Internet marketing can be a broad and confusing goal. There are a myriad of different opportunities and each one has its unique nuance and strategy for success. Getting the most out of your Internet marketing investment is tied to creating a system of metrics and settings.
Survey your marketing goals
The first step to optimizing any process is to understand the landscape of possibilities. Internet marketing is no different. Lead generation can be a combination or approach and can range from search engine strategies to lead buying. Create a map of internet marketing techniques and look for close matches to the techniques you are already using.
- Are you doing a lot of direct mail that can be leveraged on directories like Trulia, Zillow, and Inman?
- Can your customer database be turned into an email newsletter campaign?
- Are you giving a lot of useful tips and advice that can be translated into a local blog?
You are looking for synergies in your current marketing execution and your ultimate marketing goals. Where there are discrepancies, cut. Where there are synergies–scale. Where are your opportunities: test.
Create a metric system
Before continuing, use that same list of goals and assign them to specific metrics. Whether you’re scaling current opportunities or trying new ones, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. Metrics are the roadmap.
Don’t forget your collection methods. If you haven’t designed a way to collect (good) data efficiently, your marketing optimization project will be planned. Your methods should be passive and unobtrusive. This will increase the integrity of the data and the speed at which it can be analyzed.
Observe and adjust marketing
Test. Test. Test. Again, whether you’re scaling or trying new things, testing is critical to uncovering counterintuitive opportunities. Invariably, consumers behave in unexpected ways. If you are testing, you will discover these hidden gold veins.