Your Internet Marketing Game Plan: The First 90 Days

So you’ve finally made the decision to take Internet marketing more seriously when it comes to generating traffic, leads, and customers for your business.

Great, now what?

You need a game plan - one that will get you out of the starting blocks as fast as possible.

Now before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to remember that when it comes to Internet marketing, slow and steady always wins the race. That said, there are a few critical components that you’ll need to get up and running within the first 90 days. By doing so, you’ll not only set yourself up for long-term success but will feel a sense of accomplishment (in the short-term).

Your Internet Marketing Game Plan: The First 90 Days

1. Perform a content audit

Internet marketing success hinges on having a piece of premium content to promote on your web site as soon as possible.  Why? Because it helps with lead generation.  However, don’t have reinvent the wheel.  Simply find something that already exists to polish up and put behind a landing page.

Consider re-purposing a company brochure with a new introduction to make it more educational or turn some existing training materials into a basic how-to manual on best practices.

If none of these options exist, repackage your existing “contact us” page as a request for strategic consultation or in person assessment.  The final option will have a lower conversion rate than the previous two recommendations, but at least it’s a start.

2. Prepare SEO and Blogging Efforts

Optimizing pages and creating blog posts will begin the organic process of driving more traffic to your website.  That said, plan to make both of these on ongoing priority.

Creating a solid foundation with your Internet marketing efforts, means getting your website ranking on the first page of Google for some of the most coveted terms in your industry.

When doing keyword research, look for terms that are both relevant and have decent monthly search volumes.  Use these keywords to optimize your product or service pages.  However, look for low-hanging SEO opportunities as well.

Consider long-tail keywords that are “problem-solving” in nature for your blog posts.  Long-tail keywords are more descriptive (example: “red running shoes” versus “shoes”).  There are lower monthly searches for these terms, but they are usually more targeted or relevant, which means they typically have a higher conversion rate.

Use the keywords identified for SEO to begin crafting blog titles and begin writing. Start simple: how to’s, etc.  Create an editorial calendar (we use Google docs) for all team members involved in content creation.

Finally, make sure you include social sharing buttons on the blog itself so people can share your content with their own social networks. Also, if possible, begin targeting external websites that might be interested in your content to generate inbound links, which will improve your rankings (if done correctly, that is).  Start this outreach once there is content on your blog.

Plan for the Future

Of course, the game plan above only scratches the surface.

But by incorporating lead generation (premium content for your landing page) and traffic generation tactics (SEO and blogging) you’ve covered off some of the basics of the Internet marketing process, which most companies seem to miss.

You’ll also start to see how creating content people love plays an important role across your website to generate traffic, leads, customers or clients.

At that point, you’ll most likely want to “double-down” on your Internet marketing efforts by creating more premium content offers, landing pages, and blog posts.

The good news is, you can now that you’ve got a good foundation.

Learn 5 ways to generate more qualified inbound leads from your web site by downloading our free On-Demand Marketing 101 whitepaper.