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May
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2011
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Posted 364 days ago ago by John Clark  2 Comments
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2 Wows
Why is it that so many people have the mindset that they can go online to market their business and not have to spend any money to succeed? I mean seriously! Marketing is marketing, whether you do it online or conventionally, it's still marketing.
Could you run a TV campaign and not expect to spend money? How about a newspaper or radio campaign being free? Yet when it comes to marketing online many think the rules suddenly change and you can now market effectively with no budget. After all, Google will list you for free and all you have to do is get that number 1 ranking, right? Right.
Let's say you are a business that specializes in corporate logo apparel. You want to rank on the first page of Google for "logo wear". On the right do you see that image? In fine print it is telling you that you are competing against over 8 million web pages Google has indexed for that phrase. Now, out of those 8+ million pages, only 10 will fit on Google's page one results. Just how do you expect to go about doing that without spending some money and time? I mean other than buying into some snake oil salesman promising your that position for a couple hundred bucks?
The internet is quite easily the most important communication vehicle on the planet today since TV, which replaced radio. People are so hooked into being wired up all day long they feel naked not taking their mobile device with them for a trip to the grocery store.
Now people can shop TV's at Best Buy and scan the item's bar code for instant price shopping using their Amazon app from their iPad or Andriod phone. They can scan the
QR code on a bottle of wine on the wine shelf and see the foods that wine goes with along with reviews of other users instantly. It's all internet based.
Internet marketing has gone so far beyond the
"build my website and get to #1 on Google" that if you have planted your mental tree there then you are going to die online all alone. Yes, there are some wonderful free advertising opportunities on the Internet. You are still going to have to unzip your purse if you want to do business effectively online. Your competition has and they will eat your lunch money.
Ranking #1 on Google is not your lottery ticket to instant riches!
You actually have better odds with that lottery ticket than you do getting to #1 on Google for anything but your own businesses name. Remember, it's impossible for everyone to achieve the top 10 listings on Google.
Even if it were possible, there are so many other methods to market on the internet that you shouldn't limit yourself to that narrow of a vision. Google changes their algorithm about 100 times a year to filter out the crappy stuff. You can be #5 today and #500 next week having to retool. If you are leaning on that stick alone you are asking for failure.
You need to enlist a variety of methods to generate visitors to your business and website. Multi-pronged approaches have always worked better than single target nuclear strikes. There is content marketing using blogs, newsletters and article marketing. There are ways to market using forums, there is online and offline advertising, guest blogging or participating in question and answer sites like
Quora. You can enable a Facebook business page, place Like buttons on your website so others can spread your information if they like it. In other words, spread it around and make all roads lead to your Rome.
Winking in the dark...
Do you know what happens when you wink at a girl in the dark? Nothing at all. You know what you did but nobody else does. Do you know what happens when you build a website and don't tell anyone about it? Same answer.
So often potential customers ask us to build them a website and have no vision for marketing that site. They just want it built regardless of what we say. Then 6 months later they wonder why it is not effective, bubble bursting in full glory. All the bright and shiny going to waste in the dark, by itself. So they then call and ask about getting better search rankings as if that's the answer. It's something they should have started with. It is part of the answer but a very small part.
There is a short cut, it's called Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. That means you have to actually spend some money for getting each click to your site. You can buy your way into front page listings for your terms on Google. The problem is they still don't want to actually spend any money, go for the free listings. Even if you know exactly how to do it, you are going to still spend hundreds and thousands of dollars in man hours to do it right.
The cheese is moving again...
Earlier this year Microsoft and Facebook aligned to integrate Likes into Bing search engine results. Today it was unveiled publicly in their article in the
Bing Community. In short, when you turn on the feature, your Bing search results will favor pages that have a Like button that your friends have punched. This way you can ask those friends about their experience with that company or product and make buying decisions from those recommendations. People are apparently 84% more likely to trust a friends recommendation over what the site says about themselves anyway. Side note, I wonder about those other 16%, don't you?
So, as you can see, it is a mighty complicated set of disciplines that are needed to market effectively on the Internet. I can do math, but I can't do it nearly as well or as fast as my accountant. Doing the math myself is free. I can spend a few cheap skate bucks and get Turbo Tax, deluding myself into thinking it will maximize my returns.
Yet I've found that my accountant's $3000 a year software package finds me a lot more in refunds than what I would save doing myself. I don't even have to have the aggravation. Yes, I hate writing his check but I have no problem spending the refunds he gets me every year. He goes to weeks of classes every year to learn all the new rules and I get his brain as well. I write him his check because it's worth it. Beside, I don't have time to go to his classes.
If you insist on being your own marketer then both you and your business will suffer financially for it. Not to mention, it will suck up the time you could be using to actually do what you do best, running your business.
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