understand internet marketing benoit gaillard - wsi - sep 2011

Copyright Benoit Gaillard 2011 ©

Grow your business by investing online. Understand Internet marketing and prioritize your online marketing investment.

Benoît Gaillard Internet Marketing Entrepreneur in Switzerland Member of WSI – largest network of Internet Marketing Experts worldwide [email protected] www.wsibusinessperformance.com

Abstract: Internet Marketing is about driving your business: recruiting new customers, filling your sales pipeline with new leads, building your reputation online for improved credibility. Internet Marketing complements the traditional word of mouth and other offline advertising activities. Benoit Gaillard WSI Business Performance proposes 5 steps of Internet Marketing: specific measurable business objectives, pragmatic marketing strategies inspiring the choices of internet solutions to generate targeted traffic, a conversion strategy to convert visitors into buyers, a measurement system to assess which activity is most efficient in driving new business. WSI: We Simplify Internet, understand how Internet Marketing is a profitable investment to drive your business. Keywords: Internet Marketing, lead generation, customer communication, online reputation, return on investment What’s in it for you? 1. Why you must invest online 2. How to prioritize Internet marketing solutions based on your business objectives 3. WSI We Simplify Internet – what’s behind the infamous SEO, SEA, PPC, SMO, SEM 4. Internet Solutions are good, Content is King 5. Customers look for your products/services anywhere, anytime – go Mobile 6. You get what you measure: Analytics 7. How to get started


1. Why you must invest online Here are 3 simple questions and pragmatic solutions to understand the potential of internet marketing for your business: 1. Do you know how many people actually search for your products or services online? Use keywordspy.com -‐ select keywords and type in search terms your prospects are likely using to find your products and services. 2. Do you know how people rate / talk about your products or services online? 3. Do you know what your competition is saying online? Google your company, your name, your competitors. Check consumer rating sites such as yelp.com, google reviews. Search facebook, Twitter, Quora, Wikipedia, Youtube, Slideshare to assess who is building an credible expertise in your industry. Internet is an established source of information, communication, entertainment across age groups, dayparts. End 2009, 75% of Swiss people were using Internet between 10am and 9pm. Internet is used either standalone or in combination with other media augmenting the user experience.

Whether serving business clients or end-‐consumers, Internet plays a key role in your purchasing decision process. Consumers first browse on the internet to find competitive offerings, they then use internet to compare / benchmark, when ready to purchase they actually look for promotional offer to make the actual purchase either off or online.


Actually a study from Mc Kinsey from the French government highlighted that 1€ invested online brings 2.5€ in profit and that Small and Medium size companies that invested online are more successful exporting.

Now where to invest?


2. How to prioritize Internet marketing solutions based on your business objectives First and foremost, let me clear the obvious but common mistake: building a website without investing to drive traffic to it. This is like opening a store on a closed street. You can replace the investment in a full fledged website by smartly leveraging social networks (facebook, linkedin, twitter), blogs, content sharing portal (slideshare, scribd, youtube, flickr) to make your brand, product, services visible. If you need one place to store all that content and build a visual identity for the brand then start with a blog. A blog makes it easy to bring new content. Blog design can be cheap if you leverage standard design templates. So Internet Marketing is not about building websites, it is about generating targeted traffic and converting it to meet your business objective. For instance for AUDYVA.ch, one of my clients, we started by creating landing pages (audyva.ch/swissinstituteforappreciativeinquiry) and driving traffic through Google advertising. The main blog (audyva.ch) was developed in parallel and used to implement off-‐page SEO, syndicating content across social networks to build online reputation.

PPC, SEO, SEM, SMO, SEA … three letter acronyms that hide a BIG opportunity but certainly confuse most business owners. I am interested in driving business for my customers, not selling solutions. So let me help you decide where to invest for the biggest bang for your buck.

Be visible when and where PROSPECTS are receptive to your

message

Generate targeted traf@ic driving VISITORS to a

landing web page, facebook fan page

Convert visitors into CLIENTS by

providing convincing call to action

Measure which activity is most ef@icient, optimize

content and solutions


Every business needs 3 things: -‐ lead generation -‐ credibility and brand awareness -‐ customer communication.

