How to Build a Web Marketing Strategy | Channel Design and Combination Steps

In web marketing, you handle multiple channels such as SEO, web advertising, social media, and email, but the cause in many cases where results don't come is that "each channel is run in isolation." What matters is not trying every measure once, but giving each channel a role and designing them in combination. This article explains web marketing strategy from the angle of the role division and coordination of channels (the channel mix), together with the design procedure.

Note that the way to build the overall strategy using frameworks such as 3C, SWOT, STP, and 4P is explained systematically in a separate article. This article narrows in on the execution phase of "how to combine web channels."

Think of web marketing strategy in terms of channels' role division

Each channel in web marketing has a different role it's good at. There are channels good at spreading awareness, channels that support comparison and consideration, and channels that lead to revisits and repeat purchases; designing them in combination is the basis of strategy. Trying to run all channels equally scatters your resources and leaves them all half-baked.

The starting point of design is to take a bird's-eye view of the flow (the funnel) of how a user comes to know your company, compares and considers, and reaches an inquiry or purchase. On that basis, you decide which channel to assign to each stage. First, let's organize the roles of the main channels.

The roles and characteristics of the main channels

SEO and content (mid-to-long-term asset, comparison and consideration)

SEO (search engine optimization) is a channel for gaining stable traffic over the mid-to-long term from the organic search of Google and Yahoo!. It has no immediate effect, but the more content accumulates, the higher the cost-effectiveness becomes, and it has a strength in the role of delivering information to users who are comparing and considering. On the premise that it takes 3 to 6 months, and in some cases around a year, to see results, you tackle it as asset building.

Web advertising (short-term acquisition, immediacy)

Search ads (listing), display ads, and social ads are channels that can be exposed immediately once you run them, creating traffic and acquisition in the short term. Search ads in particular can appeal directly to users who searched with high-purchase-intent keywords, so they pair well with the acquisition phase. On the other hand, when you stop running them the traffic also stops, so they don't become an asset like SEO. You use them positioned to handle short-term acquisition.

Social media (awareness, a receptacle for search, relationship building)

Social media is strong at expanding awareness and building a brand's worldview, and in recent years its role as a receptacle for "social search" has also grown. Because the audience each platform reaches differs, rather than "doing all of them," it's important to choose the medium that fits your target. A combination of nurturing long-term fans through organic operation (free posting) while supplementing short-term awareness with social ads is effective.

Email and LINE (revisits, nurturing, raising LTV)

Email newsletters and LINE official accounts play the role of prompting revisits and repeat purchases and deepening the relationship with a list you already have contact with. By not leaving acquired leads alone but nurturing them in stages, you connect to improved conversion and LTV (lifetime value). Combined with marketing automation, you can run them efficiently with automatic delivery according to behavior.

Assign channels to each stage of the funnel

Once you understand the channels' roles, you assign them per funnel stage. The rough correspondence of stages and channels is as follows.

• Awareness: the stage of reaching broadly to those who don't yet know your company. Social media (organic and ads), display ads, and video are central. The metrics are reach and impressions; don't evaluate by inquiry count

• Interest and comparison: the stage of recognizing an issue and gathering information. SEO and content are the lead. Evaluate by time on page, page views, and an increase in branded search

• Acquisition (purchase, inquiry): the stage of reaping the audience whose intent has risen. Search ads, retargeting ads, and LPs (landing pages) are effective. Evaluate by CPA and CVR

• Revisit and continuation: the stage of deepening the relationship with an audience you've had contact with once. Prompt revisits with email, LINE, and retargeting. Evaluate by repeat rate and LTV

What matters is changing the metrics you look at per stage. Evaluating an awareness-stage channel by inquiry count alone leads to the mistake of it looking like it isn't producing results and pulling out. This is because there's a time lag before the effect of awareness measures appears in conversions.

The procedure for designing the channel combination

Let's organize the flow of actually designing a channel mix into four steps.

1. Narrow the goal to one: clarify whether it's expanding awareness, acquisition, or nurturing. If the goal isn't set, you can't choose channels either

2. Balance immediacy and asset value: if you need numbers in the short term, ads; if it's mid-to-long-term asset building, separate them out as SEO and social. The ideal is running both in parallel

3. Start by narrowing to 2 or 3 channels: rather than deploying many from the start, narrow down and operate deeply. It's easier to distinguish effects and easier to turn improvement

4. Design coordination between channels: create paths across channels, such as developing an SEO article on social and email, or connecting from an ad's LP to email nurturing after a document request

For example, when operating with a small team, narrowing to two channels with different roles, like "SEO articles + email delivery" or "social media + email newsletter," and running them for about three months first to see the reaction, makes judgment easier. By coordinating channels across the board, you produce a bigger effect than operating them alone.

How to think about budget allocation and measurement

Once you've combined channels, you set up the mechanisms for budget allocation and measurement. Here too, data-based judgment is the axis.

• Narrow the main metrics to one or two per channel: look at them with metrics suited to the role, such as organic search traffic for SEO, clicks to the profile or product page for social, open rate and click rate for email, and CPA and CVR for ads

• Work backward from business metrics: keep upper-funnel metrics such as CTR and video completion rate as diagnostic material, and judge success or failure by business metrics such as CPA, ROAS, and LTV

• Look at data across channels: when each channel's data is fragmented, you overlook realities such as CPA looking good but the deal-conversion rate being low. Integrating and comparing is the premise for accurate investment judgment

In budget allocation, an allocation like "70-20-10"—allocating heavily to channels with a track record while also giving a certain proportion to channels with room to grow and experimental channels—serves as a guide for preventing bias. Watching the results, you gradually shift resources to the channels that produce them.

Summary

The core of web marketing strategy is giving each channel—SEO, web advertising, social media, and email—its own role and designing them in combination along the funnel stages. Divide the roles as SEO for mid-to-long-term asset and comparison, ads for short-term acquisition, social for awareness and relationship building, and email for revisits and nurturing, and evaluate with the appropriate metric for each stage.

In designing, it's realistic to narrow the goal to one, balance immediacy and asset value, and first narrow to 2 or 3 channels and operate deeply. By coordinating channels across the board and repeating budget allocation and improvement based on data, you can achieve web marketing that leads to results even with limited resources. Tackling this together with the design of the overall strategy using frameworks enables more consistent operation.