Which Comes First: Online Marketing Plan ( SE0, PPC, Etc.) or Building Website ?

[CALTCAgent]

Disclaimer I am a technical novice, so this is confusing as heck to me. Just random thoughts on building a website.

Which comes first: Online marketing plan ( SE0, PPC, etc.) or building Website ?

Talking with several companies that build websites, they keep this mantra that everything starts with the site. They say build the site over and over and "they will come".

It seems to me the game plan needs to be established first. Where will you be targeting ( SEO, local or more broad, social media, etc.) before the website can be designed to optimize how the website is built ?

Everytime I get into the discussion about what my game plan for marketing should be they seem to,

1. Change the subject

2. Tell me to just build the site, then figure the marketing out later

3. Pay an SEO or PPC expert to come up with a game plan first

4. They offer SEO or PPC services. But no guarantee they can rank and that ranking takes months or years. They offer this as recurring fee after the site is built.

They tell me that the site must be optimized for the type of marketing I am doing. Then how can they build the site efficiently without that established ?

They counter that they will build the site, then they offer SEO or PPC services. But no guarantee they can rank and that ranking takes months or years.

I come back to, how can they build the site first, without knowing the the game plan and areas that will be targeted ?

Wouldn't the build depend on your game plan ?

I see site builds from $500 to thousands of dollars.

Is trial and error the best approach ?

Thanks!

 

[lrixford]

Absolutely building the website. It is the landing page for all of your marketing. Including the ones you mentioned and more.

PPC - Your search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) needs to go somewhere. Therefore you need a website to serve up keyword targeted landing pages. They need to look good, be precise, and have a form for easy lead capture. Don't put the visitor through extra steps when you have already paid for their visit.

SEO - If you do not have a website what are the websites going to index? What are you going to optimize.

Social Media - It is unwise and often impossible to put your entire value proposition and lead generation forms on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ (lowering value). Those sites need to link to your website. This leads into...

Content Marketing - You need a website to place your content upon. The real value of content marketing is delivering quality information to your target demographic while supplying fresh pages to the search engines to supplement your search engine optimization strategy.

Email Marketing - No one wants to read volumes in your emails. Your emails should include many short snippets to multiple articles on your website (see content marketing). A point of recommendation, your emails must have multiple topics within them. What might interest me might not interest others. Give multiple topics to engage multiple audiences.

Offline Marketing - Every major insurer that advertises now have dropped their phone number from their marketing. Why? Because they have done many focus groups to understand that the modern buyer (young and old) do not call anymore when they are researching their future purchase. Whether it be radio, TV, or a billboard. It is easier to remember a well named website versus a phone number. Think of the mental map to remember my phone number (800) 383-3482. Eight hundred, three eight three, three four eight two.....or.... insurancewebsitebuilder.com.

However, all of those people are right. You need to know your base game plan before you build a site. What methods from above are you going to use to market your agency? That will help angle what kind of site you need. Basic or full featured. For example, not going to do content marketing (bad idea) then you do not need to have a site that does blogging. Not doing PPC, then you can forgo a platform that provides keyword landing pages? Doing offline marketing on TV? Then you need a site that supports personalized URLs like myagency.com/tv to make it easier to create landing pages for those visitors.

Who is your target market? Young or old? What is your geographical area? Local (best), state (meh), national (hahaha, hope you have tens of millions). Sometimes it is better to dip your toe in with a decent and relatively low cost website and see how your visitors initially react to your site. Is it easy to navigate? Are your call to actions working? Once you know your website is ready for the big time then start the cost intensive marketing efforts. No better way to waste money is to build a website, spend money to drive leads, and having your user experience stink.

By the way I looked at keywords for "California long term care" and you are on average looking at $4/click for good placement. Figure a conversion rate of 10% (AWESOME!) and you are looking at $40/lead. Then let's hope you have a stellar lead close ratio of 50%. Then that lead just cost you $80. If your numbers are worse they drop quickly. $4/5% conv/25% close and that lead will now cost you $240. Now you know why I am advocating build that website right and have your house in order before spending the real money.