This is simple but powerful! 3 jobs to be done:

-‐ lead generation = get new customers -‐ credibility and brand awareness = give people a reason to buy me -‐ customer communication = keep the discussion going with my prospects,

customers, lapsed users. This is relevant for the biggest brands, a local restaurant, a service company – this is relevant to your business! The chart below shows you how to prioritize and match Internet marketing strategies to meet your business goals.

Thanks to François Muscat WSI expert in Digital Marketing Strategies who put this chart together based on his extensive experience with small and med size companies. Choose the solution with the highest priority as defined by your business objective. So that if you want to generate leads, the tactic to use is Google Pay Per Click. Back to the diagram, if we look at the lead generation column in red, we can see that Google pay per click is the best choice to generate leads. This is because we can get a result on Google within 24 hours using paid search. For some businesses, you may want to use a combination of Google / Facebook / Linkedin pay-‐per-‐click advertising.

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Once we have worked out the best keywords for Google pay per click, we would then use these keywords to search engine optimise your website. Search engine optimisation helps you create an asset of your website and as you get higher rankings you rely less on paying Google for your advertising. If building an online brand is your primary business objective for the year, you will use a combination of social marketing, content marketing to build your online reputation. Search Engine Optimisation helps you build online brand and credibility because you would be ranked for more content on Google. Content marketing is definitely the best way to be seen as a thought leader and you will create an asset out of your website by regularly adding content people are searching for. Content and Links from social networks are valued by Google because people share it meaning it must be relevant. Therefore creating content and links in social media provides us with a great way to build brand as well as communicating with customers/prospects. You may use Google pay per click tactically to bid on your name to protect it. So use this diagram to help you prioritize your digital marketing budget. It is also a great page to share with your management team to show the type of tactics that you can use to help the support your business objectives for the year. Now let me clarify what’s behind the 3 letter acronyms because you will face those in your discussions with agencies, in your quest for solutions online:


3. WSI We Simplify Internet – what’s behind the infamous SEO, SEA, PPC, SMO, SEM SEA: Search Engine Advertising = Advertise when and where customers look for your services. When customers search for keywords related to your business, your advertising will appear in search engines. You pay only when customers click on those advertisements. Google Adwords and similar services from Yahoo!, Bing allow you to generate those ads, define the keywords you want to bid for and track results, budget. It is important to create landing page optimized for the same keywords you are building on in Google Adwords, this will ensure you display relevant content and present promotional offers to convert visitors into clients. Google value a good match of keywords across search terms, ads text, landing page; this will increase your quality score and increase efficiency for the same budget. SEO: Search Engine Optimization = Improve your visibility in search engine by optimizing the structure of your website and the content you put in your website. Improving visibility in search engine means that you get better ranking (appear closer to 1st results on Google) and that you get more than 1 result in Google (image, video, address/place, blog, social media …). The key to SEO is to define keywords – ie the set of words that your clients are likely to search for in Google. If you look for new customers, they are likely to search for the solution, generic description of your service, possibly your competitor brand. PPC: Pay Per Click. Usually refers to SEA as defined above as you pay for the advertising only when users click on it. It can also refer to advertising banners on websites or social networks when pay-‐per-‐click applies. SEM: Search Engine Marketing is the combination of SEO and SEA – that is how to make your brand / service / product visible in search engine either from organic or natural results or paid advertising. SMO: Social Media Optimization. SMO is being active in social networks but in a way that is optimized for online visibility. SMO also tackles how to improve ranking in search engine of the social networks themselves: ie when searching directly in facebook, youtube … Activities on social networks (Facebook, Google, Youtube, Linkedin, Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, Scribd to quote the iconic ones) are more and more valued by search engine to determine the relevance and quality of your content and therefore decide how much of a priority to give it in search engine results (ranking). The reason for this, if others like what you say then it must be good


Do you like what I am saying in this report, then please share it: -‐ Connect with my network on linkedin -‐ Stay up-‐to-‐date on Digital Marketing following me on Twitter and Facebook -‐ Register for webinars presenting solutions impacting your business: WSI Business Performance newsletter Now you have an idea for the kind of solutions you need based on your business objective. Having a solution is like buying a house, now to get friends to visit you, you need to give it a soul, decorate, bring furniture in, hopefully family and kids … beyond the solution, you need to create content. This is often overlooked by my customers yet remains the best way to make difference.


