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6 Key Online Marketing Strategies Cheat Sheet
6 Key Online Marketing Strategies Cheat Sheet
6 Key Online Marketing Strategies Cheat Sheet
phones, tablets, computers and various other devices that keep us in a constant state of
engagement. While there are plenty of negatives for this, we’re going to focus on the positives, and
what you can do to use these habits to grow your business, build your tribe, and engage your
audience. Most business owners understand their business, but not the way that online marketing
works. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to help you begin using some key strategies to gain
market share and grow your business. We’ll be covering blogging, email, copywriting, SEO (search
engine optimization) social media and landing pages. While there is so much more information
than what I’ve been able to fit in this e-book, this should be the information you need to get
started or expand your current strategy. If you need additional help with marketing consulting or
full marketing and administrative support for your business, feel free to reach out!
Allie Bloyd
In the purest sense, a landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. However,
when discussing landing pages within the realm of marketing and advertising, it’s more common to
refer to a landing page as being a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has
been designed for a single focused objective.
This means that your landing page should have no global navigation to tie it to your primary website.
The main reason for this is to limit the options available to your visitors, helping to guide them toward
your intended conversion goal.
There are 2 basic types of landing page, Click Through and Lead Generation (also referred to as
Lead Gen or Lead Capture pages).
● Does your landing page headline match the message on your ads?
● Is your landing page messaging focused on a single purpose?
● Could a stranger understand the purpose in 5-10 seconds? (test this)
● Is it clear who your company is and what you do? (a logo and
tagline)?
● Do you have a simple secondary description to enhance the headline?
● Do you use bullet points to describe the benefits of your
product/service?
● Are you using a relevant and original main image or video that shows
it being used (context of use)?
● Does your page message have the clarity of a 30-second elevator
pitch? (Read out your page copy to someone and see if they
understand it.)
● Is your primary headline phrased to answer the question “What is this
page about?”
● Have you removed extraneous links (like the global nav) – to remove
page leaks?
● Does your landing page explain how your product/service is unique
(USP)?
● Does the writing focus primarily on benefits rather than features?
● Did you resist asking for any unnecessary information in a form (be
completely honest cos it’s bad)? (check the box if you aren’t using a
form).
● Do you explain the value or size of your lead gen giveaway (discount
amount, number of ebook pages, $ value)?
● Do you provide examples of previous customers using or
complimenting your product/service? (Testimonials and other trust
factors)
● Do you offer multiple contact methods (phone, email, live chat)
● Do you make it clear what the visitor will receive by clicking your
CTA?
● Does your landing page appear to be professionally designed?
● Does the design of your landing page match the visual style of your
ad creative? (Banners)
● Does the design match the style of your main website or brand? (Only
relevant if you will end up there after clicking the CTA)
● Do you use lightboxes to show extra information without leaving the
page?
● Do you provide a privacy and or terms & conditions statement/link?
● Are you providing a sample (preview of first chapter etc.) of your
giveaway, if applicable?
● Do you show certifications or logos of partners/affiliates/security
● If you are getting people to sign up for a webinar, are you showing the
number of registrants as a form of social proof?
● If you use exit popup windows, only check this box if it offers
something of value that’s relevant to the page, and doesn’t use
manipulation to encourage the click (for example, making someone
click on a link that says “That’s okay, I like crappy conversion rates.”).
It’s not delightful and you can do better.
● Are you doing A/B testing on your pages?
● Are you seeking feedback from your customer to help develop a
hypothesis for your next test?
● If you have a multi-step process (sign-up etc.), do you make it clear to
visitors? (30 seconds, 3 steps etc.)
● Have you optimized your landing page to get a paid search quality
score above 7?
● Do you use a separate landing page for every promotion/campaign?
● Have you tested using a short page vs. a long page to understand
how much information your visitors need to convert?
● Does your landing page follow the principle of unity, where every
element of the page is focused on explaining a single concept?