Any marketing firm that assures success. Run. If one firm had the secret sauce they would be billionaires and would charge like they have a private jet fleet to build. You can review stories on these boards of people wanting to bust out of the gates rocking it. Then they realize it takes time and effort. The majority of the members on this board that have been successful have made either a significant investment into their site and marketing or have made significant commitments of themselves to build a successful presence. However, those two are really the same...time and money. You need to decide how your want to roll.

You can build your own website for cheap, as discussed on this board. That takes your time. You can have someone build one for you. That takes your money. Once it is launched you can do all the SEO, PPC, Social, Content, and email marketing yourself. A lot of people on this board will guide you down the right path free of charge....you just need to invest the time. Or you can have someone do some or all of it for you. Remember, their time is valuable as well. The value of working with them is that hopefully you are working with a firm that has experience in YOUR vertical. Otherwise they will be marketing your LTC agency with the same tools and content designed for the bakery next door.

I also want to leave you with this. Your site is fluid. It sounds like you are wanting your site to be set it and forget it. It does not work that way. There is trial and error. However, that is the nice part of a website. You can change it after launch...and you should. If your website is built right from the beginning then it will support any marketing method you choose.

Hope this helps.

 

[CALTCAgent]

Thanks for the response!

Absolutely building the website. It is the landing page for all of your marketing. Including the ones you mentioned and more.

Again, building it to be "optimized", I guess that means for seo keywords and geographic location, wouldn't it be best to know that first ?

SEO - If you do not have a website what are the websites going to index? What are you going to optimize.

Shouldn't you have a plan on where and what you want to have your site indexed on first ?

I can appreciate that you need a site, where your target is seems like the crucial part.

Social Media - It is unwise and often impossible to put your entire value proposition and lead generation forms on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ (lowering value). Those sites need to link to your website. This leads into...

That makes sense.

Content Marketing - You need a website to place your content upon. The real value of content marketing is delivering quality information to your target demographic while supplying fresh pages to the search engines to supplement your search engine optimization strategy.

Isn't the content dependent on a plan where you want to be found ?

Again, shouldn't a plan be known to optimize the infrastructure and content of the site ?

However, all of those people are right. You need to know your base game plan before you build a site.

So does the website builder help you with this or must you already know seo and ppc, therefore able to make a reasonable game plan before site build ?

For example, not going to do content marketing (bad idea) then you do not need to have a site that does blogging. Not doing PPC, then you can forgo a platform that provides keyword landing pages?

Knowing how to write content that ranks in your target sounds like the challenge.

I was told keywords are put in the infrastructure of the site, whatever that means. Maybe that is easy to change. It sounded like a big deal to the build the way the guys I talked to made it sound.

What is your geographical area? Local (best), state (meh), national (hahaha, hope you have tens of millions).

I have seen some sites that target many states. I don't think they have tens of millions. Maybe they do.

This is an area that I think is confusing without again, a more specific game plan and costs.

Sometimes it is better to dip your toe in with a decent and relatively low cost website and see how your visitors initially react to your site.

This makes it sound like trial and error. Nothing wrong with that if that is the approach.

Again, someone asked me what my plan for the site was and what areas and keywords I was targeting. Made me think it would make sense to build the site around the plan.

By the way I looked at keywords for "California long term care" and you are on average looking at $4/click for good placement. Figure a conversion rate of 10% (AWESOME!) and you are looking at $40/lead. Then let's hope you have a stellar lead close ratio of 50%. Then that lead just cost you $80. If your numbers are worse they drop quickly. $4/5% conv/25% close and that lead will now cost you $240. Now you know why I am advocating build that website right and have your house in order before spending the real money.

Interesting. Good to have some numbers to consider. Those sound expensive but I have little experience with online leads. I can't imagine a 50% closing ratio though.

