You will agree with me if I tell you that the strategy is one of the most complicated things to set up and carry out in the world of Online Marketing.
As I know first-hand this need, the result of more than 8 years in the sector, today in this post I want to make your life a little easier thanks, neither more nor less, than 70 Online Marketing strategies that you can implement one by one to May your project grow.
As today’s article is long, we start without further delay:
SEO strategies that you should implement
Next, I show you 10 SEO strategies and actions for you to implement in your project:
1. Get ideas from the competition
My first advice is to use your competitors to find valuable ideas, especially at the keyword level and positioning strategy in general.
Be careful, I am not saying that you copy them, you should always improve everything you see and, on the other hand, if you limit yourself to seeing what your competition does and copying it, you will always be one step behind.
Use it as a source of inspiration, if someone else has already done a Keyword Research for you, why not start from him?
2. Study the top 10 before writing
Before you start writing content that you want to position, you must do something very simple:
- Search for the keyword for which you want to position in the search engine.
- Study the type of content you are ranking for.
- Do something similar, but much better.
With this I want to tell you that, if Google is rewarding product pages for a keyword, it would be very rare for you to position yourself with blog content, don’t you think?
3. Don’t forget the LSI
The Latent Semantic Index (LSI) is very important to position today, and it will be even more so in the future.
To improve it “only” you must introduce synonyms and related terms in the post in order to make it more attractive to the search engine.
If you wonder which ones, the answer is in the competition (once again).
4. Make a Guest Post per month (at least)
Guest articles are a very useful weapon for any project since:
- You introduce yourself to other like-minded communities.
- You get links to improve the relevance of your site.
Yes, I know that it is time consuming and sometimes tough negotiations, but it is so worth it.
5. Upload content, download images
If you want to improve the stay time of your project, try uploading the content to the top of the body and lowering the first image or leaving it relegated to a corner, you will see how the user starts reading earlier.
Of course, in addition to this you need to touch up the first paragraphs of the content of your articles as much as possible since, if you do not hook your readers, it will be of little use to put them to read.
6. Republish your content
If you want to have a second chance so that your content ranks better, you have it very simple:
Change the content of a post that is not positioning as you want, put the current date on it, and republish it, you will see how it rises in position.
7. Write less, promote more
You can write the best content in the world, but if you don’t promote it properly, no one will see it, and it won’t do any good.
Therefore, my advice is to spend 70-80% of the time promoting, and only 20-30% creating content, you will see how your numbers improve.
8. Change the publication date
I told you about it in point 6, changing the publication date means that, for a short time, you have a little turbo in the search engine and, if your behavior during that turbo is good, you can gain a few positions.
Now, this is not a panacea and you should not abuse it, just as important as changing the date is modifying the content.
9. Concentrate your blog content in a single post
The trend of the search engine is that each time they position longer and longer posts, and I am sure that you have created a series or that you have related articles that would go very well together.
If this is the case, my recommendation is that you merge these articles into one and redirect the old ones to this one first.
10. Redirect URLs with no traffic
If you have articles without traffic and you don’t want to change the content because you didn’t do the Keyword Research well at the time (don’t worry, it’s happened to all of us), the solution is simpler than you think:
Put a 301 redirection towards related content so as not to lose relevance and improve the Crawl Budget.
SEM strategies that are a must
Now we move on to the next point, the SEM strategies, we continue with the count!
11. Synchronize AdWords and Analytics
The first thing you should do when you start an AdWords campaign is nothing more or less than hook it up with Google Analytics. If you do that, you will have much easier information management, which is the most important thing in any campaign.
12. Check the words that do not bring you conversions
One of the things that you should monitor regularly are the keywords that consume budget and do not give you sales.
With these types of words you must be up to date, pause them and, if you want, try them at another time, but following them very, very, very hand in hand.
13. ROI is measured by margin
In any Marketing plan, ROI is one of the metrics that is very present, but it is often done wrong!
If you want to measure the ROI well, you should never look at the billing, instead, you should do it at the margin, that is, at what you earn for each sale of each product.
Yes, it is clear that studying the margin of each product is somewhat tedious, but it is of vital importance if you want to know how your project is going, as well as if you are making money or not.