● Have you Krug’d your landing page? (Remove 50% of the copy, then
delete half of what’s left. (To ensure maximum simplicity and clarity).
● Leave this box unchecked if your form button says “Click Here” or
“Submit”.
● If you use a form, is it encapsulated in a colored background box to
make it clearly stand out as the most important part of the page.
As you can see, there are many key factors to creating a great
landing page that actually converts. You can either set out to
learn how to build landing pages yourself, as well as integrate
them with your email, social and CRM platforms, or you can
hire someone to manage this for you. Landing pages and
more advanced funnels are a very powerful marketing
strategy that I would highly recommend using. I offer these
services in my digital marketing packages, found at
alliebloydmedia.com
expanded over the last 10+ years to be a very powerful sales tool. Your blog should typically be
housed on your website, but it can also be a separate site that it's connected to your primary
business site. A blog for business has several purposes. First, you want to position yourself as an
expert in your field. This builds trust with present and potential clients. Second, it helps you address
common questions or objections that your customers would have surrounding your product or service
without them having to reach out to a salesperson to discuss them. This is a much more effective
way to persuade your customer as it’s a very soft sell. Third, when set up correctly, blogs can build
your organic search engine rankings. This means that when your potential customer searches for
something related to your industry or product, they could find you first. You could be the person who
educates them, answers their questions and then they can discover your products or services. On a
more advanced scale, blogging is a way to get segment your customers and website visitors in order
to retarget them with online advertising and email content based on their specific interest. This is a
cost effective way to increase sales and get a higher engagement rate with your content.
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How to write an effective blog:
Empathy is the most powerful tool you have as a blogger because it connects you to your
audience emotionally. You create that empathy with your readers and it’s the emotional
connection that gets them to think that you understand their need.
Then the key is to take one of the problems or desires that your readers have and
incorporate it into your blog post.
2) Attention-grabbing Headline/Title
You need to grab your audience’s attention by writing a catchy headline. Jeff Goins has a
headline formula that works pretty well:
Follow the formula and then analyze your headline with CoSchedule great new tool. It will
show you the overall quality of your headline and even tells you how it will rate in social
shares and SEO value.
Make it personal, be yourself, and keep remembering to speak the language of your target
audience.
There are several other key factors in blogging which include SEO best practices. We’ll
cover those in the SEO portion.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and
quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
Organic SEO, also called On Page SEO, all stems from creating a good user
experience. Google wants to make sure they’re serving up links that are EXACTLY
what the user is looking for. Despite all the Google updates over the years, On Page
SEO hasn’t really changed that much, which is great.
If you follow these key steps on every page of your website, you’re going to
drastically increase your organic SEO. However, this increase takes time. This is not
a quick solution, as Organic SEO never is. This is part of a long term strategy.
Blogging ties into this, because most business websites only need a few key pages.
Blogs are your opportunity to have more content to be indexed by Google, as well as
to better educate your consumer. There is SO much information that goes into
organic SEO and paid search, but this is a starting guide for you to work with.
Do you take meta tags seriously? Or do you even know what they are? Although
the effect of the title tag or meta description has changed significantly over the
past several years, it’s still a good practice to pay attention to them. Essentially, all
the tags are just ways that you can add additional data to your images and pages
to let the search engines know exactly what your page is about.
In on-page SEO, the major types of meta tags that you should pay attention to are:
1). Title tags: Title tags define the title of your web page or document. They’re
mostly used to display preview snippets of your web pages. When you’re writing
your title tag, it should be short, clear and descriptive but don’t duplicate content
from the page content. The ideal length is 50 – 60 characters. If your title tag
exceed 60 characters, Google will only show the first 60. It looks like this:
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How to Increase my Organic SEO
2). Meta description: According to Survey Monkey, 43.2% of people click on a
given result, based on the meta description alone.