Any marketing firm that assures success. Run. If one firm had the secret sauce they would be billionaires and would charge like they have a private jet fleet to build. You can review stories on these boards of people wanting to bust out of the gates rocking it. Then they realize it takes time and effort. The majority of the members on this board that have been successful have made either a significant investment into their site and marketing or have made significant commitments of themselves to build a successful presence. However, those two are really the same...time and money. You need to decide how your want to roll.

The problem is knowing where to get the ROI.

You can build your own website for cheap, as discussed on this board. That takes your time. You can have someone build one for you. That takes your money.

I have heard prices from $500 to $15,000. This makes me wonder what this huge variance is for. Is it all about appearance, performance or amount of pages. I just don't know.

Once it is launched you can do all the SEO, PPC, Social, Content, and email marketing yourself. A lot of people on this board will guide you down the right path free of charge....you just need to invest the time.

I am not sure I am capable. Maybe I can do it. I have talked to several people that build sites, That makes me think it might be hard since they could not clarify for me a specific game plan.

Maybe that is for me to figure out, which given my technical skills, well it is above my abilities at this time.

Or you can have someone do some or all of it for you. Remember, their time is valuable as well. The value of working with them is that hopefully you are working with a firm that has experience in YOUR vertical. Otherwise they will be marketing your LTC agency with the same tools and content designed for the bakery next door.

This is the business I should get into. I pay them and they give me no guarantees. I wouldn't even know if they were doing everything possible.

I don't know many businesses that you pay a lot of money to someone with no way of knowing if they are doing the job. If they are doing the job it seems they should be able to have some sort of guarantee.

I know the rules are changing all the time and that is why there is no guarantee.

I also want to leave you with this. Your site is fluid. It sounds like you are wanting your site to be set it and forget it. It does not work that way. There is trial and error. However, that is the nice part of a website. You can change it after launch...and you should. If your website is built right from the beginning then it will support any marketing method you choose.

It just seems an idea of the target would be ideal. Possibly not realistic. Still really vague to me.

 

[lrixford]

Shouldn't you have a plan on where and what you want to have your site indexed on first ? I can appreciate that you need a site, where your target is seems like the crucial part.

Google. Bing. Google Local. Yahoo. Bing Local. Those. In that order. All free. All will index you. Just where they index you is the question. That is where SEO comes in.

Isn't the content dependent on a plan where you want to be found? Again, shouldn't a plan be known to optimize the infrastructure and content of the site?

No. Content is to target your clientele. The search engines only care that the content is relevant to your site and that you update it regularly. Google spiders are not an expert in LTC. You are overthinking this one.

So does the website builder help you with this or must you already know seo and ppc, therefore able to make a reasonable game plan before site build?

A web design firm will help you. If you pay for it. Setting up a PPC campaign takes 10 hours for our team. Setting up and configuring SEO takes much more.

Knowing how to write content that ranks in your target sounds like the challenge.

Not really. How do you currently sell and educate your prospective and existing clients? Same stuff. Different medium.

I was told keywords are put in the infrastructure of the site, whatever that means. Maybe that is easy to change. It sounded like a big deal to the build the way the guys I talked to made it sound.

This is web design basics. Put the target keywords in the H1 or H2 header tags. Then include the keywords in the content. Most website platforms will make the "title" of a page the H1.

I have seen some sites that target many states. I don't think they have tens of millions. Maybe they do.

Target yes. Get traffic no. Just look at long term care insurance California. Nothing but large publications and government sites that will outrank you. Now think of doing that in multiple states. Focus on a locale or state first. Move on from there. If you don't you make one of the most common and costly mistakes.

Again, someone asked me what my plan for the site was and what areas and keywords I was targeting. Made me think it would make sense to build the site around the plan.

Focus on one state. Focus on 15-25 keywords. Use the Google keyword planner. Find out what people search on. That is all you'll need.

The problem is knowing where to get the ROI. I have heard prices from $500 to $15,000. This makes me wonder what this huge variance is for. Is it all about appearance, performance or amount of pages. I just don't know.

I keep telling you start small. Get the $500 setup website with a good support staff behind it. If you out grow it then great. If not, you didn't spend $15,000.

