Marketing Basics: Target, Design, Promote.

Online marketing is no different in many ways to offline marketing and advertising. It's important to know your target audience. What are their demographic profiles? What age range and socioeconomic background is your typical customer or prospect?

Whether you use formal surveys or other tools, it's important to know who you're communicating with and understand how they think and behave. The typical behavior drivers for a gen-x soccer mom are not the same as those of her Millenial teenage son, or her Baby Boomer parents.

Make sure you're speaking your business' message in your customer's native language.

Design your site's visual style and content around that target audience. Do some research of competitor sites and evaluate what's working and what isn't for them. Look at the best practices in your industry, compare them to your business' overall marketing style and message, and translate the trends to fit your unique business. These best practices can include both design trends (color scheme, font choices and overall visual style) and functionality elements (shopping cart, chat, message boards, blogs, etc.)

Once your site is built to target that ideal audience, begin an online marketing program to drive traffic to your site and promote search engine visibility. Guaranteed traffic campaigns will bring new visitors to your site. Permission marketing campaigns and other tools can generate the initial buzz around your site's "Grand Opening." Keeping the site updated with relevant content and desirable products and services will keep them coming back.

Tracking all the moving parts of your marketing campaign can be a challenge. A Marketing Calendar tool can help you keep track of how often your communication is going out, and help keep you on track to meet all your internal and external deadlines. Analytics can help you track progress and see the results, so you can make changes as needed.

With the right customer-centric attitude and the right tools, anyone can successfully create and market an online business. LeapFrog Small Business is here to make sure that everything you need is right where you need it!