Influencing behavior is at the holy grail of marketing, how do we get people to buy our products or use our services?

The main tool utilized for directly influencing customer behavior online is in the form of a conversion marketing campaign. However to be effective a conversion marketing campaign needs to be precisely planned and executed.

For a conversion campaign to be successful it must have the following parts.

The Target
The target is the group or groups that the campaign hopes to communicate with and influence. Relevance is critical in target selection. A highly relevant group for a company selling electric blankets would be Eskimos. On the flip side a ice making company might have little or no relevance to this same group.

The goal
The goal is at the heart of every marketing campaign on-line or otherwise. Goals must be clearly defined and simplified for each campaign. The more goals that a campaign has to fullfill the more complicated the campaign strategy gets. Good campaigns usually have 1 or 2 clearly identified goals.

The strategy
The strategy is the mechanism which the campaign uses to a. prime the audience and b. presenting them with the offer. Strategy must have a strong enough impact to influence the target to explore the offer.

The offer
The offer is usually a combination of the product or service, the benefits of the product or service plus the mechanism to partake of the product or service all roll into simple package. An effective offer is a a great product that is relevant to the needs of the target that offers great benefits and is easily accessible by the target.

Measurement
To gauge the effectiveness of any conversion campaign, one must be able to ascertain the number of persons who saw the offer and the total of that number who were actually converted.