So you have a web site. You may have dabbled in social media, tweeting a bit, posting to Facebook or LinkedIn. You might have even shot a little amateur video that you put on YouTube. From a marketing standpoint, what have you generated in terms of real return for your efforts? Let me let you in on a little marketing secret. If your marketing is not leading to a sale, your marketing isn’t working. Does this apply to online marketing too? Yes it does. In fact you can have thousands of people reading your content marketing, but if they are not the people who will buy from you (or influence someone to buy from you), you are wasting marketing time and money.

So how do you put together a successful online marketing campaign? First, let’s understand who your target market truly is, and in inverse, who they are not. Are there certain people groups that are likely to buy your products or services? Think about the age, gender or social demographics of your customers. Maybe you are selling B2B and there are specific industries that purchase from you. Now think about that particular group’s preferences, especially their habits in seeking out information before they make a purchase. Web sites and social media are primarily used as awareness marketing tools. In other words, they are some of the first places searched to gather enough information about your company to take the next step. If you are using your online presence as a marketing tool, you need to match the preferences of your target market. So if you are selling after market parts to owners of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, who are predominantly baby boomers in their 50s or older, are typically white, blue collar middle class Americans, you would want to promote your parts on your web site, but also on Facebook, because baby boomers have taken over Facebook. Twitter is probably not a good option for you. Why? Boomers find Twitter confusing. They don’t get it. It is used by a much younger demographic, so don’t waste your time with it, even if you think you can get a million retweets, it is leading to nowhere, so leave it alone.

The next thing you should consider is the content of your online marketing. Social media leans away from hardcore advertising, which leaves many marketing professionals wondering what good it really is for their purposes. Used the right way, it is a powerful tool. Business and social media work best for marketing when two things are happening. First, it works when social media lends credibility to your products and services. At its heart, social media is a place for the common person to add their opinions. There is nothing more powerful in marketing than a satisfied customer. Social media gives them a forum to express this. Second, online marketing works when it touches the influencers of your customers in a positive way. For instance, if your customers are involved in a charitable cause and your company makes a donation to support that cause, social media is a great place to announce that donation. The people running that charity may never purchase one thing from you, but they have an influence on the people who will. Too many times I see fluff content on social media, blogs, and web pages that are designated for customer satisfaction statements. There are people in my industry that will tell you that you need a nice fluffy blog to increase your ranking with search engines. What I will tell you is this: fluff doesn’t sell. Don’t get caught in the scam of putting a bunch of garbage on your web site, blog or social media that does not have a marketing purpose that will get money in the door.

The last thing I want to emphasize in online marketing is measuring the activity on your web site and social media sites. Let’s talk about a word in marketing that has been redefined by those who build analytics. The word is conversion. A conversion used to mean someone went from being classified as a prospect to a customer by virtue of a first time sale. In web analytics language, a conversion is a person who takes an action you have deemed as a goal or a key performance indicator, such as liking something you have posted or signing up for your online newsletter. If you want to get beyond the basics of online marketing, this is very important for you to understand. Web analytics software is geared towards setting these goals. But if you set goals that do not lead a person a step towards a sale, you are fooling yourself with the effectiveness of your web site as a marketing tool. If you are responsible for setting key performance indicators, make sure actions that lead a person to the next step in the path towards a sale is measured. How are sales transactions to take place at your business? If your web site is not making it clear that there is a next step towards that sale, you need to redesign your web site.

Your online presence can be very powerful in driving people to your business if you are smart about the way you are marketing. Make your web site and your social media work for you. Think through the demographics of your target market and use the tools where they will be seen. Measure what is happening. If it is not leading to sales, do something different. Otherwise, you will spend a lot of time and money with little in return.