14. Make a Remarketing campaign
One of the things that usually works to improve the acquisition numbers of a campaign is everything that has to do with Remarketing.
That’s why I recommend that, if you haven’t tried it yet in your project, you do it today.
15. If you have an eCommerce, make this Remarketing dynamic
If you have a catalog with several products (especially if you have many) hosted on an online commerce platform like Tiendanube, my recommendation is that you do not stick to a typical Remarketing campaign.
It is that you go a little further and carry out a Dynamic Remarketing, it is much more powerful at the recruitment level and, on the other hand, today with some eCommerce tools you have everything simpler.
16. Study your competition to find gaps
In the SEM you bid against other brands, and that competition can be fierce.
For this reason, you should study it to see what keywords it is bidding for and which others slipped in when setting up the campaign, so you can bid on keywords with less competition and, with this, you can have more impressions for each sale.
17. Do not invest less than €2,000/month in AdWords
AdWords is not for everyone, in fact, if you want to get good results, it is expensive.
I’ll tell you a little more: if you invest little money, the difference between the success and failure of a campaign is normally a sale, and of course, that is not statistically consistent.
In addition, no matter how well you invest a little, you will earn little, therefore, so that you can see it in your income statement, the standard viable minimum is usually €2,000/month.
If you do not have that amount, you have to try other ways.
18. Pause anything that doesn’t convert
One of the main tasks in an SEM campaign is to be reviewing keywords every day and pausing those that do not convert in a certain time.
It is a labor-intensive task, but essential to maximize profits.
19. Do not focus so much on the position
The position in Google AdWords is important, but infinitely less than the conversion.
I have seen SEM projects that were very profitable playing with positions from 11 to 20 in ads, since the price per bid drops to the ground and, however, the quality of the visits does not have to.
Obviously, you have to create much more extensive campaigns in terms, but who said fear?
20. Test different creatives
Whenever you do a Display campaign, try very different creatives, some that are more corporate and others more emotional, some lighter and others darker, etc.
As always, try and stick with the one that converts the best.
Social Media also plays strong
If something has democratized Social Networks, it is that today no project comes to mind without having at least one Facebook account, so I lend you these 10 strategies:
21. Define which Social Networks you are going to be on
I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t be in all of them, because just thinking about it is already crazy (you can’t even imagine the hundreds of relevant Social Networks that exist), I’m going to go a little further.
You must define very well which ones you are going to be in, determine the budget and the resources that you are going to put into each one of them before getting down to work, without it, you are lost.
22. Define the time you are going to spend on each of them
As I mentioned before, your strategy must be defined by the time you are thinking of investing in it, and carry out actions that are consistent with this period.
If you don’t, you run the risk that this part starts to cannibalize the time of other parts of the strategy, and you won’t get the numbers you want.
23. Don’t take it too seriously
Social Networks are not serious and, in fact, the brands that are have many problems since:
- Not too many people follow them.
- It costs them a lot for each new fan/follower.
- They are breeding grounds for trolls.
That is why you should always adhere to the language and tone of each channel, always within your corporate strategy, relax and enjoy.
24. There is no Social Network without Advertising
If you want to grow on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you have no choice but to checkout, in fact, whenever I say in any Online Marketing strategy course that I teach that Social Networks are a freemium element, I explain myself:
- It is free for the user, who pays for the service with their data.
- It is paid for by companies, which buy this data to grow.
So define a budget and a maximum acquisition cost and get down to work.
25. Use Facebook Ads
Normally, Facebook occupies 70% of the resources allocated to Social Media and, with this, it should also occupy at least 70% of the Advertising budget allocated to these channels.
Depending on your sector and expertise you will have an acquisition cost or another, but without it, forget about growing.
26. Always measure CPF
The main metric when making a Facebook Ads campaign is the CPF or Cost per Fan, it must be very present in your strategy and, in fact, you must set a desirable cost and a maximum initial cost that you must not exceed.
27. Study each Social Network separately
When choosing whether to enter a new Social Network or not, I strongly recommend that you set aside time in your strategic plan to study it and its usefulness separately.
