By S Mohan Ramkumar



It would be a cliche to say that marketing has gone through a paradigm shift (if not many) since the advent of the Internet. Online marketing has levelled the playfield for companies of all sizes in more ways than one. Money isn’t the only factor that determines the reach of your brand any more. A healthy dose of creativity is all it takes for upstarts to unseat reigning goliaths.

Over the years, the complexity of marketing online has seen an exponential rise as well. You don’t get a ranking bump any more just by paying for a link farm. Today, online marketing has so many layers to it with more sophisticated ones added to the list ever so quickly.

In other words, there are so many moving parts in an online marketing strategy. Getting them all right isn’t what matters when you get started. But, making sure that you’ve taken into account all the obvious and most important ones is what matters.

Here’s a list of low hanging fruits that’ll let you see quick wins and lay a strong foundation for you to build on top of:

Search Engine Optimization

Where would we all be if there isn’t a Google anymore? It really is a scary thought! Almost every customer begins his buying process with quick search online. So, it makes a lot of sense to get that in order real quick.

SEO isn’t rocket science and throwing a boatload of money to reach the top position of search results isn’t a guaranteed win any longer. Paying a consultant blindly for boosting search engine rankings is downright deplorable.

As a business owner, it’s vital that you ask them to explain their strategies in detail and see if they are doing white hat or black hat SEO to start with.

You wouldn’t go by the book keeper’s word when it comes to your accounting right? Overseeing the SEO strategies is the online marketing equivalent of balancing your books. Like I said, it isn’t a tough nut to crack. See it as a pretty lengthy and slightly boring checklist, which it indeed is.

Figure out the keywords that you want to go after. Use the Google Keyword Planner to analyze the keywords with decent search volume. Look at your competition if you are in doubt.

Write a compelling web copy that isn’t stuffed with keywords. Get more relevant content onboard using a bunch of landing pages.

Avoid copy pasting content and duplicate content at all costs.

Keep the code clean and pay attention to the usual suspects - headers, meta tags, alt tags and the like.

Clearly map your 301 redirects and 404 error pages.

Build a search engine friendly sitemap.

Deploy the website in a fast, responsive server to speed up page load times.

Local SEO matters. Pay the dues to local listing and review sites.

Pay attention to International SEO if you are doing business across geographies. Use relevant language if you have the site translated to the local audience.

Use Google Webmaster Tools and get rid of crawling errors.

Focus on usability for better user experience, this will bring down bounce rate and boost conversions.

Get backlinks only from relevant, quality sources with good page rank and domain authority.

Use guest blogging as your tool to building linkbacks instead of paying for sketchy Fiverr offers.

Keep your blog updated at a regular pace.

Branch out beyond the traditional SEO strategies. Use videos, images, slides and other multimedia to diversify the mix of SEO enhancing content.

Stay on top of search engine algorithm updates and adapt. ‘Fit and forget’ doesn’t hold good when it comes to SEO.

It gets lonely on Google+. Still, keep that feed constantly updated.

Online Advertising

The results of SEO take time to show up. Paid advertisements get you results from day one, if you get them right. Among all such channels, Google AdWords is the king of the jungle.

Depending on your audience, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other paid channels can be put to use. Before opening up your wallet, make sure to get these things right:

Figure out who your customers are, what they like and where they hang out. Basically, build customer profiles.

Be it a colorful banner ad or plain text ads, make the content stand out. Ensure that the design and the copy stand out.

Spend a lot of time in the Google Keywords Planner tool to unearth long tails keywords that have the potential.

Stay away from bidding wars until you have a decent quality score. Even then, put your weight behind finding niche and longtail keywords.

Have many variants of the ad ready and rotate ads. This will keep your audience curious and the campaign fresh.

Build and test multiple landing pages. Learn which Call to Actions (CTA) work in your favor.

Calculate the time you spent researching for keywords. Now, invest the same amount of time finding and listing the negative keywords. For the uninformed, these are the search queries for which you don’t want to serve up your ads.

Come up with a sensible remarketing strategy. It’s easy to convince a customer who is sitting on the wall having a hard time to decide when compared to a total stranger.

Set up a budget and stick to it.

Wherever possible, use geo and demographic targeting to serve ads to the right group of customers.

Content Marketing

Content is the fuel that powers all forms of Internet marketing. The reference to content isn’t limited to the written form, which is arguably the most generated one of the lot.

Generating a wide array of content types with a dedicated focus on improving the shareability of the same is what content marketing is all about.

Swear by your blog and keep it updated with relevant content at a steady pace, just like we do.

Before dedicating your resources to bring in more traffic to your blog, ensure that the visitors to the homepage and other pages of the website visit the blog.

Work hard to figure out the strategies that get the attention of your captive audience before going after new eyeballs. Make content discovery easy and painless. Share articles in your support mails. Link to relevant articles in your knowledge base. Be creative.

Setup an email newsletter and start drip email campaigns. Hand pick the most liked, commented and shared articles and put them in front of the subscribers of your mailing list.

Guest blogging is by far the most legitimate source of link building without earning the wrath of Google. Instead of madly pursuing the so called “A-list” blogs, find a list of niche, influential blogs in your vertical and contribute to those regularly.

Stay relevant to your subject when it comes guest blogging and contribute only to those sites that are closely related to the vertical you operate in. Running a post on a tree hugging group’s blog to get a link back to a SaaS app just because you could get a slot is bound to get you smacked by Google sooner or later.

Go beyond articles. Create videos and share on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Pin a truck load of gorgeous images in Pinterest. Upload a deck of slides to Slideshare. Blogging isn’t the silver bullet.

Stop worrying about syndication. Submitting to obscure article submission directories doesn’t cut it any longer. Leverage social networks and guest blogging to build an organic reader base.

Social Media Marketing

Among all the Internet Marketing channels, social networks are the most chaotic of the lot. Trends get created and go bust by the hour. The conversation happens in real time and so has to be the social media strategy as well.

Embrace the fact that there are social networks beyond Twitter and Facebook.

Create a presence across all relevant social channels.

Keep the messaging around a central theme, but, make the content unique to the audience of each channel.

Keep the streams constantly updated.

Customize the profile page to align with your branding and be precise with the descriptions.

Use appropriate hashtags for maximum discoverability.

Create groups and lists to get closer to influencers and prospects.

Whenever possible keep shameless self plugs to the minimum. It’s better of you get a dedicated customer support or engineering status account to avoid unnecessary noise in your stream.

Engage in meaningful conversations with your audience. Answer to relevant questions even when they aren’t addressed to you.

Try spreading the posting of content across time zones and schedule them using Buffer or Hootsuite as much as possible.

Share a lot of visual content to increase shareability.

Follow people and show how much you appreciate their opinions by retweeting, liking, pinning or favoriting their posts.

Prominently showcase your social presence and make it easier for people to follow you. Use badges, icons, widgets and embeddable snippets to make your job easy.

Respect LinkedIn and turn it into a lucrative source of lead generation and to build a strong network.

Set up Google author pages, Google+ profile, Google Places and all things Google related. Ignore the loud sound of crickets - it all adds up in the big SEO puzzle!

This isn’t a definitive list, but, we guess we have covered a lot of ground for those who are working on a sound digital marketing strategy. Did we miss any?