As hundreds of thousands of small British firms start to harness the power of the web to get customers, maintain relationships and sell direct, this simple guide provides a checklist of practical steps many have found useful. Every firm can benefit from online marketing, and as the techniques have matured, they've become simple to use.

Download dsc_dir_web_marketing_for_smaller_firms_4.6.pdf

If you have any comments or questions, please post them below

1.    Build: How will you enhance the website? What is working best? What are your customers looking for? What do you need to do to achieve higher conversions?
2.    Market: Which types of search engine keywords worked for you? How many leads did you get? How much did they spend?
3.    Talk: What caused your customers to respond? And how did the response vary between the different segments of your customer base, the timing of the mailings and the offers?
4.    Observe: Which data are most useful for your business to track? Can you select some key performance indicators that will act as a monitoring system for your web marketing? Do you or your partners need to install tracking tools? Invest in your web analytics so you can hear what your customers are really saying.
5.    Refine: Refine the plan and decide what are the changes you'll make.

During this second phase you will be exploring more sophisticated web marketing tools, but don't forget to carry on nurturing the search engine and email campaigns you started with. 

For these new tools, here are some more questions you might want to ask:
Community: Which sites are the most effective? How are you measuring that effectiveness? What other relationships can you explore with them?
Distribute: What are the factors influencing your performance in the affiliate networks? How can you extend your distribution to reach even more customers? Can you tap into the private networks of your customers' own friends and family, or those of their business partners?
Be quick: How can you make decisions and get feedback faster? Your marketing can be switched on and off quickly in online, so you can experiment more easily than in other media channels.
Learn: Being able to learn how these new tools work, and then act on what your team has learned, is key to making the most of your online marketing. With the connection between marketing and results much tighter and more accountable than other media channels, smaller firms who can change their processes to absorb the learning that comes with each campaign will be better placed to maximize their return on investment and customer acquisition.

Danny Meadows-Klue has been a commentator on digital networked marketing since 1995. He managed the UK's first online newspaper and has helped run web businesses ranging from mass market portals and consumer magazines, to online stores, search and email services. Among his industry roles he is the co-founder and former chairman of the UK and European Internet and Interactive Advertising Bureau, and has been lecturing on digital marketing for more than a decade. He helped set up IAB organisations around the world and created Digital Strategy Consulting in 2000 to help more firms accelerate by harnessing the tools of the digital networked economy.

In times of huge economic and technical change, knowledge becomes a critical success factor. We created the Digital Insight Reports to bring you insights from a particular part of this fast changing industry. They are independent perspectives on key issues around business or marketing in the digital networked economy, and are published monthly. We also publish similar Digital Thought Leadership interviews and Digital Book Club reviews to share the ideas and thinking of some of the people and companies shaping the digital networked world. These often accompany our keynote talks and training workshops. Making sense of the digital world can be tough, but knowledge and training can unlock the potential of your team.

Keeping on top of the latest research and trends is still a challenge for many, but Digital Intelligence can help you. To keep our Digital Training Academy classes up to date we trawl through hundreds of websites, magazines and research newswires every month and distil some of the key points into this review of the industry's growth and the evolution of marketing.

If your firm wants to harness new marketing and publishing approaches, then why not talk to the team here at Digital? Our senior associates can deliver the hands-on expertise you need to change the way your team behaves, enabling them to understand and implement new publishing strategies. We can work with your board to improve understanding and your operational teams improve execution. We can support the rapid prototyping of new ideas and the building of simple tools to allow you to use these new insights to improve your conversion rates, unlocking more of the value from the digital channel investments you've already made. Our range of training spans all areas of digital publishing, marketing and business and includes mobile and emerging platforms. Call us to find out how we can help your team achieve more.