Is there a city in America that’s as synonymous with sunshine as warm temperatures and friendly folks as much as Austin, Texas? If so, then it must be time for some serious relaxation! Although Austin has a well-deserved reputation as the live music capital of the country, the city is also a hub of corporate activity. Companies like Google, Dell, and Apple have their headquarters there, and it’s an ideal place to run a business that relies heavily on the internet. If your business is online-based, then there are plenty of opportunities to grow your audience in Austin and beyond.
If you’re looking to grow your business online, then the first thing you need to do is to find a way to attract customers to your online store. To do this, you need to focus on establishing a strong presence on the web, and one of the best ways to do this is with an online marketing plan. In this article, we’ll walk you through exactly what you need to have in place in order to successfully market your online business in Austin. We’ll cover:
Website
First of all, you need to have a website. While it would be great to have a physical storefront and accept customers’ orders online, without a website, you’ll be losing out on a massive audience. Even if you have the perfect product and the best delivery system, no one will know about it if you don’t have a website. To put it bluntly, without a website, you may as well not even exist.
When it comes to picking a web host, be sure to go with a company that’s based in Austin or nearby. Furthermore, you want to rent a dedicated server from a reputable company since you’ll be handling a lot of traffic once you’ve launched your site. Make sure to ask the web host about how much experience they have with online marketing and if they’re willing to provide support for such a plan.
Social Media
Speaking of not existing, social media can also be a great way to let people know about your website. Once you’ve established a social media presence (i.e. a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a LinkedIn profile), you can use the platforms to promote your website and gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t.
To be able to effectively use social media in your marketing strategy, you need to follow a few simple steps. First, be consistent. Try to post regularly and make sure to engage with your audience on the platforms.
Google Ads
Speaking of not existing, Google Ads can also be used to gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t when it comes to marketing online. Google Ads can be a bit tricky to get used to, but following a few simple steps will put you in command of this powerful tool.
First, set up your Google Ads account. You’ll need to provide a credit card to ensure you can make the most of this tool. After you’ve set up your account, navigate to the “adwords” tab and consider creating a new campaign.
Email Marketing
Now that you’ve got a website and are actively promoting it on social media, it’s time to turn our attention to email marketing. While social media can be a great way to reach potential customers, there’s still a large audience that you’ll be missing out on if you don’t have an email address.
To get started with email marketing, you’ll need to decide on an email marketing tool. There are a number of robust email marketing tools out there, but for the sake of this article, we’ll be using Marketo. After you’ve made your selection, you can move on to the next step.
First, create an email marketing list. This is the group of people you’ll be sending emails to. Next, craft a compelling email to attract potential customers to your website. Once you’ve crafted the email, schedule it to be sent to your list.
What makes up a successful email marketing plan? There are five basic pillars that make up a successful email marketing plan:
- Segmentation
- Personalization
- Contextual Marketing
- Analytics
- Dosage
- Triggers
Each of these pillars is vital to the success of your email marketing campaign. Let’s discuss each one in turn.
1. Segmentation
Segmentation is all about breaking down your list into groups of people who are similar to one another. A simple way to do this is via demographics or psychographics. For example, you can target women between the ages of 25 and 34 who are interested in makeup and fashion and use that to craft an email marketing list. You can also use the data you collect to find similarities within groups of people and then target your emails toward these similarities.
There are a few different approaches to email marketing segmentation, but a simple and effective way to do this is via creating different email messages for different groups of people.
2. Personalization
In a similar vein to segmentation, you can utilize personalization to craft different emails for different groups of people. For example, if you have an email list of health-conscious people who are always looking for ways to improve their diets, you can use that data to craft an email encouraging people to eat more vegetables.
Even if you have the same product or service, you can still get very different results from different groups of customers. Personalization is all about tailoring content to suit the individual.
3. Contextual Marketing
Contextual marketing is all about placing ads that are relevant to the individual viewing the ad. This can be done through various methods, but most notably through Google Adwords and Facebook ads. When a person clicks on an ad, they’re landing on a page with content that is relevant to what they were searching for.
Because of the nature of these ads, it’s entirely possible to measure the success of your contextual marketing campaign. You can see how frequently individuals clicked on relevant ads and whether or not those clicks resulted in conversions (i.e. the sale of a product or service).
4. Analytics
Now that you’ve got a group of individuals who’ve opted into your email marketing list, it’s time to take a closer look at how many people are actually opening your emails and whether or not they’re acting on the content within your emails.
The analytics package within your email marketing tool will provide you with all of the information you need to make informed decisions about the future of your email marketing campaign. Some of the metrics that you can track include:
- Opens
- Clicks
- Conversions
- Average order value
- Demographics
In addition to analyzing the metrics, you can also use the analytics tool to conduct A/B testing. In essence, this means you can randomly select a group of individuals who’ve opted into your list and send them different versions of the same email.
If you’ve ever tried to run an online business, then you’ll be well aware of the importance of generating web traffic. Without visitors, you’ll never make sales and, quite frankly, you’ll never have a successful business.
5. Dosing
Dosing is all about delivering an appropriate amount of content at the right time to the right audience. As a digital marketer, this is a skill that you’ll need to develop. One of the best tools for doing so is digital trackers. These trackers will monitor the effectiveness of your emails and alert you to any changes that may need to be made.
To put it simply, if someone lands on your website from an email but doesn’t convert, it’s likely that they’re not going to be won over by a string of uninteresting content. Instead, they want to quickly find information that’s valuable to them, so it’s imperative that you consider the wants and needs of your audience when crafting your content.
In addition to the five essential pillars of a successful email marketing plan, you can also look to these digital trackers for insights into the effectiveness of your emails.
If you’re looking for a quick tutorial on how to get started with email marketing, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ve outlined the five pillars that make up a successful email marketing plan. With these five steps, you’ll be able to put in place an effective email marketing program and drive revenue your way.