Consumers research online before shopping

In the Online Shopper Intelligence Study, compete.com found that 60% of consumers research their purchases online first.

Also interesting to note, however, is that there is variability in search behavior across different industries. For example, only 12% of apparel shoppers use search, relying more on emails, websites, mailing, and ads from retailers.

And 59% of electronics shoppers rely more on websites than on search.

One of the most interesting statistics in an ongoing consumer tracking study conducted by BIA/Kelsey is that 97% of consumers use online media to search for local businesses and products. Among those surveyed, 90% use search engines, 48% use internet yellow pages and directories, 24% use vertical sites, and 42% use comparison shopping sites.

In-store shoppers use search before and during shopping

Consumers also search online before doing in-store shopping. According to a survey of consumer retail spending and trends from Deloitte, 75% of consumers look online for store, price, or product information before or during in-store shopping. More than half use social networking sites to research and interact with retailers, find out about promotions, and read reviews, with half of consumers saying that an online product review has influenced their decision on whether to buy a product.

Users search for local stores and products

According to Google, 20% of Google searches are related to local and 30% of mobile searches are local. Google Place pages appear before organic search results on results pages and visitors use this information to find out more about your company, map your location, and learn about your products or services. Listings in online directories and online yellow pages can also help your business appear in higher rankings.

How do you take advantage of these stats?

• Optimize your website for search
• Make sure your free Google Places page is correct and complete
• List your business in local online directories
• Optimize your site for mobile devices or have a mobile website
• Keep information on your Facebook page up to date
• Know your audience so you can focus on the online resources your customers use most

The Google “Grow Your Business Online” events are being held in locations around the world and are a great source of the latest information about online search. I highly recommend attending if one comes to a city near you!

What’s the big deal about online marketing?

• 90%+ of people search online before making decisions, big and small
• Search engines find content, categorize it, and connect people with what they need
• To get found, you need online content that’s relevant and fresh
• Some of the steps in building your online presence are “do-it-yourself” and some are “do-not-try-this-at-home” so don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it

Building blocks of an online marketing strategy

• Build a foundation of a robust website
• Add the three pillars of search marketing, e-mail marketing, and web analytics
• Cap it off with a social media strategy.

More info

Building blocks:  Your website

Top 5 reasons your website is the foundation of your plan

• 60% of prospects will visit your website
• Search engines direct visitors to your site
• First introduction might be online
• Prospects use traditional websites
• You control the information

More info

3 important things to consider

• Usability – architecture, navigation, and analytics
• Content – clear, simple, easy to contact you
• Design – stand out but be appropriate, use only graphics that support your messaging

More info

6 main sections your site should have

• Home page
• Products or Services
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Custom Information
• Dynamic Content

More info

Building blocks:  Search

A search strategy is the first pillar of your plan

• Create content that targets your customers’ needs
• Use words customers search for, including negatives
• Long-tail keywords improve results and target your audiences
• Update content often
• Create compelling, link-worthy content

More info

SEO: Getting links to your site

• Link to your site from social networks
• Comment on blogs and online communities
• Add yourself to online directories
• Use social bookmarking
• Submit online press releases
• Answer questions online
• Ask for customer reviews
• Ask for links from influencers

More info

SEO: Technical recommendations

• Find keywords relevant to your business, include keywords in the page content, write naturally
• Properly name pages, 
meta data, headlines, 
URLs, and links
• Make clean, organized 
coding a priority
• Give it time

More info

Building blocks:  E-mail

• E-mail is the second pillar of your plan
• Users overwhelmingly prefer e-mail as a contact
• E-mail keeps customers informed about new products and solutions, or industry news.
• E-mail offers a great return on your investment

E-mail best practices

• Build your list with customers, colleagues, people you meet, and online signups
• Create a master calendar and send a combination of newsletters, promotions, announcements
• Get results with well-designed, straightforward, compelling, brief e-mails
• Use analytics, testing, and segmenting to target e-mails

More info

Other online marketing tactics to consider

• Online ads – banner ads, PPC, sponsored content
• Video and podcasts
• Flash demos
• SMS text advertising
• Branded apps

Building blocks:  Analysis

Analysis is the third pillar of your plan

• Set up tools to get the most accurate analytics
• Web analytics
• SEO analytics
• E-mail analytics
• Monitor your online presence, mentions, links, activity, competitors, industry
• Test and refine

