Mastering digital marketing

Richard Butler

Digital
MASTERING DIGITAL MARKETING
Marketing Dublin
LOW COST METHODS TO INCREASE PROFITS

+353-(0)87-6361907

Richard@DigitalMarketing.com
As a business owner in today’s economic climate, you are likely
more concerned than ever with your bottom line. It’s critical to
both increase sales and reduce costs. Every part of a business has to
be analyzed to determine if it is increasing profits — or just costs.

Marketing is no different.

Just a few short years ago a business could place an ad in the
Yellow Pages followed up with a few newspaper ads or direct
mailings. Today, frequently the only time the phone book is
touched is when a new copy is delivered. Newspapers are also
quickly becoming obsolete when compared with the instant news
found both online and on 24-hour news channels.

However, both newspapers and the Yellow Pages act as if they still
have the advertising monopoly that they held for so long. They
price their advertising as if there are no other options.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Butler is a “OLD” -VS- “NEW” MARKETING
trained business coach
and consultant to
small/home office If you ask a room of 100 people if they’ve used the Yellow Pages in
businesses. the last month you might see one hand raised. Ask the same crowd
In 2000 he wrote one if they’ve used Google to search for a business or business phone
of the first books on number and nearly all hands will go up.
internet usage
published by OakTree
Press. His articles have
also appear in The Irish
Marketing Journal

He has lectured on
internet marketing for
business.

+353-(0)87-6361907

Copyright © 2010 Richard Butler www.DigitalMarketingDublin.com

Mastering New Marketing DigitalMarketingDublin.Com

The average consumer is getting more connected every year. We’re
moving from desktop computers to wireless laptops to web-
enabled cell phones. It just makes sense that people will use
whatever is easiest, and today they’re looking towards the Internet.

Does this mean that traditional marketing methods no longer have
ARE YELLOW PAGES a place? Absolutely not. However they have become a small part of
DEAD? a much larger whole. A business that ignores the Internet as a
Of course not. The printed
marketing medium will quickly be passed by competitors who use it
effectively.
phone book is being used by
fewer people each year, so
the price tag just doesn’t
ADVANTAGES OF ONLINE MARKETING
match the benefit.

Internet Marketing allows a business to have a great deal of
flexibility in their marketing efforts. Since all of the marketing
methods are digital, it’s very easy to change and tweak parts of
campaigns or even entire campaigns to either improve them or to
react to changing markets or to add new products or services.
NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL Internet marketing efforts can be worldwide or can be targeted for
SOLUTION a region or a specific town or even a neighborhood. If a business
Every business has different adds additional locations, new locations can be added to the mix
marketing needs. Even very painlessly.
direct competitors in the
same field might have
For those who want to spread their marketing message across the
different marketing needs
world, there has never been any advertising vehicle like the
based on their market
Internet. A chocolatier based in a small mall in a suburban area can
sell and ship their chocolates anywhere in the world — without the
share, the age of their
need to print and distribute catalogs. But not every business needs a
business, and even the
worldwide reach.
segment of the market they
are targeting. Thankfully The Internet can also be used to target nearly any market segment.
marketing on the Internet No matter how specific your target market, the Internet can help
gives plenty of flexibility to your customers find you. No longer do businesses have to rely on
meet each business’ the shotgun approach of traditional advertising. You can see exactly
individual needs. what customers are searching for online and place your marketing

Copyright © 2010 Richard Butler —2— www.DigitalMarketingDublin.com


message in front of customers who are looking for your product or
service.

LOW COST

Traditional advertising is very expensive. The investment required
for a comprehensive Internet Marketing package, even when fully
outsourced, is a fraction of what a single Yellow Page ad might
cost.

MEASURABLE

No longer do you have to take shots in the dark. You won’t have to
rely on statistics from advertising salesmen either. With Internet
marketing, it’s easy to see real-time results of each piece of your
THE SURVEY SAYS : marketing campaign. When one part is making a larger impact, it
According to a December becomes very simple to ramp up that portion of your marketing
2008 survey, 74% of
American adults use the
campaign. Finally, poorly performing methods can be turned off
Internet. nearly instantly. This can dramatically improve the cost
effectiveness of your advertising.

GROWING MEDIUM

Use of the Internet continues to grow at an incredible rate. In 2007,
58% of all American adults (both Internet users and non-Internet
users) stated that they used the Internet to research a product or
service (source: Pew Internet). This year that figure is expected to
be higher than 70%.

Doesn’t it make sense to place your marketing message in front of
those who are looking for it?

MARKETING ON THE INTERNET



When asked, most business owners will say that they are already
marketing on the Internet. “We have a website.” In truth, often a
business’ website is often nothing more than an online brochure —
it does little to help increase sales or to attract customers. Even an
effective website is only one part of an effective marketing
campaign online.