This is how a meta description usually appears in the organic search listings:
The meta description is what search engines use to gauge what topic you’re
writing about and the exact audience that they should send to that page. So, make
it descriptive and short – no more than 160 characters. There is no need to stuff
keywords in your meta description (which would work against you anyway). 160
characters is just not enough space for stuffing. If you have a wordpress site, there
are SEO plugins that will help you make sure to input each one.
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How to Increase my Organic SEO
Content is the backbone of a thriving business and on page SEO is the backbone
of content marketing. You’ve probably heard the saying, “content is king.” But,
there is way more to successful content marketing than just “content.” You have to
publish the kind of content that will drive traffic and grow your business.
This involves using specific keyword phrase components that include long tail
anchor words. A long tail keyword could be something like “How to use social
media marketing for my business” instead of “social media marketing”. One is for a
business owner, one could be for a marketer.
You’ll also notice that when you start creating in-depth content, you’ll see a
corresponding increase in traffic from long-tail searches, a very specific keyword
phrase indicating buyer positioning and urgency. These help search engines give
you juice because you are helping people solve problems with your content.
● Is interesting to read
● Is in-depth and well-written
● Is written with the user in mind
● Solves a problem
● Is easy to share
● Is optimized for a high-volume keyword
There is so much more to SEO, but we’ll stop here. Feel free to reach out to me
regarding keyword strategy, paid SEO and organic SEO.
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Copywriting
Do’s and Dont’s
Copywriting is the key to your social media, email, SEO, blogging and
landing page strategy. All of these platforms rely on copy, so make it
compelling!
Copywriting is very simply the backbone of all of your marketing efforts. Think
about it, if you’re going to do social media marketing, blogging & SEO, create videos,
or do email marketing, you’re going to have to WRITE. And just throwing something
out there is not a very good strategy. Copywriting is a skill, and while not everyone is
a talented writer, there are some formulas and do’s and don’ts that you can follow to
make sure that you copy is the kind that will drive your potential customers to the
buying process. We’ll cover 10 ways that you can make effective copy that will
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Facts to Know First
● When college students read texts that were less technical and had a more conversational
tone, their reading retention rates were 20%-46% higher. (The Journal of Educational
Psychology)
● 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product
● 90% of the people in the U.S. read at a grade seven (age 12) level or lower. Research also
shows that reading from a computer screen is around 25% slower than reading from paper.
The first step toward getting what you want in any situation—in business or in life—requires that you
get clear on your core outcome. For each piece of copy you write, what is the specific result you want
to achieve? Is it a certain number of sales? Are you looking to get a high number of people to convert
(volume) or are you targeting a more refined customer for a higher end offer (quality)? Depending on
the stage of your business, where you are in the customer acquisition funnel and your specific
revenue goals, your goal will likely differ. Take a moment to go upstream in your business and get
clear about what it is specifically you want you want your copy to deliver before you get started.
Once you know what you want, clarify who your customer is and what they want. The more clearly
you understand who your ideal customer is—whom you’re writing for—and what will get them to
respond, the better results you’ll get from your copy. Look at your competitors’ products and what
groups or forums so you can get in on the conversation and/or consider surveying your customers. In
short, do anything and everything you can to narrow down who your ideal customer is and to
understand what they want, what their big problem is, and how you can specifically help them solve it
forever. The more clearly you understand this and the more precisely you can mirror back their own
frustrations, fears and goals back to them in their own words, the more effective your copy will be.
What are you selling? In the simplest terms, what do they get, how much is it, which option is better
(if you have more than one) and how do they buy? You’re also going to clarify pricing and bonuses in
this step. For the pricing, be sure to benchmark, which means look at other similar products in your
niche so that your pricing is consistent and competitive. In addition, bonuses are a great way to
increase the value—and therefore the price point—of your product or service. If you can add two or
three bonuses that genuinely equal or exceed the value of the main part of the product, it will
increase your conversions. The key is your bonuses can’t overwhelm or feel like more work; they
need to compliment your main product (i.e. an app or piece of technology that helps them implement
Your headline is what you use to get your audience’s attention—a single statement that summarizes
the big problem and your solution in a way that compels the reader to want to know more.