Use analytics to refine your site, SEO, and e-mails

• Fine tune your website and SEO
• Dashboard, Visitors Overview, Traffic Sources Overview, Keywords, Top Content
• Improve your e-mail campaigns
• How many were sent, received, and bounced
• How many people opened, clicked, forwarded, opted out, signed up
• What was clicked
• Compare to past campaigns
• Test and refine

More info

Monitoring your online presence for free

• Setup an RSS reader to watch keywords, companies, people, Twitter #hashtags, LinkedIn answers
• Check LinkedIn and Facebook pages and groups
• Search for terms on Addict-o-matic
• Use grader.com to rank yourself
• Use Tweetdeck for real time info
• Respond to issues before they’re problems, find new customers, build your reputation

More info

Building blocks:  Social Media

Social media is the capstone of your plan

• Social media enhances all of your other efforts.
• Engaged customers are more likely to buy
• Social media influences search results
• Links drive traffic to your website
• Conversations about you are already going on online

More info

Top social media tools

• LinkedIn – Profiles, Companies, Groups, Answers
• Facebook  Profiles, Pages, Groups
• Twitter       Profiles, Companies
• Blogs    RSS reader
• Local search – Google Places, Yahoo!, bing, getlisted. org
• Review sites – Yelp, TripAdvisor, industry sites
• Social bookmarking – StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit
• Other – forums, wikis, industry or interest group websites, local websites, local organizations

More info

5 Quick steps to get online

• Sign up for membership on targeted sites
• Fill out the basic information (you can add more later)
• Find groups of peers and/or customers
• Listen and get a feel for discussion etiquette
• Add value to conversations

More info

Maintaining your online brand

Branding 101

• Keep your design and content consistent
• Maintain a unified design on your website, e-mails, social media sites, and presentations
• Make sure you develop guidelines, image and copy assets, instructions, 
written strategy
• Provide feedback on all marketing pieces anddon’t allow anything off-brand.

More info

Branding and messaging across multiple media

• When you develop online sites, pages, and profiles, be sure to use consistent graphics and messaging.
• Develop a set of images you can use for each platform that are optimized for each use
• Develop a set of copy blocks you can use in a variety of lengths
• Keep a list of sites to update when you make a change in messaging or imagery, when you launch a new product, or when you have news to share.
• Keep things consistent everywhere!

Download the presentation

“Building an Online Marketing Plan” is available in a variety of formats:

• PowerPoint Show (ZIP 15.6 MB)
• Keynote Presentation, with notes and links (ZIP 12.8 MB)
• PDF file, with links (ZIP 12.6 MB)
• Slideshare Presentation, with links (Slideshare)

First, your customers are fragmented across the web. Your corporate website is no longer the sole destination for customers seeking information about your company. Your customers may be discussing your products and services on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo Answers, CNET, and eBay, as well as on countless forums across the web. It is up to you to make sure that you monitor the conversations going on in all corners of the web, hook into online communities that already exist, or create your own new communities. And get involved in the conversation whenever and wherever you can.

Second, there’s a rebellion inside your company fueled by social media. Marketing has spread throughout the entire enterprise through the adoption of social media tools, so more and more people are becoming the voices of your company. Teams no longer have to go through the public relations department to get messages to news organizations, and product groups no longer have to work with an analyst relations department to get their products into the hands of reviewers. You need well-developed strategy that will guide your company in the best uses of social media, plus internal processes that make it easy for employees to learn from one another, collaborate, and keep the messaging on track.

Finally, you should have a long-term strategy about social media that transcends current tools and tactics. You should think about mobile marketing, augmented reality, social media mail instead of traditional e-mail, and technologies that are still being developed today. And you should think holistically about your social media strategy to make sure that every department in your organization is using social media effectively.

You can’t afford to ignore the effects that social media is having on marketing across your enterprise.  You should be proactive and get involved, create standard processes for using social media, and plan for new social media technologies down the road. As one attendee said last night, “You can ignore social media if you don’t make any other mistakes.”

When designing a website or online campaign, creativity is important. But for your project to be truly successful, you must create something that’s targeted to your audience. Before you jump into designing a new marketing piece, you must fully understand your market space, your goals, and your competitive concerns.