4. Internet Solutions are good, Content is King You need content if you have decided to advertise on search engine with pay-‐per-‐click, run onpage and offpage search engine optimization or become active on social networks. Content is the message you use on the landing page to convert visitors into clients when they click on your Google adword. Content is the webpage, images, videos you will add to your website to increase visibility for specific keywords on your website. Content is the on-‐going updates you post on social networks. Fresh content is critical to keep search engines interested in visiting your website and improving your ranking. Google is like a guest to a buffet on a packaged holiday, first visit it will enjoy the variety of food (content) and decide to come back the day after, finding the same food the day after (assuming you did no update content) it will decide to skip dining at that buffet and come back in a few days. Without updating content your website will quickly be downgraded by Google and updates will be missed if Google does not visit your website regularly. Content is about 3 letter acronyms as well – how lucky!? WHO WHY WHY NOT (you get two 3 letter acronym here!) WHO are you targeting. More interesting and actionable than demographics, think of your target in terms of

-‐ Lifestages (parents, students, first job, pensioner) -‐ Stage in the purchase decision process (not aware, browsing, comparing

specific critiera, ready to buy need a reason to buy now, lapsed users, happy users ready to advocate or upsell)

-‐ Behavior / attitude to life (creative, socializing, comfort, in-‐control, power…) WHY would they buy you, their motivations. There are things you must deliver in your business: points of parity. And there is one main thing that is unique to you and will make them buy you vs competitors: the point of difference. WHY NOT – why would they probably decline buying you – barriers to purchase. Don’t know you, don’t need you, don’t believe you, can’t spend that much, don’t see the value, use competition. For one of my clients advertising the launch of a comic book, it was useful to think of reason that would prevent visitors from buying (not relevant, not for me, too expensive) and argue around those barriers (perfect corporate gift, buy 1 get 1 free seasonal offer). So WHO, WHY, WHY NOT will help you generate relevant and powerful content – whether it is an insight to get their attention, a tagline to hook them up, a call to action to close the sale.


5. Customers look for your products/services anywhere, Anytime – go Mobile There are more mobile phones than Internet users in Switzerland and certainly true worldwide given the skew to mobile phones in developing countries.

• There will be 3.6 million mobile internet users in Switzerland by 2014 (eMarketer.com)

• 36% of internet users will use mobile access in France by 2014 (eMarketer.com)

• Google’s research: • 59% of smartphone users report using the mobile Internet while

waiting in line • 48% report using it while eating • 44% report using it while shopping.

Mobile marketing is becoming more relevant as geolocalized services transform our lives and businesses. Mobile marketing truly brings to life the ubiquous nature of the internet: access anybody/anything, anywhere, anytime. Goelocalized services have a direct impact on local businesses: advertise a promo in a local restaurant to people walking nearby, search the closest pizzeria, tell me how to go to this business office.


We live in a world of 3 screens : Cell phone Individual use

Mobile fits your pocket Everywhere, Anytime

Small screen forces rethinking how to design the web experience. Local services are more important as you carry this screen with you

Laptop, Tablet Sharable At-‐home or At-‐work

Full web experience, rich media, browse using multiple windows

Large screen fixed on the wall

Media consumption, less interactive, entertainment focused

Entertaining simple experience

You need to market through those 3 screens thinking of the situation, need state people have at that specific moment. For instance when browsing on a laptop in the evening at-‐home, you can benefit from the richness of the Internet and have time to dive deep for content. Use rich media, offer a journey of discovery to the users, entertain them. Using Internet on mobile, the users is more likely looking for an immediate solution, checking out a supplier that popped up in a discussion, sharing a good tip with a friend, looking for the pizzeria next door. There are 2 priorities in Mobile Marketing:

