Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
What are you hoping to achieve?
Before beginning an SEO project, you should consider your company’s business objectives and how your website plays into them. It is important from the outset to be able to describe your business offerings in simple terms. After all, the content you have on your site should simply and accurately answer the queries that a user is inputting into a search engine.
A website can have a number of roles:
- To inform, in which case the amount of time spent on site or amount of pages visited might be a sign of success
- To entertain, in which case user engagement with content will be a priority
- To persuade, in which case you will want a user to fill in a form, such as a contact form or newsletter sign-up
- To sell online, in which case the goal will be to move users right through the funnel to a purchase
Define your target audience
It’s important to consider the profile of your target audience. You want to know as much as possible about your ideal customer, so look at:
- Market segmentation
- Where they are located
- What language they speak
- What kind of behaviors they typically exhibit
You should also identify what motivates and interests each target audience by:
- Conducting market research, such as surveys or focus groups
- Learning best practice from the websites of successful competitors
- Talking to your Sales department to better understand customer needs or even customer frustrations
Shane Lyons
Shane Lyons is head of Search & Analytics at Mediaworks, an award-winning media and communications agency. He has been working in Digital both in Ireland and abroad for the last 8 years and now specializes in SEO and Analytics.