Copywriting expert John Carlton suggests starting with a “how-to” hook if you’re struggling to create
one. For example, “How to Fix a Flat Tire in Traffic in Five Minutes or Less So You Don’t Have to Use
Your AAA Card.” Your hook is used to reel in your audience and pull them into your copy or
presentation. In a sales letter, your hook may be used under the main headline as a transition into the
main body of your copy. Your goal here is to further explain your headline so you can present what it
There’s a saying in marketing, “Sell the hole, not the drill,” or “Sell the shade, not the tree.” Sell the
benefit, not the feature. Bullets are mini-headlines that make specific promises about your product or
service and what it will give your customer. Bullets are particularly effective as your reader can scan
them quickly, yet each one tells a different story about what’s in it for them as it relates to your
product or service. Vary your benefits so that you are highlighting a different value proposition in each
one. Include some that are very simple and practical and include benefits that hit your customer at a
Building around your headline and your hook, tell the story of your product and service. Keep asking
yourself, “Why should your audience care?” Look at how you’re positioning yourself in the market and
the compelling ‘why’ that will motivate your audience to act. A great way to approach your core story
(or the main body of your sales copy) is to tell a ‘before/after’ story. As you do this, you can
mind-read where your audience is and the pain they are feeling (the ‘before’), and you can paint the
picture of what life is like after implementing your product or service (the ‘after’). Weave in your
benefits, advantages, social proof and selling points as you go. Also, include research and facts to
back up your claims. Most important, keep your story simple, brief and clear.
What your customers say about you and your product or service is much more powerful than
anything you can say yourself. Testimonials and customer success stories are a great way to counter
possible objections and build trust. Match your customer testimonials to specific benefits you’ve
claimed in your copy. Be sure to include the ‘before’ and ‘after’ in your customer stories and ask your
customers to reveal the specific results they achieved as a result of implementing your product or
service.
Present your offer with total clarity. This is where you want to tell them what they get, how they get it,
how much it is and how to buy. Structure and clarity is king when you present your offer! Your offer
doesn’t need to be super long—in fact, the more succinct and clear you can be, often the better your
offer will convert. Your price presentation needs to be compelling—build the value before you reveal
the price. Then, as soon as you present the price, justify it. Use scarcity and urgency!
When possible, provide a money-back guarantee. For example, “If you’re not totally blown away by
the value of this product, simply return it to us within 30 days, you’ll receive 100% of your money
back and we can still be friends.” The only exception to this is if you are offering something like an
intensive coaching program or a trip to an exotic location where you are investing substantial time or
money to deliver the product. In these cases, you might consider forgoing the e guarantee so you
Remember to ask for the sale! Remind your audience of the core benefits and build in scarcity and
urgency as you ask for the action. Finally, include a P.S. Often, your P.S. will be read more than the
entire sales copy. Use your P.S. to reinforce an important point, highlight your best benefit, overcome
an objection or make your final point about why your audience has nothing to lose and everything to
gain. Ideally, your P.S. will build off of your headline to put a nice wrapper around your copy.
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Email Marketing
Email marketing is a way to nurture your leads and drive them one step
closer to purchase. This allows you to communicate and stay top of mind.
● Email can deliver the highest ROI than any other platform.
● It’s 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than social media.
1. Strategize
Don’t even bother with email marketing without a solid strategy. You need to know what you’re trying
to achieve. You should spend more time on your strategy than any other part of email marketing.
Without an audience, you can’t really email market. No matter where your list is now, you can get
started with list building. You need to have email sign ups on your website, popups (when done right)
can also be a great way to get email addresses. If you have a physical location, get a sign-up sheet
in store! One of the best ways to get email addresses is to provide great content in exchange for their
information. You can use infographics, free classes, guides, webinars, checklists and more to get
your audience to give up their email. Contests can be another great way to build your list.
