Developing a Promotional Plan - Planning your Website Goals
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A major part of any website promotional plan involves setting the goals your website is trying to achieve. Without previously decided upon goals in place, your promotional and marketing program can drift aimlessly from one idea to the next. A lack of focus will mean greatly diminished results.
The major categories of website goals include sending traffic to an offline bricks and mortar business, direct product sales from the website itself, sign-up for further information usually by newsletter, or as a purely informational site. All websites usually employ some combination of any two or three of these purposes. For promotional purposes, a more focused campaign is best. Failing to target the efforts could result in a dilution of the desired results.
Before you decide on the means, you have to select the goal of your website. If your goal is building offline traffic, you will want to develop a strategy that emphasises the product line and qualifying potential customers and clients. Since the product and service offered requires qualified prospective buyers, the promotional technique will have to be chosen for the website traffic to self select. Your site will benefit from a strategy that funnels qualified buyers in your direction.
If your website is in a highly competitive and optimized category, your site may not be able to rise high in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for really difficult search terms. Your better bet, in those cases, would be to concentrate on targeting localized business. That means ignoring a more global reach, and thinking about dominating your own neighborhood and city.
You should determine if your business requires large volumes of lower priced sales, or fewer sales at higher prices. That dichotomy is important in deciding whether to try to gain wider keyword coverage, or if a highly specific set of conversions is sufficient.
Following that preselection process, your site will then help convince the visitor to choose your company’s products and services. The promotional methods employed should flow naturally into that marketing process, as a logical next step. Your site should attract the buyer to select your product, if comparison shopping. If your product offering is what is desired by the purchaser, then your offline business should be the point of sale.
If the purpose of your website is the actual end sales point, your promotional goal should be to bring as many prospects as possible to your site. Selecting promotional strategies that maximize traffic will work well for this type of site. Simply target the marketing efforts where potential customers can be found to improve the level of conversions.
An informational website will benefit most from a less targeted wide ranging marketing and promotional campaign. You want as much visitor traffic as possible to gain maximum exposure for your website.
Next: Deciding on Your Promotional Techniques >>
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