Competition is so fierce online. Your competitors might already have 20,000 facebook likes and have been using their website and other online sales techniques for a very long time. How can you compete?
Here are two undeniable facts about the internet:
Fact #1: The internet is a very crowded place and there are lots of companies competing for attention. But while competition is huge, the market is even bigger.
Fact #2: The vast majority of your online competitors are doing an incredibly poor job. They are shoving heaps of money at it, with no target, plan or strategy. Worst of all, they don’t test or analyze their results, so they really have no idea what’s working and what’s not. I can assure you that out of their whole online marketing effort, no more than 10% is producing results.
With a smart strategy, you can easily outperform your competitors with as little as one-tenth of their budget.
Targeted marketing vs flooding
Your competitors are playing a game that is based purely on machine-gunning everyone, everywhere with their message. They bombard social media with paid adverts, shoving their pictures and slogans down everybody’s throats. But they never stop to consider whether they are speaking to the right people.
While this produces results, the return on investment is very low, as it is not targeted. What’s worse, this exercise is not sustainable. Advertising should be an investment, not an expense. You invest money, and you get more in return.
You should be in a position where you know exactly what is working and capitalizing on it, while getting rid of what is not.
Effective Targeting + Testing & Analysis = Lots more sales = Extremely high return on investment
The internet makes for an excellent testing ground. It allows to test in small samples, maintaining low costs and getting almost instant feedback. Then, using those test results, we can tweak the campaign accordingly and go bigger, with the reasonable certainty that it will bring a more than adequate return on investment.
So here’s exactly how it works:
Step #1: Create a campaign
Step #2: Test it on a small sample of the target audience
Step #3: Analyse the results and test against another version of the campaign
Step #4: See what works best and adjust as necessary
Step #5: Send out to the whole target market
This approach allows you to:
1. Save money by only investing in what works
2. Use the money you saved to invest into a much more effective campaign that will bring you a lot more sales
3. Get better results than your competition, for a fraction of their budget
4.Win over their market share and outperform them in the field
This is what we call Guerilla Tactics. Essentially, it’s what allowed the Vietnamese to resist and ultimately push back the American Army in the Vietnam war. The American army was vastly superior to the Vietnamese, both technologically and numerically. Yet, strategy outperformed size.
This is the kind of approach that you aught be taking; using every bit of your resources to its maximum effect. No carpet bombing, no machine gunning, no trying to reach everyone at the same time. Strategic, targeted and tested is the only way to web success. Read More.
If you want to get yourself started - start by finding out who you are targeting. Download you worksheet here.
If you want to get yourself started - start by finding out who you are targeting. Download you worksheet here.