If you are serious about using the power of the Internet to drive
your company’s profits, consider the following marketing methods.

YOUR WEBSITE

What’s the purpose of your company website in its current form?
Does it “claim your space on the Internet” or perhaps provide an
address and phone number for those who are searching for your
CALL TO ACTION business? Here are some other things that a website can (and
Every page on a website should) do:
should include a single
clear action for your  Attract customers. A website should help your business attract
visitors and should tell your new customers who are searching for or researching your
visitors exactly how to take
product or service — or those who have the need your product
that action.
solves.

 Capture leads. Once a visitor has found your website, if you
capture their contact information you’ll have multiple
opportunities to present different marketing messages.

 Pre-sell your product or service. Show the benefits of your
product or service to start warming up your prospect for the
sale.

 Sell your product or service. Using a shopping cart or other
methods actually sell your product or service directly from your
website.

 Build and strengthen your customer relationships. Show
your customers that your company is made up of real people —



people who have common interests.

 Increase customer retention. Provide support or other
methods to make sure the customers you have today will be
around tomorrow.

Each of these actions works best if done somewhat independently
— each on its own page or section of your site. Changes to an
existing website can often be accomplished by simply adding a few
pages. For example a service business with an existing “brochure”
website might only need to add the following pages:

 Pre-sell service A

 Pre-sell service B

 Lead Capture

So while the prospect of website changes might seem daunting,
often smaller focused is called for rather than broad wholesale
changes.

Finally, where at all possible it is important to build in a tracking
mechanism. This helps you to learn which parts of your site have
the most impact.

EMAIL MARKETING

EMAIL IS KING Thanks to a few who have abused the system, email marketing
91% of internet users send often gets a bad rap. However, email can be a powerful yet cost-
and/or read email effective way to market to new prospects as well as a way to stay in
contact with existing customers. Possibly the best part of email
marketing systems is that they can be set up to be semi to fully
automated.

For prospective clients, once you capture their lead information,
the email marketing system can send them a series of pre-
composed emails — each with your specific sales message based on



whatever frequency your sales process requires. These emails might
be a series of soft-sell messages, each discussing a benefit of your
service. They could alternatively be used for weekly or monthly
product specials

It’s often significantly easier to get a pleased customer to return
than it is to attract a new customer. For this reason, email
marketing can be an extremely effective means of communicating
with existing customers. Give the fans of your business a way to
sign up for a “rewards program” or “birthday club” or even a
“lunch special” list, and you can give them incentive to return more
frequently. Not only will these emails bring your customers back,
they can also be used to strengthen your existing relationships by
staying in contact with your customers just to let them know what’s
happening within your business. Even automated emails can read
like a personal one-on-one contact.

If your product or service is one that requires ongoing support, a
support list can be a great way to provide information on product
updates or changes as well as common support issues. It can also
be used to remind customers how to find support (i.e. visit this
website or call this number) at set intervals after purchase.

As with most other marketing methods in this report, measurement
of results is an integral part of email marketing.

COMPANY BLOG
BLOGS
A company blog does not Nearly any business owner would agree that if he could take a
have to replace your customer to lunch or for a round of golf, he has a great chance of
existing website. Normally making a friend that will remain a customer for a long time. A blog
it is set up as a subpage.
For example:
can be used for the same thing. When semi-regular blog posts are
made by the business owner (even if ghost-written), customers can
www.yoursite.com/blog.
feel as if they are having a conversation with the owner. This feeling
is bolstered by their ability to leave comments, which makes it a
true two-way conversation.



Blogging is a big part of relationship marketing. It can help the
customer feel he has a stronger relationship with the owner and the
business.

Blog posts don’t always have to be long essays with tons of
information, nor should they always be purely personal. However a
good mix helps show your customers that you are a real person
with a life not too different from theirs. Rapport is the key.

Also in the mix can be posts that pre-sell your product or service.
Each of these posts could target a specific benefit. Certainly if you
are in the news or get positive press, this should be mentioned. Any
new product developments could be detailed. All of this can help
establish your authority in your customer’s eyes.

Finally your blog can help direct new customers to your “action”
pages. This should be done gently, but that should be a goal with
any online interaction.

PPC (PAY-PER-CLICK)

GOOGLE ADWORDS PPC is a type of online advertising where an advertiser pays for
Google sells PPC each click-through to their page. This type of advertising can be
advertising that is very effective, but there is a small downside — you are paying for
displayed both in search visitors (often pennies for each).
results and within related
pages on the Internet. PPC advertising can be extremely beneficial as a means to drive
customers to your action pages. Once a certain number of visitors
have been on a site and their actions have been measured, it’s easy
to calculate the average dollar value for each visitor. This
information can help indicate whether a particular area should be
increased or not, but it can also indicate whether or not to continue
or even ramp up further PPC advertising.

