Planning for Profit in 2007
mkLINK Internet Marketing Tips(25 January 2007)

Fail to Plan or Plan to Fail

Now seems like a very good time to plan your future online marketing enterprises!
So, Where do you start? At the beginning...!

What do you want to achieve(online)?

It sounds overly simple and possibly a bit silly - but write it down anyway.
Be as clear and concise as you can.

Who is your target market? What product, service or information do you want to
provide for them? It's difficult to help you here, except to say that time spent
researching how other people are attracting your prospective market will pay
dividends. Even if you think you have a unique service, time spent 'Googling' around
may well prove you wrong - or give you some more ideas!

What Kind of Site are you going to have?

To help you, here are the main things that people want their websites to achieve.
1) To create online sales. This could be books, holidays, electronics, membership
subscriptions for example.
E.g. www.amazon.co.uk www.ebay.co.uk
This type of business is instant
2) To Create Sales Leads. This could be complex quoting system on a car insurance
website, or a simple enquiry form on a dentist's website.
e.g. www.confused.com
Here, the business is usually further down the line, after a qualification process.
3) To capture information. This can be for various marketing purposes from the
government wishing to find out a certain poll, to (more usually) business websites
trying to capture email addresses so that they can market to their audience over
a period of time. An example is my site http://www.mklink.com ,
4) To Provide information(a Portal). There are various types of these but famous
examples include www.bbc.co.uk , www.google.com , www.direct.gov.uk/

There are other types of sites and blogs and thing like that but essentially you
either want to sell to someone there and then, or capture their details(or both)
or simply inform your audience.

There are plenty of companies who want websites simply to act as a brochure,
rather than as a business generating device.

Once you have decided what kind of site you have - or are going to have
- you can develop it with your audience in mind.

Work out & Fulfill Your visitors' immediate needs.
Bear in mind that your visitors needs aren't the same as yours!

It is also useful to know which Key Performance Indicators you'll want to build into
the site as well - I shall discuss this in another email as it needs plenty of
explanation.(Visitors, signups, dropouts, etc)

Think of Your End Objective
- e.g. a Telephone Sales call with a lead generated from your website.

Think of the Flow of the Site(Sales Funnel)

The Sales Funnel might go like this:(Suspiciously similar to mine in fact!)

1) Offer some free information on your website(Relevant TO you website!) in return
for an email address
2) Send useful tips and articles on a regular basis(Remembering the CAN-SPAM
laws etc)
3) At the end of each email - provide a call to action - e.g. call for more info
- or a link to a contact form
4) Contact the leads that are measured
5) Make a sales Call.
6) Sale Made? If not - and appropriate - go back to Step 5

As a general rule of thumb - you can't have too much information - just make it
too boring. Make the relevant information available at a high level - with obvious
drill-down points for those visitors that want more detail.
Note : When this is working properly - you can afford to (buy) more traffic to your
website. Of course, you'll only know if it's working properly by testing and
measuring to get the best results.

It can be seen that even a simple website - like mine - needs a fair amount of
thought and planning. If your website isn't working for you - it may be that you've
simply got the planning wrong - an obvious and easy mistake.

Ecommerce sites have different objectives - and different Key Performance
Indicators. Again - this will be the subject of another email.

Once you have your sales funnel in mind - it can be very useful to simply sketch out
the layout of the new website - with a rough idea of the navigation. Doing this helps
you visualise the end result - and aids clarity.

Remember :

• Design your web site from the perspective of your Audience-Not You.
• Organization. Keep navigation as simple as possible - making all links obvious.
• Avoid using jargon and trying to show off.

(My own website for example - used to have nice imagery, Flash animation
-all sorts of things. The result? A lot less leads than I get with simple sales copy)

Feedback.

This comes under the auspices of usability. Again - a subject for another email.
The bones of it though are in another newsletter I wrote back in July
: http://www.mklink.com/newsletters_04_07_06.html

Want to know More?
Simply reply to this email, call me on 01454 852414 or visit my site :