Elements That the Ideal Marketing Plan Should Have

The ideal online marketing plan should incorporate creating high-quality content, website optimization (SEO), keyword research, continually updating a website, creating a mobile-friendly site, using social media, Email Marketing, and video marketing. A well-crafted marketing plan is crucial for the success of your business, and below are the key elements for you to consider including in your strategy.

Why Is a Marketing Plan Important?

Having a business without an online marketing plan is like baking a cake with no recipe. You might make a delicious cake, but the chances of it turning out a disaster are equal or even more probable. Now, we aren’t saying you don’t know how to bake, but you need to predetermine the ingredients. You cannot use 3 cups of sugar if, later on, you are planning on adding two cups of honey.

High-Quality Content

Content is the most essential and core element of a successful marketing strategy. You might invest time and money in crafting a well-designed website, in speeding up a website, and creating ads, but what is the point of customers landing on your site if you don’t have captivating, informative, and relevant content to offer? According to statistics in 2019, 57% of marketing executives say on-page content development was the most effective SEO tactic.

Creating content might sound like a simple task, and you might think, ‘“okay, I write well, so let me get started.” But your writing skills aren’t going to be enough for high-quality content. Writing for a company starts with research. And research needs a lot of investment of time and energy. Not only will you end up digging through hundreds of web pages, but you will need to filter information, choose the relevant content, and create original content based on the gathered information. Now, you might be capable of doing all of this, but still, you are not an editor or a professional writer, not to mention that you have to run a business and probably don’t have so much time to invest in writing. Remember, there are professional writers out there who are capable of doing all this and will be happy to collaborate with you.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Once you create a compelling website with captivating content, it’s time for optimizing your site for search engines. 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. Having an SEO strategy is crucial, as with optimizing, you make your content, products, and services discoverable. Statistics show that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, and over 5.5 billion searches are performed on Google every day. If you have already created a stunning website with high-quality content, at this point, your goal should be driving traffic to your website. And one of the most effective and long-lasting ways to do so is by SEO. There are two types of SEO:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to every step you take within the boundaries of your website to rank better on search engines. By using special algorithms, search engines organize results from the most relevant to the least relevant content, and ranking is the website’s position in the results. On-page SEO helps to rank better by different tactics like targeting proper keywords, creating high-quality content, speeding up a web page, compressing images, and optimizing HTML code, title tags, and alt tags.

Off-page SEO addresses everything outside the boundaries of your page. This can refer to backlinks, promotion methods, and the use of social media. Off-page SEO is mainly used for raising the trustworthiness of a website, as it is an essential factor in search engines.

SEO is a long process that requires an investment of time and energy. Still, as we have stated above, you don’t necessarily have to be the person in charge of all this. There are professionals trained to create compelling content and perform SEO services successfully. To put it simply, there is no successful marketing plan without SEO, just like there is no cake recipe without flour in it.

Creating a Blog

We believe that neither SEO strategy nor a successful marketing plan can be crafted without a good blog. A blog is a wonderful space to communicate with your customers and help them solve issues. A blog allows you to create more high-quality content and appear in more search results. It also brings backlinks – other sites linking to yours, which increases the trustworthiness of your web page. A blog helps to update your website; most of the time, there is no reason for adding content to your home page, but Google wants to receive signals that the site is fresh. By adding blog articles, you are communicating with Google that your content is new and relevant. Besides, when you help customers find solutions by offering blog content, you establish a relationship with them, and most of the time, they come back for your products or services.

Keywords

Google uses keywords to find your content. Those are words and phrases that people use to find your content. When they type their search query, Google analyzes web pages and finds the keywords on your site. Having keywords is not enough as you might have them but in a different context, and the content might not be relevant at all. That’s why there are primary keywords and LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing keywords. LSI keywords are words associated with the main keyword. So if the main keyword is “tea,” LSI keywords can be “black tea”, “tea leaves”, “tea plant”, “black tea recipe”, and others. For finding the right keywords, you can use a free LSI Keywords generator.

With its length, there are two types of keywords: short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords consist of one or two words, while long-tail keywords can feature three to five or even more words. Short-tail keywords are primarily used in general search queries, and people who want more specific results tend to use long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are also crucial to voice search, as people use much longer queries when speaking to a device. So for the best outcome, you should be targeting both short-tail and long-tail keywords.

Page Speed

Page Speed is among the major elements to keep in mind for your marketing plan, and it was confirmed as a ranking factor by Google twice. It’s necessary to keep the website in healthy shape in terms of its load time, as the customers are not going to stick around while your page is trying to load. Anything that takes more than 5 seconds to load increases the bounce rate – the percentage of users abandoning a website – by 106%, according to Google. It’s a crucial factor to keep in mind for a successful marketing strategy.

Mobile-Friendly site

Creating a mobile-friendly site should be in your plan, as smartphone users are going to make up a vast majority of your visitors. 58% of all searches on Google are done through mobile devices. In 2015, Google announced a mobile-friendly algorithm update, which was targeted to boost the ranking of mobile-friendly websites in mobile search results. To determine whether or not your web page has mobile usability issues, you can use the nifty tool in Google Search Console. It is going to let you know if mobile users are having issues on your website. It will also let you know what the problem is and how to fix it.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is the process of sending a commercial email to a group of customers and is a powerful tool that is going to help get more customers or keep in touch with existing clients. It’s a powerful tool as the statistics show the average expected ROI (Return on Investment) is $32 for every $1 spent for Email Marketing. Considering these numbers, it’s a great investment of time, money, and energy. And by energy, we don’t mean writing each of your customers or potential clients. For this step, you can use automated emails. To build a list of customers, you can offer a piece of information, service, product, or other items, in exchange for their email address – this is called a Lead Magnet. For a list of ideas for your lead magnet, click here.

Once you have the list, it’s time to choose the email marketing software provider to use. The software automates email marketing and sends emails for your campaigns. Plans vary and depend on the size of the list, amongst other factors. For the best results, use personalized emails and customized subject lines.

Social Media

Just like a blog, social media is a unique space where you can build a relationship with your customers and spread the word about your brand. It is important, as there are billions of users using social media daily, and it’s a great place for reaching your customers. You can share content on your social media page daily, and by being present on the platform, you build the trustworthiness of your brand. Social media is also going to help engage your audience by engaging content. You can ask questions, ask for recommendations, get to know what your clients need and what they like about your products. You can also provide support and help your customers find solutions. Social media allows you to have direct communication with customers, and that’s why it’s among the most powerful marketing tools.

Video Marketing

According to research in 2019, 83% of marketers believe that video is becoming an increasingly important element of marketing. Videos are engaging and can illustrate a message effectively and memorably. By creating videos, you can convey the message you want to deliver and use the design, style, audio, and visuals that represent the style of your brand. Videos are much more effective than textual content, and in the ideal situation, you might want to use both for the best results. According to HubSpot, 80% of consumers recall a video they watched at least a month ago.

If you need to create a strong foundation for your Marketing Plan and don’t know where to start, contact your SEO experts at Internet Marketing Geeks today. Let us help you determine what your website and campaign need in order to dominate your market.