour of visitors on their blog and continue to gather search data and intelligence about their market that can be used to further improve their results.

Armed with this strategic information, Business 2# then hired an article writing service to create their blog content and gave them exact instructions about the articles they needed written. This article writing company also creates articles and blog posts cheaply for their clients by outsourcing the content writing to freelance writers in developing countries, but the content is created specifically as per the instructions given to them by the owners of Business #2.

Business #2 also has a business blog now and content to post to their blog on a regular basis.

In the above example, you can see that Business #1 "abdicated" on their blog marketing responsibilities by expecting the SEO company they hired to write content for their blog to somehow be able to accurately guess what customers in their client's market are really looking for. Business #1 has a blog, but no real strategy for growing their business online using their blog. This is simply a "me too" approach, commonly used by many businesses who don't really know what they are doing, but believe (often in desperation to keep their businesses alive) that doing something is better than doing nothing.

Business #2 illustrates the approach of an organization that knows how to approach things strategically and that can delegate what needs to be done, because they are working from a plan. They can outsource their content to external providers - even to freelance writers in foreign countries who will do the work cheaply, because they know exactly what they are paying the writers to create (if the quality of the article is poor, they can just look for someone else), what the content is supposed to do to help them achieve their goals and where this component fits in in the overall strategy of the business.

If your business or company is more inclined to approach your online business marketing like Business #2 above, then we can help you. Please contact us to discuss how we can set up a winning online business strategy for your business.

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