This mini-market study will help you make a decision about whether to enter or not.
28. Use more images and less text
No matter what Social Network we are talking about, all of them tend to have more and more images, GIFs and videos, as well as less text.
In the event that you are forced to write, do not put more than two lines before the content, you will see how your engagement rate goes up.
29. Measure yourself with the competition, but with a head
The competition is a very good point of reference and you should measure yourself against it, but always taking into account your resources and what you think they have.
If you don’t do it this way, in most cases it’s going to lead to frustration and hurt your project, and that’s not what you want.
30. What matters is being brave
In Social Networks, the one who is brave wins, that is clear.
Of course, you can also miss him being brave, but hey, it’s part of the game, so you know, go out and have fun.
Email Marketing: The Great Undervalued
Email Marketing strategies in a project are usually the most profitable, but also the great forgotten ones, here are 10 tips to take them to another level.
31. Hire a professional mailing service
First of all: If you want to do Email Marketing and you don’t have a professional tool, you can forget about having good results.
For this reason, before getting down to work you should get into Doppler and hire the plan that best suits you, do not leave it for later, or you will be losing money.
32. Create autoresponders for each channel and input type
Once a user is registered in your List, you must have prepared automatic response Emails personalized by the channel and by how that user entered.
It might sound crazy to you, but that’s the beauty of automation, you can do this just once and review it every month!
33. Create different workflows
Once the user enters your List and receives the content that he was looking for, you cannot stop there: you must create workflows that bring him closer to the final sale.
Again, all of this can be automated and indeed should be done.
34. Hypersegmentation is easier than you thought
Hyper-segmentation is the best thing to sell more, since it allows you to know your user inside out and, in fact, there are a lot of Online Marketing strategies that are based on hyper-segmenting everything they can as if there were no tomorrow.
Well, that in Email Marketing is super simple: you just have to monitor which link each user clicks on and automatically take them to a specific List.
In a short time, you will have your hyper-segmented Database.
35. Make them click on “Reply”
If you want to avoid falling into the Promotions folder and much less in the Spam folder, you should try real interaction with the user from the first email.
To do this you must encourage him to press the “Reply” button and reply to the Email, whatever it may be. As soon as you get it once, you’re in.
36. If you have something important, put it at the end of each email
I am going to give you an example: in my blog I have a VIP Area only for Subscribers that is entered by password, how do I make sure that a contact always has it at hand?
Simple, I put a paragraph at the end of each Email remembering what the URL of that VIP Area is and offering the password, so it is always available.
Well, that goes for the most important part of your project, without exception.
37. Do A/B Test on each shipment
Another of the things that I like the most about Email Marketing is that you can perform A/B Test both in the Subject and in the content.
That is why in each shipment I do an A/B Test in the same way:
- I send Email A and Email B to 20% of the total Database.
- I wait 2 hours.
- To the remaining 80% I send the option that has had the most openings.
With this I make sure that in each Campaign the majority of users see the most optimized version.
38. Do not use images if it is not strictly necessary
The images are nice, but they have a problem: if the user does not click on “See all the images in this Email”, they will not see them.
And don’t kid yourself, you never do it, so why would anyone else?
Therefore, my recommendation is that, as far as possible, you send Emails without images.
39. Study the response of your community
Each community is different and moves in a different way, that’s why I always urge you to try a lot, to make mistakes, in order to, in the long run, offer what your community is waiting for and, with it, get you to bill more.
Here what counts is personal experience, there is no other way.
40. Measure sales, always
If Email Marketing has something, it is that you can push the user towards sales, yes, to measure the real power of it, you must evaluate as accurately as possible the billing and the margin that this channel gives you.
With this you will be able to define the ROI and, if you do it well, I assure you that it will surprise you.
Digital analytics strategies
Next block: let’s talk about digital analytics strategies, let’s see what you think.
41. Do not look so much at the sessions
The number of sessions is a fact that is good to look at, but it is by no means the most important thing in almost any strategy.
Having said that, as I’m sure you’ll be quite obsessed with it, try to relax, there are other obsessions that I’m going to tell you about now…
42. Pay more attention to the length of stay and page views
There is a maxim in Online Marketing: the longer and more pages a user sees in a project, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
If this is true in 90% of cases, why don’t you look at the time spent per page, the time spent on the site and the number of page views per user?
