Online marketing should not be seen as a completely new marketing paradigm, but rather a new marketing channel like television was 50 years ago or radio was in the early 1900s. The real difference in online marketing is its ability to be measured, its speed, and its flexibility. Online marketing is the most measurable advertising medium ever to be created. With this in mind, you should strive to continually change, optimize, and track your campaigns for continued improvement. Below are some basic tenets to consider as you market your products and services online.

1.    Goals and Objectives
Before any online marketing initiative is implemented clear goals and objectives need to be identified. Are you trying to drive registrations, drive traffic, sell something, etc? This is important as it puts a framework around all of the items mentioned below and allows progress and overall ROI to be measured appropriately. Also, a specific page should be attributed to conversions whenever possible—for example, a “thank you for registering” page that can be associated with a successful conversion.

2.    Tracking and Benchmarks
Once goals, objectives, and conversion pages have been identified, it is important that tracking and benchmarks be setup. This should be thought about as part of the planning process, not as an afterthought once the campaign is live. Setting up analytics is usually pretty simple unless custom metrics need to be set up for a new type of campaign.

3.    Relevant Landing Pages
Make sure that the page or pages you send people to via your campaign are highly relevant to your ultimate goals and objectives. Don’t send responders to your homepage or some generic page where they have to search for the offer you extended in your advertising. Often times an existing page on your site will meet your needs, but you can also create custom landing pages to increase your conversion rates and meet other unique marketing needs (registrations, special offers, seasonal needs, etc).

4.    Driving Conversion
When you figure out what page or pages you are going to use to drive conversion remember what you have brought them there for. Studies show that the more you offer the less likely a user is to convert, so try and get them through the process to conversion as quickly and efficiently as possible. Landing pages offer a great way to test different creative, forms, copy, etc., as they are not part of the standard site so you can manipulate them or even test different versions simultaneously by splitting your traffic.

5.    Page Flow
The way you bring a user through a process can be as important as the offer itself.  Make sure you create a “conversion funnel” via web analytics so you can see the drop off of customers at each page of your flow.  You may find that you lose most of your prospects right at the beginning, which could mean that they were either confused about the offer or your copy/creative failed to entice them to continue to the next step (or some other variable is off). You may see that prospects make it all the way to the final page and drop of, which might mean that they were unhappy with payment or shipping options or perhaps you were asking for too much information at that point. As a matter of course, always try to continually reduce and/or optimize your page flow (copy, creative, info requests, etc).

6.    Consistent Messaging
One mistake often made in online marketing is in consistent messaging. As you move a prospect through a conversion flow, make sure to continually remind them about the benefits of your offer, the quality of your brand, or the needs that you are satisfying (whatever the audience reacts to).

7.    Testing
Never stop testing until you hit a point of diminishing returns, which rarely happens.  Most campaigns are never fully optimized, but with a couple of rounds of testing you can often hit the high leverage items and make real difference in the success of your program. Remember to set up a “control” and some benchmarks to compare against, and then change aspects of your campaign a little bit at a time so you can identify what changes are working for you.  Don’t redesign the entire page in one fell swoop and then compare that to the old page, as this may blind you to quality aspects of the original design and leave you with little specific insight.

8.    Refinement and Optimization
Based on the results of your testing you will need to continually adjust and optimize your copy, creative, page flow, etc. In order to do this, you will need access to creative services and a plan about how and when to make adjustments. 

9.    Integration across Channels
There are many different channels for marketing—print, events, direct mail, Web sites, e-mail and telemarketing. Try to keep this in mind and capitalize on opportunities where one of these other branches could help promote your offering at little or no cost.

10.  Talk to Your Sales Team
Some say that the true structure of a company is the sales team and then everybody else, though not entirely true. It is worth remembering where the money comes from though. Talk to your sales teams and understand what they sell, how they sell it, and what their clients are looking for. A good marketer treats their sales team as their most important client, and involves them in many aspects of strategy, planning, and tactical implementation.