How to Master Your Online Marketing and Achieve Your Business Goals

By Next Level Pod on August 4th, 2021 in Uncategorized

If you’re a small business owner, you are doing a lot of online marketing. This is obviously something that Mark talks about all the time. It covers any kind of marketing that has an electronic component to it. This includes channels such as LinkedIn, MailChimp, Facebook ads, and SEO.

Because there is such a wide variety of ways to do online marketing, Mark gets frequent questions on which one is the best. People want to know what program to add to their online marketing repertoire that will change everything for them.

The truth, though, is that there is no “magic pill” when it comes to online marketing. There are, however, some great tactics and strategies for you to implement in your firm.

Tactics vs. Strategies

Something that law firm owners get confused about all the time is that tactics and strategies are not one and the same.

Tactics are the actual things you do for your marketing. For example, search engine optimization is a tactic. Even within search engine optimization, there are tactics such as local search, link building, content focus, and Google paid ads. Beyond SEO there are tactics like social media marketing, Facebook ads, and email marketing. 

Usually when people talk about marketing, they’re talking about tactics. Everybody talks about the tactics because it’s the sexy thing to talk about. 

However, strategies are the level above. They help us determine the tactics we want to use. For example, your strategy could be to add three new clients each month by increasing the potential new clients reaching out to your firm from 20 to 40 per month. There are numbers and specific goals behind that. Once we have that strategy in place, we can look at it and decide which tactics will help us achieve it. 

It’s important to separate strategies from tactics because not every tactic will work in every market for every firm. Too many people work on a tactic and then throw up their hands and say, “Well, that’s it. Marketing doesn’t work for me,” or, “This agency doesn’t work for me,” or, “This resource that I’ve hired doesn’t work for me.” From there, they’ll want to walk away from marketing. 

How to Map Your Marketing Strategy

Now that you understand why your strategy needs to come first, you need to map that marketing strategy to your business goals. Don’t come up with a business goal because of a marketing strategy; come up with a marketing strategy because of a business goal. 

When you set your business goals, make sure they’re SMART goals. These are goals that you’re writing down and that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.

Deciding on Tactics

From there, you can finally decide on what tactics you’ll use to achieve your marketing strategy to reach your business goal. 

Pick tactics that will move the needle you’re trying to move. Data can help guide your decisions on some of this. Additionally, take into consideration the speed at which you need to see results, your competition, and your existing marketing investments and assets. 

If a tactic doesn’t work in the beginning or hasn’t moved the needle on your marketing strategy after a few months, just throw it out and start a new one. 

If you want to learn more about online marketing, check out Episode 010: What Are the Best Online Marketing Tactics?.