Using a three-phase approach, you can develop purposeful strategies, design on-target solutions, and get the results you seek.  This standardized approach to problem-solving provides a framework for a smoother process, better support for your brand, and the ability to routinely and systematically produce great work. The process can be driven by the client, but having an outsider—such as a design firm or web agency—oversee the process allows you to develop a better-balanced plan.

Phase 1: Discover

First, work with your team to discuss your goals, identify your audiences, analyze your brand, assess your competition, and refine your market position. Learn about the customers you want to attract, which competitors keep you up at night, and what makes your company unique. Get to know your business inside and out by including stakeholders from throughout your organization.

At the end of your discussions, produce a strategic brief that defines the scope of the campaign, including the results of your findings, definition of roles, a schedule of milestones, and content recommendations. This strategic brief guides your team or agency as they develop marketing pieces. It is the measurement by which you should judge any creative solutions your team develops.

Phase 2: Design

Once you have defined your marketing challenges and objectives, begin the exploration of visual concepts and designs with a personality and style that support your brand. Designers and project managers should collaborate with your team to develop a design solution that meets your unique needs.

With the strategic brief to guide the process, make sure the designs are on-target in terms of your audiences and your marketing goals. You can then discuss the choices with your team, determine which will meet your objectives with the most impact, and then refine the creative work. When this phase of the design process is complete, you should have the creative framework and assets you need to implement your design solution.

Phase 3: Deliver

In the final phase of the process, you should develop the tactical marketing pieces to launch your design across all appropriate media. The visual concept may be applied to your website, e-mail, web banners, collateral, direct mail, advertising, and more. Whether an online marketing firm develops your marketing pieces or you create everything in-house, you should create templates for each type of marketing piece—and make sure you have someone to turn to when technical and creative issues come up.

Be sure to include tools for tracking results and providing feedback on your marketing. And plan for refinement and maintenance of the all of the pieces to ensure that your integrated campaign is a success.

Results: Success

Your marketing team’s job is to create solutions that produce optimal results. Whether you measure your success through visits to your website, leads generated from your e-mail campaign, direct mail response, or click-through rate from your banner ads, a proven process helps to ensure you get the results you seek.

Before the Internet, when all music came on pieces of plastic, the record companies controlled distribution. They had the warehouses to store the LPs, CDs, and tapes. They paid the trucking companies to ship them music to record stores around the country. Record labels were the only game in town. Downloads and file sharing have changed this forever and record companies need to redefine what benefits they offer their artists.

At the recent Adobe MAX 2008 conference. Eric Snowden, Sr. Creative Director at Atlantic records, gave an excellent presentation, “Atlantic Records: Connecting Fans with Bands.” which described some of the innovative ways Atlantic helps its artists turn casual listeners into fans.

What’s in it for the musician?

If you’re a musician, what benefit (other than prestige) do you get from signing with a major label?

The first thing you get is a team with a vested interest in your success. (Without being too naive about the beneficence of record companies, if you do well, they do well.) On this team you get people who have skills that you probably don’t. Just as most companies spend most of their time perfecting and producing their widgets, most musicians concentrate on making music, not on marketing themselves and ‘maintaining their brands.’

On the Web

The presentation focused on the web sites for two acts: T.I. and Paramore. T.I. is an rapper who has sold tons of CDs. Paramore is an “indie” band that just released its second album. Because T.I. and Paramore are at different stages in their careers, Atlantic’s strategies for marketing them are different: in brief, increasing community for T.I.’s fans and increasing access for Paramore’s.

Atlantic has given cell phones with cameras and Flip video cameras to all its artists so that they can upload their own candid photos and videos to their sites. This sort of behind the scenes access is what fans crave. Paramore is constantly blogging from the road.

Fans are encouraged to participate via forums and to contribute their own photos and videos. All user-generated content is tagged with paramore.net (to encourage others to visit the site).

On your phone

All Atlantic bands have mobile websites. These mobile web sites are not second-class citizens: Due to the restrictions of the medium, the content isn’t quite the same as the main sites, but there is the same priority given to mobile content. Chat, authorized and unauthorized photos. All designed to give fans instant access to the bands and to their communities.

On your desktop

Atlantic has also created an Adobe AIR application (i.e., a standalone desktop application based on Flash), FanBase, that features an audio player, chat room and a continuous feed of official and unofficial news, photos and videos from some of Atlantic’s top artists. FanBase allows fans to find out more news and information about their favorite bands without having to launch a browser.

