The Pyramid of Internet Marketing Priorities

October 8, 2012 By Matt Weber

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Have you ever started a workout routine and wondered if the exercise you chose was the best one for what you were trying to accomplish? Did you ever experience that nagging uncertainty of whether another exercise might be better?

That's how a lot of companies feel out about the Internet. There are so many things they keep hearing about Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+, they never feel certain they are taking the right steps to actually drive business revenue.

What helps your business drive revenue is being found in search. What helps your business drive revenue is having a website that is persuasive enough to convince a visitor to fill out a form and engage with you.

If that isn't happening, your Facebook strategy is irrelevant.

Internet marketing should be attacked through a series of step-by-step priorities. There are certain tactics so pivotal to success on the Internet, they have to be done before anything else. Every company has limited resources, so it is important to work on the tactics with the highest payoff first—step by step.

Your Marketing Base
The chart in the media player at right depicts the progression of Internet marketing priorities and allows you to focus on one critical step at a time. It will apply to most companies, particularly those companies that market to a specific geography. Diluted focus yields diluted results, and many companies are dabbling in Facebook, Twitter and local search with no real focus or payoff from any of them.

Notice that first and foremost, you have to rank first on a search engine results page for the most common variations of your company name.

Most of the time when users Google your company name, they want either your phone number or address, and typically people only want those if they have a serious interest in engaging with you in some way. So if the people who have an active desire to contact you can't find you, you are losing money—period.

Next, make sure your website can convince a visitor to do business with you. The vast majority of companies don't get past this level, and every minute you spend driving visitors to your site is wasted if your site doesn't persuade those visitors to do business with you. Your site should capture interested prospects and measurably deliver those leads to you.

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