Contents

Introduction

Usual Internet Marketing

The 3 Opportunities for Mike

The Smart Approach to Internet Marketing

Acquisition

Retention

Monetization

Smart Internet Marketing in a Nutshell

IntroductionHow often do you read articles about marketing your business online?

How many of those articles have actually helped you get more sales?

The amount of internet marketing advice out there is overwhelming—and it’s hard to know which information is right or worth your time.

It’s like standing at a crossroad and wondering where to go: social media? SEO? Blogging? Pay Per Click?

Getting started with internet marketing doesn’t have to be hard or confusing.

It’s the art of the start, right? You’d better imagine what you want to end up with before you start following all the how-to best practices.

In this report, we’ll do 3 things: 1. Point out the faults of the usual approach to internet marketing2. Discuss the smart approach to internet marketing 3. Provide tips on getting started the smart way with internet marketing methods

So, let’s get the ball rolling!

Usual Internet MarketingMike is a local business owner running a flower shop. He wants to expand his business, and internet marketing seems like a great opportunity.

So, what does Mike do? First, he launches a website for his flower shop. Then to get started marketing his business online, he browses the web reading lots of tips on search engine optimization, social media, newsletters, blogging, and more.

Like most small business owners, Mike tries to do most of his internet marketing himself, which quickly becomes overwhelming. His efforts are intermittent at best.

In most cases, Mike’s only success is in attracting visitors to his website.

A lot of visitors is a strategy, right?

Well, not really. The problem is that these visitors need to convert—become customers—for Mike’s internet marketing efforts to be meaningful for his business.

Mike’s getting some good traffic on his website from his SEO and social media, but most of these visitors aren’t ready to buy from him, so they leave and Mike loses lots of potential future sales.

Only 1% of visitors are ready to make a purchase on the spot, the remaining 99% are the lost opportunity for Mike.

What Mike needs is the smart approach to internet marketing.

The 3 Opportunities for MikeThe smart approach to internet marketing increases your return on investment (ROI) in marketing with these 3 opportunities:

1. Acquisition If Mike comes up with value propositions, or lead magnets, for customers who are not ready to buy yet in exchange for their contact information, he can get a steady stream of leads he can talk to later. Through regular contact, these leads are more likely to become customers later when they need what Mike offers.

There is a great opportunity in the visitors who come to Mike’s site but aren’t ready to buy yet. Realizing this opportunity through acquisition can be a real goldmine.

2. RetentionOnce Mike has visitors’ contact information, regular communication with them helps keep Mike’s floral shop at the top of their minds. When prospects and customers need flowers, they think of Mike. If you don’t remind prospects about your business, they will forget about you.

3. Monetization Selling additional products to customers who already know and trust you is much easier and cheaper than finding and converting new prospects. Fine-tuning his sales funnel and utilizing up-selling techniques are the two ways Mike could improve his monetization.

Sales funnel is a series of the steps website visitors go through in order to buy a product or service (first, they see an ad text, then they click on it and land on Mike’s site, then they fill out the order form).

The Smart Approachto Internet MarketingThe smart approach to internet marketing sorts marketing techniques into the 3 opportunities above—Acquisition, Retention, and Monetization—to help you recognize which tactics are the highest priority for your business and understand the big picture of your marketing. Which method to start with depends on the current situation of your traffic and customer base.

AcquisitionThere are plenty of channels through which businesses like Mike’s can acquire visitors, such as SEO, Pay Per Action, Blogging, Article Marketing, and many others. That’s why the process is called acquisition – because businesses acquire visitors through it.

But they are not free. Even if Mike does all the work by himself, his time still costs money. So, Mike needs to keep track of the time and money he spends on attracting new visitors and leads so he can determine the ROI of his efforts.

Acquiring Prospects with Lead Magnets

To turn visitors into prospects to follow up with and convert later, Mike needs lead magnets. He can give them in exchange for visitor’s email addresses. Some common lead magnets include free e-books, reports, white papers, video training, and e-courses.

It’s a win-win for everybody. Visitors get high value materials and Mike gets visitors’ emails. Mike now can contact prospects to remind them about his flower shop and later on offer his products or services.

When to Focus on Acquisition

Scenario 1: If your site gets lots of traffic but few visitors are converting, either into leads or customers.What to do: Offer lead magnets on website pages visited by prospects most often. Use

analytics to determine which pages get the most traffic. For example, you can also offer

your lead magnet in the sidebar of your blog.