I am not sure I am capable. Maybe I can do it. I have talked to several people that build sites, That makes me think it might be hard since they could not clarify for me a specific game plan. Maybe that is for me to figure out, which given my technical skills, well it is above my abilities at this time.

Just focus on the plan outline from above. Let someone handle your site.

This is the business I should get into. I pay them and they give me no guarantees. I wouldn't even know if they were doing everything possible. I don't know many businesses that you pay a lot of money to someone with no way of knowing if they are doing the job. If they are doing the job it seems they should be able to have some sort of guarantee.

No, you should go into future trading. Way more lucrative. Seriously though, A reputable firm will tell and demonstrate what they are doing for you over the phone or on a monthly report. However, I do not control where Google places your site. (again if I did I would make billions) I don't control the consumers you are targeting. I can assure you top ranking on PPC...you will be paying $7/click. Yet again, people can get you to the top, you just have to pay for it.

Next, getting you leads is one thing. You are also on the hook to make sure you close them. Have a 10% close ratio? Then someones services will be more costly because they need to overcome a low close ratio with volume.

I know the rules are changing all the time and that is why there is no guarantee. It just seems an idea of the target would be ideal. Possibly not realistic. Still really vague to me.

Yup. No one controls what the search engines do. You could have a firm get you to the top of the results through blank hat methods. Then Google penalizes your site or changes their algorithm. Then you are no where.

That is why you use a firm that follows the rules.

Remember it is a marathon, not a sprint.

 

[CALTCAgent]

A web design firm will help you. If you pay for it. Setting up a PPC campaign takes 10 hours for our team. Setting up and configuring SEO takes much more.

This speaks to my point. To set up and configure comes with the site build doesn't it ?

Therefore knowing the plan should be known before the build ?

This is web design basics. Put the target keywords in the H1 or H2 header tags. Then include the keywords in the content. Most website platforms will make the "title" of a page the H1.

OK, this is good to know. I guess some guys I talked to made it sound complicated, words like infrastructure and optimization. Sounds like this stuff is somewhat flexible on the site.

Target yes. Get traffic no. Just look at long term care insurance California. Nothing but large publications and government sites that will outrank you. Now think of doing that in multiple states. Focus on a locale or state first. Move on from there. If you don't you make one of the most common and costly mistakes.

I have seen it in multiple states. Not sure what you mean by getting traffic. The sites were on the first page of google and not an ad.

I keep telling you start small. Get the $500 setup website with a good support staff behind it. If you out grow it then great. If not, you didn't spend $15,000.

Small means less money on the site ?

Yup. No one controls what the search engines do. You could have a firm get you to the top of the results through blank hat methods. Then Google penalizes your site or changes their algorithm. Then you are no where.

That is why you use a firm that follows the rules.

Remember it is a marathon, not a sprint.

I wished I knew what black hat was. I guess that mean violating some SEO rules set by google.

 

[lrixford]

This speaks to my point. To set up and configure comes with the site build doesn't it ? Therefore knowing the plan should be known before the build ?

No. A low hourly rate for a AdWords certified SEO/PPC company is $75. For 10 hours it would be $750. For SEO it averages 20-25 hours. So now you are paying $1500+. You are paying for the expertise. It would take you much longer to research, configure, and test. Remember, you don't have to pay someone to do it. Lots of guides how to do it yourself. Here is a good one. You just just to decide what YOUR time is worth.

I have seen it in multiple states. Not sure what you mean by getting traffic. The sites were on the first page of google and not an ad.

PM the keyword phrase you search one and the domain.

Small means less money on the site ?

You can get a lot for $500 setup and $59.95 a month.

 

[ltcadviser]

Build the site first; write great unique content. People will find you if you do this.

 

[CALTCAgent]

PM the keyword phrase you search one and the domain.

PM sent. I guess I made my point based on your response to me.

You can get a lot for $500 setup and $59.95 a month.

What does the $59.95 a month get you as opposed to the site builders that don't charge ongoing fees and the person own their site ?