5 Steps to Choosing the Most Effective Online Media Combination for Your Business

I am often asked questions similar to the following “What online marketing channels make the most sense for my business?”; “Can I use a blog instead of a website to market myself?”; “Should I add a blog to my website?”; “What about using social media?”; “Which would work the best for me?” and so on and so forth. My response to these type of questions is with questions of my own. Questions such as “What are your specific business objectives?”; “Who are you targeting?”; “Where online are you most likely to find them?” and “What does their online behavior tell us about their needs and objectives?”

To help guide answers to questions such as these I suggest following 5 key steps:

Define Your Objectives
Define and Segment Your Target Audiences
Understand the Role Each Online Channel Plays and How it Can Contribute
Choose a Combination that Suits Your Business
Implement, Measure and Adjust as Needed to Improve Performance

Step 1. The objectives part is pretty straight forward and involves laying out marketing objectives specific to your business. Typical objectives include generating new leads; making new business connections; getting customer/client feedback; improving website search engine results; increasing marketplace visibility or establishing authority in your area of expertise.

Step 2. You can define and segment your target audiences by examining your existing customer base and creating segments (homogeneous groupings) based on their interests, needs, past purchase behavior, demographics, etc. I would also suggest doing some research to determine which social media networks they are part of and participate in. You can then review their profiles, and examine their online behavior to learn about their interests and what are they talking about. (You can read more about this kind of research in a prior blog post Using Social Media Research to Develop Your Messaging in All Media.

Step 3. You then need to make a determination based on the characteristics and relative strengths of each online media channel and how well it is likely to perform in terms of meeting your specific business objectives. While each online medium is generally better at accomplishing certain objectives (e.g. increasing your authority and generating website traffic with blog) these can vary for every business depending on how they are used.

Step 4. One way to plan and quantify online media combinations is to construct what I call a “decision matrix” to help review the alternatives and choose what you think will be most effective at meeting your objectives. On a spreadsheet, list those objectives specific to your business.

Step 5. Regardless of what you start with the only way to find out what ultimately works best is keep testing, measuring and making adjustments.