If a visitor has a “value” of $1 (i.e. you earn $100 profit from 100
visitors on average), and if this traffic only costs $.05 per click,
you’d want to get as many of these visitors as possible.



Direct mailing is the only other form of advertising where this level
of measurement has been possible. However with PPC, your
overall budget doesn’t have to be in the thousands of dollars —
unless you chose to ramp up based on real results. You set your
advertising budget from the outset.

PPC advertising can also be targeted to a very specific geographical
area. If you add a branch office in a different town, advertising can
be “turned on” for that town extremely easily.

Of course, PPC advertising can be tracked and measured in order
to maximize its effectiveness.

PRESS RELEASES

READ ALL ABOUT IT
Most businesses are familiar with traditional press releases.
Online press releases can
pull in visitors to your
However it’s now possible to submit online press releases as well.
website as well as draw These press releases can serve the same purposes as traditional
customers to your press releases, but they also have other benefits.
physical location.
Online press releases can be picked up by traditional media sources,
but they are also often used by online sources which can widen
your online “net.” When you use press releases as a way to
announce new products or services, they can drive traffic to your
action pages. These printed “stories” can help establish your
company’s authority in your field.

Finally, not only can these pre-sales articles help directly boost your
sales, they give you the opportunity to be called upon as an industry
expert in the future by news sources which can lead to even more
exposure.

SIMPLE VIDEOS WITH
BIG IMPACT YOUTUBE
Even the most basic
online videos for a
business can help
Online video is huge. Even online commercials have a chance at
strengthen and even becoming viral — the “will it blend?” videos are great examples of
establish customer this. However, online videos don’t have to be seen by millions to be
relationships. effective.



Reality-style commercials made by low-cost cameras such as the
Flip cameras can be used to highlight products or services. These
videos, when linked from your various web pages can help pre-sell
your product, help establish your authority, and help build
relationships with your customers. Often when customers can see a
real person they feel much more connected to a business.

These videos can also pull in traffic which can then be sent to your
physical location or to one of your action pages.

Finally, videos — even low-cost videos shot with a cheap hand-
held camera — can be used to provide support to your customers.
Often businesses are hesitant to produce anything but super high-
quality video, but that’s not what YouTube and related sites are
about. Companies are just now beginning to understand how these
types of videos can be used to help their business.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are all
A CONVERSATION WITH
about relationship building. They are easy ways to maintain ongoing
FRIENDS
contact with your customers. This makes it more possible to
Social media can be
thought of as a social
develop a group of loyal fans.
gathering. There are lots
Not only can these sites be used to announce new products,
of conversations, and
people tend to wander services, or specials as well as other changes or news about your
around, joining in when business, they can be used to solicit feedback from existing
they hear something that customers — feedback that can help steer your future business
interests them. actions.

Like so many other online activities, social media sites can help you
establish your authority or expertise in your field. As long as your
style is not too pushy, these sites can be effectively used to pre-sell
your product or service, too.

None of these sites takes much effort to keep updated, but Twitter
is by far the easiest. On Twitter, you can post no more than 140
characters at a time. Anyone should be able to type a sentence or



two about things happening with their business. Twitter can also be
tied to a blog so that when you create a blog post, Twitter is
automatically updated. This makes it even easier to provide ongoing
contact with your customer base.

HUB PAGES / SQUIDOO / GOOGLE PAGES

These sites all have social elements, but from a marketing
perspective they can be thought of as secondary blogs and should
SEARCH ENGINE be used in similar manner. The main difference is that these sites
OPTIMIZATION should only be used for informational posts. Each time a new site is
It’s possible that your created, whether a blog or on a social site, a company’s presence is
business might have been widened on the Internet which makes it easier for potential
approached by someone customers to find them.
wanting to sell their SEO
services. Search engine
optimization is the
method that internet SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
marketers use to help
pages rank higher in the
Social bookmarking sites are another way that a business can use
search engine results.
the Internet to pull in visitors and customers. These sites allow an
SEO is an integral part of
individual to list their “favorite” sites, and as such each bookmark
every element we create
for marketing on the
becomes a “vote” for a site on the Internet.
Internet. While these
steps should be applied
When you bookmark each new piece of content you post on the
to your main website, Internet, not only do you have the potential for others to find your
their effect is significantly page via that bookmarking site, but also each vote gives your site a
stronger when applied bit of authority with search engines such as Google. Each
across an entire individual bookmark carries little weight, but the overall effect over
marketing campaign.
time can be significant.

ARTICLE D IRECTORIES

Online article directories can also be an excellent way for a business
to be found by potential customers. These directories are used
extensively by online businesses for their marketing efforts but are

Copyright © 2010 Richard Butler — 10 — www.DigitalMarketingDublin.com


only beginning to be used by local businesses for the same
purposes.