The higher the personalization, the higher the results. Personalization includes segmenting (putting
people into different lists based on their interests, and only serving them content related to that
interest) and using their name or information in your emails. This increases open rates by 26%,
Conversions by 10% and click throughs by 14%! That’s HUGE! So when your list building, ask
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Email Marketing Tips Continued
Set up triggered emails to save time and increase open rates. Transactional emails are opened 4-8x
more than traditional emails. They have a 624% higher conversion rate than “bulk” emails. Some
examples of triggered emails include: Welcome emails when someone joins your list, thank you (after
5. Re-Engage or Remove
When you haven’t heard from a friend in a while, what do you do? Re-engage “lapsed” customers by
sending an effective “win back” campaign. Make them an offer, remind them of a discount, or ask
them if they still want to be contacted. It may seem counterproductive, but most email providers
charge by the number of emails on your list, so if you have emails that will never engage, get rid of
them!
More than 50% of searches are done on mobile, 56% of mail is opened on mobile and 69% of emails
not optimized for mobile are deleted! Make it a priority to give your customers their emails in the
I can’t stress this enough. You need to test. If you’re just getting started, you can test time of day or
day of week, but there is a lot of good info online about this for different industries. The top item to
test is subject line. Most providers allow you to A/B test this. Your subject line is the 1 thing that can
make or break someone opening the email. The message, layout, CTA and “from” line can also be
tested to improve open and click through rates. Testing should never stop, you can always improve!
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Social Media Guide
Social media is an important way to connect with your customers and
potential customers. Don’t waste time doing it incorrectly.
● In 2015 Facebook influenced 52 per cent of consumers’ online and offline purchases, up from
● There are now more than 50 million small businesses using Facebook Pages to connect with
their customers
● Social media marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your fans and customers on a
● With 1.09 billion people logging in daily (a 16% increase year-over-year), Facebook is still the
most popular social network around. Not to mention, Facebook owns 77% of all social logins.
I could write a book about all the ways that you can market your business on social media, but today,
we’re just going to cover some actionable steps that you can take to make sure you’re getting the
most out of a basic strategy. Many businesses have tried advertising on facebook or instagram, with
no luck, but that is typically due to a lack of strategy and knowledge. This is a HUGE way to drive
sales, but it has to be done right. I’ll go over more advanced strategies in my next ebook, but let’s
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Actionable Steps
Another easy way to make your content shareable is to make it visual! People love to share
stunning images. The best news is, they only take a few minutes to create -- and you can even
brand them with your own messaging! You can use sites like canva.com to create some nice
images without needing photoshop.
Another great way to share content is by making videos. It’s not always easy to make a video that
will go viral, but it is a great way to give personality and a face to your brand, as well as go more in
depth about things that would take longer to explain in a post.
3. Making a Plan
Facebook
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Twitter Google+
You can use slideshare for: When marketing on youtube, keep this in mind
● Presentations
● Infographics ● Create a video that showcases your
● eBooks expertise
● Case studies ● Ask questions from fans and create
videos to address them
Just make sure to update your account consistently, find ● Add fun in your videos
great posts and convert them to slides and DON’T FORGET ● Use a videographer for events
to credit source! ● Run webinars to youtube for more great
content
● Do product reviews and demos
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Actionable Steps Continued
When you think of it this way, it helps you understand the concept more clearly. When you’re at a
cocktail party, you don’t simply go up to everyone you see and tell them why they need to buy from
your company. That would be very inappropriate and in-your-face. The key is to network. You meet
someone, have a great conversation with them, and let them know what you do. You become
interested in what they do and how you can help them. When that person is in the market for your
services, they may reach out to you, as they remember the positive interaction that you shared.
They’ll even probably tell their friends!
Relationships are the name of the game in social media, so no matter how badly you want to
master this new craft for your business, don’t forget to approach it with a spirit of helpfulness
and friendliness. The point of social media is to put a human voice and face to your brand.
Don’t let the stuffiness of day to day buying and selling overwhelm your presence.