Whether on the web, desktop, or phone, all of sites are designed to keep fans engaged and excited.

But, I’m not a musician …

While your widgets may not be as sexy as a slow dance ballad, businesses today need to connect with your ‘casual listeners’ and turn them into fans (and let them connect with each other). Who wouldn’t want to have fans? People who are truly excited about what you do and tell all their friends about how cool you are?

For instance, an online forum doesn’t just establish a sense of community. It could also allow your customers to help solve each others problems cutting down on your customer service costs. It can also be a great (and inexpensive) way to get real feedback on how your company and your products are perceived. Access and transparency can both help your bottom line.

In order for your organization to be successful, the 4 most important priorities should be the following:

1. Increase your revenue: Your strategy should include marketing tactics that contribute directly to sales, including direct mail, advertising, e-commerce applications, tools for your sales force, animated demos, and other marketing pieces that can be used to get your message out to potential and existing customers.

2. Reduce your costs: Make a move to less-expensive forms of marketing, for example, relying more on e-mail than direct mail, buying online banner advertising instead of print advertising, developing online sales demos instead of sending salespeople to make pitches, improving your website content instead of relying on customer support call centers, and working on SEO instead of using pay-per-click advertising to get found by online searchers.

3. Increase your market share: A well-implemented marketing strategy includes ways to make it easier for customers to find your solutions and be converted into customers. Loyalty, referral, and recommendation programs, along with awareness marketing tactics can bring more people into contact with your solutions, and help existing customers find more solutions of value to them. Additionally, making the sales process easier for the customer by storing information and pre-filling online forms and landing pages removes the barriers to repeat purchases.

4. Increase shareholder value: Knowing your target market, what their “pain points” are, and what solutions they are seeking can help you with product development. Keep an eye on user forums, make sure your marketing and development teams get up-to-date feedback from customer support and sales teams, and look for opportunities to capture new markets within your industry. There may be another problem that you can help your customers solve with a new product or solution that you can develop.

Although there are countless pressures during difficult economic times, marketers who keep their eye on their priorities will emerge even stronger from the downturn than their competition.

On a very basic level, both of these industries made the same mistake: They assumed that they were selling actual physical items: pieces of plastic in the case of the music industry, and sheets of paper in the news industry. What they failed to realize was that they were really selling content: music and information. And because they failed to realize this, these industries are suffering.

Rather than develop their own ‘iTunes store,’ the music industry, which had always controlled the storage and distribution of physical LPs, tapes, and CDs, has sunk to relying on scare tactics and lawsuits against its own customers. Radio stations which used to introduce us to new music have been consolidated and homogenized by giant conglomerates, and are largely ignored by young music fans. MTV is more concerned with celebrity cribs and pimped out rides than it is with music.

Newspapers, which used to be our primary source of in-depth information and investigative journalism, have faced declining readership and revenues. Rather than investing in their brands and taking their content online, most newspapers have cut back their staff and rely more and more on syndicated content.

Newfangled solutions
In sharp contrast to the mainstream media, bloggers, internet radio stations, and other new media outlets offer an almost infinite variety of viewpoints and voices. Savvy musicians like Radiohead, Govt Mule, and Trent Reznor have left their big labels behind and are using the internet to develop their careers and connect with their fans in ways that fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

• Radiohead offered its most recent album, In Rainbows, as a pay-what-you-think-its-worth download months before physical CDs were available in stores.
• Govt Mule? Never heard of them? They record all of their concerts and have sold more than 1 million downloads on their website.
• Zappa Plays Zappa are offering free concert downloads to everyone who buys a ticket to see them play: buy the ticket, see the show, and download it the next day.
• Trent Reznor has uploaded his songs and lets his fans create their own remixes. There’s also a Nine Inch Nails edition of the iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge, for his fans. If you score above 150,000 points, you get entered in a drawing for a signed guitar and tickets to the NIN show of your choice.

So, what do YOU do?
Does your company make software, or do you provide ways for your customers to communicate more easily? Do you sell widgets, or are your widgets just a packaged form of something more basic? Once you figure out what your business really is, there’s no end to the innovative ways you can connect with your customers and expand your business.