With this, try to set trends and plan changes to improve these metrics.
43. Also look at the number of recurring visits
Another truth at the general Online Marketing level: recurring users have a higher conversion rate than new ones.
In fact, I can tell you that I have managed projects where returning users had a conversion rate that was up to 7 times that of new ones.
That being the case, the strategy is clear: convert new users into recurring ones and, once you achieve this, it will be much easier for you to sell to them.
Don’t try to skip steps, it won’t work!
44. Study traffic sources and their meaning
In a project it is of vital importance that you understand all the sources of visits, especially the Referral Traffic.
This is important because it comes from links that users (or yourself) put on third-party sites that, if you’re a smart guy like you are, you’ll want to know to the millimeter to know if you can learn more about them, right?
45. Use Google Analytics Annotations
Every time I do a guest post, rewrite a post in depth, or if there’s a major algorithm change, I put an annotation in my Google Analytics.
Thanks to this I can see after the changes in the traffic of specific URLs, of the project in general and many other nice things.
46. Monitor organic traffic a lot
The normal thing is that 70% of the traffic to your site is organic and, since it is going to be the primary capture by far, you should study it in detail.
You must take into account not only the number of visits, but also their quality (once again, length of stay and page views per user), as well as seasonality.
Simply by doing this, you have a lot of gain.
47. Study the URLs with the most traffic
The URLs with the most traffic (also called Landing Pages in the purest Old School style) are the most important in your project, so you should study them down to the millimeter.
The good part is that they are not going to be more than 10 or 15 pages, so you have a lot of time to manage them well and improve them.
48. Study the URLs that do not have any traffic
On the other hand, you must keep in mind the URLs that do not have any organic traffic, either to completely rewrite the content or to redirect them to others, yes, do not leave them lying around without rhyme or reason.
You are warned.
49. Create at least one goal
If you have a site, whatever it is, you will have at least one objective.
Well, that objective must be reflected in Google Analytics and, if you have never created one, I have to tell you that it is much simpler than you think.
50. Create a conversion funnel, whether or not you have sales
Finally, I recommend that you carry out a Conversion Funnel, either at a monetary level (that is, sales) or not (for example, data capture or telephone contacts).
To do this you must define the URLs with the different steps (micro-goals) and thus you will be able to see how they fall through it.
Alternative media strategies
I want to give you 10 tips that are totally out of the box and that, for many projects, have been a very important point in their growth.
51. If you sell, use affiliation
Affiliate Marketing is very useful because it allows you to improve sales with a risk that is practically zero and, in addition, it gives you free Advertising and Branding.
Therefore, if you sell and have a more or less managed margin, you have the obligation to use Affiliate Marketing, no more, no less.
52. Make stickers, and put them
Guerrilla Marketing is something that I especially like, so if you have a project and you’re not shy, one of the things you can do is a lot of stickers and then put them wherever you want.
And when I say “wherever you want” I mean from giving them to your friends to sticking them on traffic signs.
53. Make a calendar of face-to-face events
If you want promotion, you should let yourself be seen in society, do effective networking and, who knows, maybe be a speaker at one of them?
For this, the first step is to create a calendar of face-to-face events, my recommendation is that you go to one a month and get everything you can from it.
54. Try to reach strategic agreements
One of the reasons why I am writing here is because after talking to Doppler and testing the tool we hit it off very well and believed that we could add value, and as a result, we both benefited.
If I have achieved something like this, why can’t you do it?
55. Keep in mind Proximity Marketing
If you are lucky enough (and have a mortgage) to have an offline business with all the expenses that it entails, I suggest you study very carefully everything that has to do with Proximity Marketing because, although the implementation status is currently limited, in 2 years maximum will be in full swing.
And I assure you that you want to be among the first.
56. Have you thought about making an app?
One of the things that well managed (and by well managed I mean with an efficient budget, scope and strategy) can give you a lot of joy, that’s why I ask you, have you thought about making one for your project?