Scenario 2: If few visitors are coming to the website.What to do: Optimize your sales funnel to make the most of any traffic you get.

This is a 3-step process:

1. Create all the materials for the sales funnel (ad text users see and click on, the website

page they land on, the form they fill out).

2. Buy initial traffic with pay per action, then test to make sure you have a good

conversion rate on your sales funnel. Tweak your materials as necessary to improve

conversion.

3. Scale your acquisition by buying more traffic. You’ve checked in the previous steps that

your sales funnel converts. Now you can buy a lot of traffic and have a good return on

investment.

Retention All businesses have a customer base. Mike does too.

What you as a business want to do in the first place – is launch email campaigns working with the existing customers and leads that have been acquired.

Retention focuses on keeping your business top of mind with prospects, leads, and your existing customer base.

Basic retention campaigns are weekly or monthly email newsletters that include unique, helpful information with the occasional sales pitch.

One of the most important aspects of retention is regularity. Prospects and customers will unsubscribe if you email too often or too rarely.

When to Focus on Retention

Scenario 1: When you have a lead base — contacts of visitors who downloaded the lead magnet from your website but haven’t purchased anything yet.What to do: Create a retention mechanism, such as an email newsletter with news and

special offers.

Scenario 2: When you have a customer base—customers who have purchased in the past. What to do: Create another retention mechanism to make customers feel important, such

as loyalty programs or special discounts. Existing customers could also receive the same

email newsletter as the lead base or a slightly different one.

Monetization

There are two parts to this step in the smart approach to internet marketing: streamlining the sales funnel for different customer segments, and using advanced selling techniques for existing customers.

Sales FunnelMost visitors follow a certain path from finding Mike’s website to becoming customers, called a sales funnel.

Since the sales funnel is a step by step process Mike’s visitors are going through and visitors get lost on the way – Mike should focus on fine-tuning the sales funnel – coming up with better value propositions, working on headlines, etc. to actually convert the visitors.

Advanced Selling Techniques

As customers are making their purchases, Mike can use a number of techniques to sell more.

Cross-selling: Offer adjacent products. For Mike’s flowers, that might be soil or pots to plant the flowers in.

Up-selling: Offer higher-end products. If Mike’s customer is buying tulip buds, Mike could offer complementary but more expensive flowers or courses on how to grow and plant tulips.

Next-selling: Offer long-term services. For example, Mike could offer

regular flower delivery throughout the year to certain customers, such as wedding planners or funeral homes.

When to Focus on Monetization

Scenario 1: When the site gets lots of visitors, but only a few convert into customers. What to do: Fine-tune the sales funnel so that it is more enticing and appealing to website

visitors. Don’t forget - visitors can get lost or confused. To fine-tune the sales funnel you

can come up with different versions of the marketing materials (two ad texts, two landing

pages), direct visitors through materials and see which ad text or landing page performs

better. This is called A/B or multivariate testing.

Scenario 2: When lots of visitors are converting into customers. What to do: Incorporate ways to sell more to existing customers, such as up-selling, next-

selling and cross-selling techniques.

Smart Internet Marketingin a Nutshell

If you have a significant customer base, start with retention. Selling to existing customers is much easier than getting new ones. So, your highest short term potential is here.

If you have large volume of traffic coming to your website, start with lead acquisition and fine-tune your sales funnel to increase conversion rates. Since you already have a lot of traffic, by fine-tuning the sales funnel you’ll realize your greatest potential.

If you have a lot of traffic and good conversion on your sales funnel, start with monetization. Buying traffic that converts through the sales funnel and using advanced selling techniques will help you gain new customers and sell even more to existing ones.

No matter what, keep track of your spending (time and money) and gains for all of your acquisition, retention and monetization efforts. This will help you determine the actual results and decide what works best for you.

Now good luck with your Marketing!

For further information or questions, please contact:

Helen Nesterenko, CEO of Writtent.comhelen@writtent.comSkype: jane.austins

Helen NesterenkoCEO and Co-Founder

Authors:Helen Nesterenko, CEO and Founder, Writtent.comChristina Walker, Copywriter and Marketing Expert, ChristinaWalker.net

Special thanks: Nick Mitushin, CEO and Co-founder, TMFunnel.com

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