-‐ Mobile website -‐ Mobile search

Hey, notice … no 3 character acronym here! Mobile website is about improving the mobile users experience:

Call to action at the top left. First thing first as attention span decrease on-‐the-‐go Minimize navigation and big button for fat fingers Avoid heavy pictures or video

Mobile Search is about making your content visible when searching on a cell phone. The keywords are not the same (users typically type less words). Less results are displayed so there is even more focus on getting at the top. Include mobile website and mobile search to any new investment in digital marketing whether it is a blog, SEO, PPC, or revamping your website. Think of mobile marketing as a complement to your other marketing activities to reach your customers in more touchpoints.


6. You get what you measure: Analytics In my previous jobs as Marketing Director in FMCG, the ‘joke’ was that 50% of the marketing investment was lost, the issue is that nobody knew which 50% so we kept on spending on the same stuff year after year. Now the Internet allows fully integrating advertising spending with the actual business objective and therefore allows assessing realtime the Return On Investment ROI you get from various online marketing spendings. Remember digital marketing starts with defining business objectives. Those business objectives will define the ‘conversion goal’: actual purchase on an e-‐commerce site, asking for a quote, registering for newsletter, filing in user reviews. Good conversion architecture will optimize the traffic and web design to trigger your conversion goal. Google Analytics allows monitoring how many conversions are achieved and link each conversion to the source of trafic : ie is natural search engine results giving you best results or is it actually pay-‐per-‐click advertising, or traffic generated via social network community management? Knowing this allows priorizing investment to generate more of the traffic that actually converts in business results.


7. How to get started? So you understand the opportunity to invest online and are ready to move on. The question is whom should you work with? Let me offer some thoughts from client case studies:

-‐ Quality input, quality output. It makes sense to spend time thinking through your specific business objective (make it specific, measurable, with define time scope). More difficult: explore different target groups, positioning for your brand/company, point of parity and differences for your product/services. For instance with one of my client, the breakthrough came from defining our target group as business context (ie company going through restructuring, steep currency swings…) rather than defining target as size, industry, turnover which was limiting and not actionable.

-‐ You need a single point of contact to own and manage the digital marketing

system. Either an internal trained resources or an external partner. The benefit comes from the integration of traffic generation, conversion architecture and on-‐going monitoring. You should seek an expert in building business through online marketing not an expert in blogs, facebook. Your ideal supplier will have access to a network of experts to keep up to date. Given the complexity of each of the solution and how fast they are changing, it is unlikely that in-‐house resources can keep up while delivering good value to small and med size companies. Expect a network of experts to be involved reinforcing the need for a single point of contact integrator.

-‐ Look for pragmatic creativity. Online marketing challenges the business

model of expensive communication agencies selling expensive advertising ideas. Online marketing is about offering information/entertainment when and where consumers look for it. Online marketing is about adding value when traditional marketing (TV ads, Out-‐of-‐home billboards) is about interrupting / catching attention. The creativity you need is how to pragmatically come up with 10 different google advertising messages, think of an easy way to produce video in order to complement your SEO plan, come up with a free solutions to design quiz that will make your attract new fans to your facebook page …

-‐ Check the sustainability of the technical solutions provided. For instance,

ensure that the supplier managing your pay-‐per-‐click advertising campaign does not takeover your adword account so that you retain benefits of the keyword and ads quality even if you change supplier. Another often overlooked issue is reliability of hosting, as online marketing develops, there will be more threats of web properties piracy, how does your supplier handles backup, what is the response time of the actual hosting company. How will your digital marketing solutions evolve to benefit from the next


Internet revolution (remember 10 years ago email was king, then sms, now realtime messaging on smartphones).

Help me improve this white paper to more specific answer your needs. I would appreciate 5’ of your time to feedback. How can I help you? Contact me at [email protected] or +41 78 837 2063, skype: gaillardbwsi.

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