57. Promote yourself with a podcast
Lately we are experiencing a very interesting revival of podcasts, keep in mind that people wear them at work, when traveling or when they go running.
The competition is rather limited and there are quite a few relevant programs in each sector, so go for them.
58. Make yourself some t-shirts
If you liked the sticker theme, why not some cool t-shirts?
The design will cost you very little and the printing less than what a normal t-shirt costs you on the street.
The good part is that you can use them in your events, and your branding will skyrocket.
59. Word of mouth is very important
As much as online networking is essential, word of mouth is vitally important.
To make it effective for your project, what does not usually fail is to differentiate yourself as much as possible from the rest of the competition, so you will position yourself in the market efficiently.
60. Consider getting into an association
One of the best places to network and go to industry events is to join an association.
Normally there are several in all sectors and they tend to be based in most provinces, so why not consider it?
Business strategies, for the end, the best part
Now that we have separate pieces, the high point of any Online Marketing plan is to put all the pieces together and make it work, and for that business strategies are essential.
61. Set goals at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months
One of the most effective ways to grow is to have a dashboard with KPIs and monitor them in this way:
- Month by month you update the data.
- Every quarter you do an in-depth report.
- Every 6 months you rethink the next campaign (mid-year).
- Every 12 months you set a strategy for the next 3 years.
If you add to this that you must define the objectives (with numbers) for all these dates, you will have a living and at the same time ordered strategy.
62. Check the relative weights of each channel and their attribution
You must review how many channels you are going to use (SEO, SEM, Social Media, etc.), what relative weight it is going to have in the strategy, that is, how many resources you are going to dedicate to it and, something even more important: how much they influence sales.
To do this, I recommend that you study the attribution models and choose the one that best suits your project.
63. Define the main objective of the project
It will sound like a joke, but in more than half of the projects I know, when I have asked the CEO about his general objective, he has replied that he did not know, that he had to think about it.
If you don’t want the same thing to happen to you, think about it at the beginning, and it is vitally important that this general objective has a number, for example:
- I want to make 1,500 sales this year.
- I want to invoice €120,000 in the next 12 months.
- I want to have 50,000 active users/month within a year.
Each of these is valid (separately) as a general objective.
64. Define the general objective per channel
Once you have the general objective of your project, you have to define the general objective of each channel, in the same way, I am going to give you an example:
- I want to have 20,000 visits/month of organic traffic.
- I want to have 30,000 new fans on Facebook in 12 months.
- I want to grow around 2,000 Emails/month in the next 6 months.
65. Make your global strategy without dead ends
Already in that great book that is “The Art of War” it says that:
When the enemy has no way out, he will fight to the death.
Something similar happens to the user, if the strategy leads to a dead end, he will leave and never come back, and reactivating it will be much more complicated.
Therefore, whenever you define an action or a campaign in your Marketing strategy, always go for the next step.
66. Measure every month, but not every day
Measurements are vital, but if you spend a lot of time measuring you can suffer from what is called “Analysis Paralysis”, and you don’t want that either.
That is why my recommendation is that you measure once a month or, if you have a very high-volume project, once every 15 days.
The reason: it is the ideal time to see trends.
67. Try to improve conversion
In fact, I am going to go further: if you want your Marketing strategy to be the best you can do, you should try to optimize the conversion in each process, objective and micro objective.
If you do it this way, you will always optimize the general conversion of the site, which is what you are looking for.
68. Set micro goals per channel and campaign
Once you define a campaign and its general objective, you must walk backwards to visualize the exact steps that a user must take to reach that objective.
Well, you can call that micro-goals, you have to set them and monitor them.
69. Review your Customer Journey
Another important thing is that you carry out the entire process as if you were just another user, for this you must get as far away as possible, detoxify yourself and carry out the processes, pointing out the errors and coherence failures that you detect.
70. And, above all: spend time on what is important
A normal project is governed by the 80/20 law, that is, 80% of the turnover comes from 20% of the shares.
For this reason, it is of utmost importance that you identify the actions and/or reasons why you are invoicing and the best ones to infinity, spending time where the money is.
With this you already have neither more nor less than 70 Marketing strategies to improve your project, so I have to ask you, which of these are you going to start with?
