TOFU Marketing Campaigns

With updates like Panda and Penguin, search engine algorithms are entering a new era.  Link building is still important, but the shift in focus to high-quality content has many webmasters scratching their heads.  What used to seem so simple is now a complex arrangement of marketing strategies and few people seem to have simple answers as to how marketers should respond.

Using internal links in your blog posts and web sites is still good marketing strategy, but Google is coming down hard on what it sees as junk–in both links and website content.  Some of the practices that have existed for a decade are now off-limits, such as reclaiming content from archaic sites and using existing links to pull traffic to your page.  In order to be considered relevant and high-quality by Google, web sites must contain fresh, timely, and original content.

Content marketing is about more than just posting links. It is about sharing valuable content with potential clients, customers, and followers.  If you are investing in professional content marketing, your Orange County SEO company should be focusing on goal-driven campaigns that incorporate links as only one part of your strategy.

TOFU, or Top of Funnel, campaigns, are focused on a top-down approach that addresses not only attracting but keeping customers on your website with high-quality content.

It starts with a core objective paired with a reasonable goal.  If you sell toaster ovens, you want to attract a certain number of new visitors to your web site, drive a certain percentage to your toaster oven page, and turn a certain number of those visitors into Facebook fans and Twitter followers before you look at sales numbers.  In order to do that, there are some things you should analyze about your TOFU campaign.

• Learn about personas.  A successful content marketing strategy not only focuses on the product but the persona of the people who buy it.  Interviews, surveys, and customer focus groups can provide you with this data.  What kind of people buy your product?  How do they end up on your web site?  What do they do when they get there?  The answers to these questions can give you great insight into your customer’s characteristics and make you better able to target your market.
• Develop a strategy.  A VP strategy is a summary of your entire strategy in a short overview.  The actual strategy is a detailed plan I the form of a flowchart or other graphic organizer that gives a step-by-step view of what you will do.
• Gather and utilize resources.  Having clear objectives and a strategy allows you to gather the resources you need to implement your plan.  You may need people, materials, or software to do what you have planned.  Look at the total cost to determine if your plan is economically feasible.
• Choose the content types you would like to use.  You have multiple choices at your disposal.  Blogs, guest posts, PRs, video, and any other medium can be combined and used, although not all will be appropriate for your particular strategy.
• Choose the medium type.  Will you use Google, Facebook, Twitter or some other platform?
• Set your goals. Periodically assess where you are where you would like to go so that you can revise your goals.  Be as specific as possible:  I want X new customers by July 1.

As your website traffic continues to grow, this top-down marketing strategy will help you meet the challenges and changes presented throughout this evolution.