For many of us, finding the time and commitment to develop an Internet marketing strategy is difficult. There are so many other obligations vying for our attention it is tempting to push strategies to the back burner. Giving into that temptation, however, means putting your business at a disadvantage.

This is because an overall marketing strategy is the compass by which you navigate. As opportunities arise or your business environment changes, the objective and marketing strategies in your plan will point you toward the best action. Without a strategic plan, you risk becoming unfocused in your marketing efforts, resulting in guesses about what might be best for your business.

To be most effective, your Website (as well as other) marketing strategies should be a part of your overall business marketing plan. By aligning online marketing with your offline efforts, you can better achieve overall company objectives. Additionally, you will present a consistent style and message across all points of contact with your target audience.

Your strategic focus will in part be determined by your site's status. If you already have a site in place, your plan can focus strictly on marketing issues. In other words, how to most effectively market using your existing site.

If you have a site that needs improvement, however, your marketing efforts will be more effective if you incorporate Website enhancements in with your strategies.

Finally, if you do not yet have a site, you can create one as you develop a marketing strategy, with your plan focused on launching the site. In any case, remember that your objective, strategies, and tactics will change over time as your situation and focus change.

Parts of a Marketing Plan

A strategic Website marketing plan is similar to a strategic business marketing plan, but with a narrower focus (i.e. the Website plan focuses on Internet marketing strategy and programs while the overall marketing plan encompasses the entire business).

As with any marketing plan, the online plan includes developing strategies and tactics (also called action plans) that, when implemented, will help you reach your marketing goals. An objective, strategy, and tactic are each progressively narrower in scope:

The objective addresses the “big picture”. In general terms, your objective answers the question “How will I overcome my main marketing challenge(s)?” If your company’s main site-related challenge is figuring out how to use your Website to help build client business, for example, an objective for your online marketing plan could be “To enhance online client service as well as build site awareness and interest with clients.”

A marketing strategy supports your objective. The strategy defines general approaches you will take to meet your objective. For example, strategies to support the above objective could include 1) improve online communication, information, and education, 2) build awareness of and interest in your company on the Internet, and 3) communicate the Website’s existence and advantages to existing clients.

A marketing tactic is where the action takes place. Also called marketing programs or action plans, they are the things you will do to bring each marketing strategy to life. Tactics for strategy 2 in the above example (improve online communication, information, and education) could include 1) sharing experience and observations in your industry through participation in discussion boards, 2) offering an _mailMsg newsletter, and 3) listing/submitting your site to targeted search engines and directories.

By implementing marketing programs that are consistent with your site objective(s) and marketing strategies you improve your chance of business success.

Search Engine Optimization and Strategy for Guaranteed Positioning

Why should I consider search engine optimization? Having a search engine strategy service to get you guaranteed search engine positioning is the single most critical element in driving high opportunity prospects to your Web site. Consider the following:

• 60%+ of all visitors arrive at a Web site as the result of a search
• 90%+ of the "found" sites are listed in top 30 search returns
• Consumers are more than 5X more likely to purchase a product after finding it via a search engine than they are from a banner advertisement
• 55% of all online purchases are the result of a search
• SE's are 3X better than banner advertisements for branding

This leads to one conclusion. To drive customers to your Web site, you need a search engine optimization service that gets you listed in the top 30 search returns for keywords that people actually use to find the products and services your company provides.

Unger Technologies E-Marketing Search Engine Optimization Services

Our search engine positioning methods employ a five step approach guaranteed to get you top search engine rankings:

Research keywords - Unger Technologies E-Marketing has a proprietary process to research keywords. We license a database that has over 300 million searches that were done in the last 60 days. We'll query the database to find keywords that are actually used by people to search for the products and services your company provides. We'll sort those keywords by the number of Web pages that compete for them. Our goal is to find keywords that are highly popular, but not highly competitive. We'll provide a report of our findings and recommend the right keywords for your Web site.

Develop Title tags, META tags, Alt tags - We'll do all the behind the scenes coding that search engines require for your site to achieve high rankings. This will include developing the Title tag, Keyword tag, Description tag, and Alt tags for each search engine optimized page.

Optimize copy - We'll work with you to search engine optimize the Web site copy. We'll properly imbed your important keywords in the copy using proprietary software that applies the same algorithms that the search engines actually use to determine the relevancy of the keywords in the copy. When we're done, your most important keywords will be optimized so that the search engines list your page in the top 30 search returns for a specific keyword phrase.

Submit to major search engines - We'll submit your optimized Web pages to all the major search engines. We'll verify the search engines have actually listed the pages and we'll continue to submit the pages until they are listed.

Provide a report documenting results - We'll verify each ranking (i.e., a search return in the top 30 for a specific keyword phrase) achieved for each keyword in each major search engine and provide it to you in a report.

Guaranteed Search Engine Strategy

Unger Technologies E-Marketing will guarantee at least 1 search engine ranking (i.e., a search return in the top 30 for a specific keyword phrase) for each hundred dollars the client invests in search engine positioning. In effect, you will only pay for results. If we achieve more than the contracted number of rankings (which is normally the case), there is no additional charge. Although we will promote your site to numerous search engines, we will only count rankings in the following major engines: AOL Web sites, AllTheWeb (FAST), AltaVista, AskJeeves, Google, HotBot, Lycos, MSN, NetScape, Overture (unpaid listings), Teoma, Yahoo (Web pages). These search engines account for almost all the search traffic on the Web.

Unger Technologies e-marketing team can help you. We guarantee it! We'll get your website positioned in the search engines.