Each article should be written about an area of “pain” or need that
your product or service solves. For example, if your business is a
tax service, an article might be something about tax audits or late
penalties. This helps individuals who have a problem find the
solution that your product or service offers. Then at the end of the
article they find a link to your page with the answers they need.

The real benefit of article directories is not the traffic that comes
directly from the site, although there typically is some. The power
comes when a website owner publishes your article. They are
required to leave the link back to your page intact, so their site, in
effect, becomes another traffic source for you.

CLASSIFIED These articles can’t really be used to directly sell your product,
On any given day about however they can be used to help establish your expertise in your
a tenth of internet users field. Each article also widens your exposure on the internet.
visit online classified
sites, up from 4% in
2005.
CRAIGSLIST AND KIIJII

Online classified sites such as Craigslist and Kijii are heavily used by
individuals and even businesses who are searching for a product or
service. Each of these sites has rules for the type of advertising that
can be placed, however the ads are free and can be effective at
targeting local customers with a specific need.

When used to target a higher-volume product or service or even to
highlight a special, online classifieds can bring customers through
your door.
RAVING FANS
Meetup groups give you
a chance to build MEETUP GROUP
relationships with the
crowd that has the
Meetup.com is a site where you can set up and schedule a regular
strongest interest in your
product or service. meeting for a group with a common interest. From a business
perspective, if your client base might share a common interest



strong enough to want to meet to talk about it, a meetup group can
be a very powerful way to reach out to potential and existing
customers. These meetings can be a great way to build relationships
with the “serious” customers who can then become raving fans of
your business.

If hosted by your business, these group meetings easily help
establish you as an authority and also have the benefit of bringing
prospects directly into your location. Obviously you would want to
keep the focus of the meeting to be purely non-sales, but the seed is
planted, regardless.

As an extreme example, do you think it might be worthwhile for a
Harley-Davidson dealer to host a meetup group for Harley lovers?

EBAY

eBay is one of the most widely-used sites on the Internet. If you sell
a physical product, the exposure you can get from setting up an
eBay store can far outweigh the small cost. Even if a potential
customer doesn’t buy directly from the eBay page, they can be
directed to one of your other action pages.

eBay has a significant amount of buying traffic. Doesn’t it make
sense to place your product in front of this crowd?

GOOGLE ANALYTICS
WHERE ARE YOU
GOING? Google provides a free service for websites to track their visitors,
One of the strengths of
their visitors’ sources, and their visitors’ actions. This is the tool
marketing online is the
ability to accurately
that makes measurement on the internet so powerful.
measure performance
then quickly make
It’s important to set up tracking on every page you have as well as
changes to adjust to on every potential action your visitors could take. The reports
real-time results. provided by Google Analytics can be invaluable for measuring and
improving the performance of your online marketing efforts.



OUTSOURCING

Often outsourcing can be a powerful way for a small business to
perform like a much larger business. For example, a mom-and-pop
store could keep their books in Quicken and file their own taxes.
However when they hire an accountant, they gain the benefit of his
years of training and experience to be able to save money at tax
time.

Marketing on the internet is another great example of this. While it
WHAT ABOUT YOUR WEB
might be possible for a business to handle parts of an Internet
DEVELOPER ?
marketing plan in-house, isn’t it better to spend your time focusing
Some companies might
on running your business?
be tempted to ask their
web guy to help them
At Your Company Name, we have spent the past ## years
with some or all of these supporting Your City companies. We have helped businesses from
marketing areas. retail shops to service companies harness the power of the internet
This would be like asking to attract customers, increase sales, and build customer
a roofer to build a house. relationships. We can help your business, too.
While a roofer might be
able to learn how to do
all of the tasks, you’d be
much better served by
hiring a contractor from
the start.
Web design is just a
small part of the overall
picture.



HERE’S HOW TO GET STARTED

Call now for a no-obligation needs assessment to see how we can tailor an
online marketing campaign for your business to boost your bottom line.

+353-(0)87-6361907

Or send me an email at Richard@DigitalMarketingDublin.com to
schedule an appointment.

Be sure to sign up for you free video series detailing 14 ways to market your
site. Simply visit the website http://www.DigitalMarketingDublin.com and
sign up on the right hand side.

Richard Butler
27 New Row Square
Dublin 8

Phone: +353-(0)87-6361907

Email: richard@DigitalMarketingDublin.com

Website: www.DigitalMarketingDublin.com

Thanks to Richard's efforts in optimising my website I
regularly receive inquiries. My site is now at the top of
numerous search engines for keywords important to
my client base. My business has grown appreciably
thanks to Richard's work”

Dr David J Carey,
http://www.DavidJCarey.com.


Mastering digital marketing

Mastering digital marketing

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