6. Collect Data
This is one of the most valuable functions of social media. The data you can gather on your
demographic and target audience is priceless. In addition to the standard age and gender
questions, you can find out what makes your customers tick. You can find out what their pain
points are, what their questions are, what they relate and react to. Don’t let this data go by
the wayside. Record it and return to it often.
When you find a new nugget of wisdom about your audience, don’t just write it in your
notebook. Act on it. Adjust your efforts to fill this need, answer this question, or offer the type
of information that their craving. This will help you produce quality over quantity in terms of
content.
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Actionable Steps Continued
8. Focus on campaigns that can run across all social media channels
Create a campaign that can be translated onto all your targeted platforms. But beware, you
can’t typically take the same photo and content and successfully post it on all channels.
Different word limits, ideal photo sizes and key hashtags will differ on these channels, so
adjust accordingly. Keeping the message the same on all channels will promote easy
recognition of your brand and it’s values.
9. Research Repeatedly
Research should be a regular part of your social media journey. Continue to research your
competitors and see what is and what is not working for them. You can use pixels to do this.
Research the best hashtags to use. You can find this on sites like iconosquare.com or
hashtagify.me. Using appropriate hashtags can spread your content much farther than your
immediate followers.
10. Testing
Test different image shapes, sizes, fonts, colors and even emojis to maximize your reach or
gain quick recognition with your followers. Sometimes the small things make you stand out
and can break through the clutter in a newsfeed or timeline. In our “Before and After” and
“This or That” posts, we found that if we made our image twice the height of a standard
Facebook image, our reach would triple or even quadruple! This happens because more than
half of all Facebook users are on mobile. When you view this post on mobile, it entices you to
click to see the “after” or the “that” image that you can’t see due to the size. The key is to put
the “AFTER” or “THAT” text in the middle of the photo, so that people will understand that
there is something to see below. When people are constantly clicking on your image, they’re
telling Facebook that they value your content, and Facebook recognizes it as more important,
making the reach skyrocket. In addition, those who click your post are served more of your
content in the future because Facebook knows that they feel it is relevant. Without testing,
trial and error, and closely monitoring the way that our fans are interacting with our content,
we would have missed this awesome realization!
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11. Use Calls to Action!
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Actionable Steps Continued
13. Make it trackable
Make sure that if you’re promoting contests, giveaways, discounts or specials on your social
media accounts, that you have promo codes associated with them for your sales staff. This will
allow you to see how many people are claiming this discount in store. This allows you to see
which channels are working well for your target audience, or what categories are especially of
interest.
10. Cross promote social media channels with on and offline marketing!
I can’t stress this one enough. If you are going to take the time to use social media, make sure
you get the biggest reach possible. This can be done by sending email blasts about your social
activity, putting social share and follow buttons on all of your blogs, images, products, and
pages on your website, putting social icons in your email signature (all staff should have this
with an invitation for the recipient to follow for “Daily Design Inspiration” or whatever your
company provides via social media.) You can also tie this to your other advertising channels,
such as TV commercials, radio ads, or in store signage. This makes it easier for customers to
follow you no matter where they are when they see your message or interact with your
business.
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I hope this ebook has been able to help clarify what you need to be doing in regards to digital
marketing for your business. I have laid out all of the basics of these 6 strategies, but if you’re
interested in advanced digital marketing to maximize your results, please reach out to me. My
digital agency, Allie Bloyd Media, provides complete support packages to allow business owners to
focus on working ON their business, not IN their business. My packages include marketing, creative
and administrative support and I also have advanced digital marketing packages that can be added
on or used separately. In the last 6 years as a marketing director for multimillion dollar business,
I’ve been able to drive revenue, streamline processes, and allow the business owners to focus on
high level tasks in their business. If you would like to discuss how I could work with you or your
business, please reach out to me via email or phone and we’ll begin your FREE business analysis!
Allie Bloyd
hello@alliebloydmedia.com
502-615-6200