Do you have a current internet marketing  penetration strategy that includes a  clear marketing communication strategy, for your business?
As a business owner, if you are like me, you may feel overwhelmed trying to keep up to date with a clear strategy as to how to promote your business online. It’s not that you don’t want to spend the time or money, it might be more related to not knowing where to begin or not knowing what to include in your marketing strategy plan.
Creating a  document with key elements to keep your growth strategy in perspective and expand upon  as you test and monitor your activity, is the only true way to move forward. Utilizing bench marked results is very important and necessary to grow your organization.
Every online marketing  penetration strategy plan needs to include specific objectives necessary to attain your goals based on a thorough analysis of your market segment, your competitors, demographics, as well as understanding the conversations going on surrounding your market segment, product or service, at minimum.
This critical information is required to understand the potential reality of your business, product or service idea before you invest any serious money. If you are not aware of the conversation or how to join in or have not clearly defined  a solution  based offer  for your prospective customer, your success will be minimal at best.

There are a multitude of different sites to search for information about your prospects needs wants and desires. However here are a few good ones to start with…

  • Omgili is a good site for searching forums, news groups and social sites.
  • Technorati is for searching blogs and user generated media.
  • Monitter is a real time twitter search tool that enables you to monitor a set of keywords on twitter.
  • Google provides a keyword tool that allows you to analyze your competitors url to see what keywords they are using to rank for, estimates traffic and more.
  • Alexa, Quora, and Compete are good tools to check conversations, demographics, and competition
  • SEO Quake is a great Firefox add-on to check the SEO ranking of a competitor.

There are many tools that dig deeper, yet require a user fee.
Now the challenge becomes, how do you interpret this information so that you can produce valuable content that will get people to visit your site and to take the intended action you want them to take when they get there?
One of the most common mistakes made by new business owners is the notion that “marketing” means only tactical marketing such as advertising, lead generation, mailers, flyers and brochures, inbound, outbound, online offline, community programs and so on. While all of these things are important to consider, many forget to consider a solid marketing penetration strategy.
For example, the strategic portion of  your marketing includes such decisions like

  • What does your company stand for?
  • How you portray yourselves in the marketplace?
  • Who you will target with your products and services?
  • What needs will you fulfill for their customer?
  • What problems you will solve?
  • How do respond to  your customers  and engage on line?
  • How much unique fun do you bring to the table
  • How do you serve in the community?
  • How do others rate your business and customer service?
  • …and so on

In most cases, strategic market planning is more important than almost all tactical marketing put together and is seen by many marketing professionals as an essential component necessary to achieve measurable marketing success.
I think one thing to note here would be that potential patrons are checking you out before purchasing. Businesses must be present and accounted  for on the social web in all of the most highly recognized sites as well as those  sites where your audience spends their time.

Our goal is to help small and medium size local  business owners construct a viable  marketing penetration strategy that will increase visibility and engagement with the local customers they serve utilizing strategic integrated web services.