Marketing your busines online is, unfortunately, more complicated now than ever. Now wait. Before you stop reading because you think I am going to pull some smoke and mirrors nonsense, hang on.
Online marketing is not magic, like some would like you to believe. In fact, its not difficult at all. What makes marketing your business online confusing is that there are so many avenues that you have to hit, there just isn't enough time in the day.
A few years ago, there were only a few methods you needed to worry about.
Direct traffic (people typing in the domain)
Advertising your website offline - billboards, bus stops, radio
Search engines - remember when you could type in "Tennis Racket" and get a porn site?
Email marketing - spam spam spam..
You get my point.
Well, things are different now. Some better some worse.
In most cases, gaming search engines is over. Unfortunately in a lot of cases, if you didn't get your place online years ago, its going to be hard to catch up. Links are key because Google rules all. Bing.com supposedly is going to be much more strict than Google in an effort to beat them through accuracy. It should be interesting.
Lead generation is a biggie, you need to gather as much information on your customers as possible. List segmentation is absolutely key.
Now enter social media, networking, and user generated content. Good and bad. Reviews and testimonials are absolutely essential for success online.
Video marketing, do you know what it is? You better. Did you know you can get on the front page for local search results in about 2 hours? You can.
You can learn all this, you can, but thats not the point. Just the sheer volume of work it takes to hit all the right buttons would take you 35 hours a day.
Find a company that understands everything I listed earlier. They have to know about it all and they have to bring it up to you, not the other way around.
Best of luck - if you have any questions - please drop me a note.
Online marketing is not magic, like some would like you to believe. In fact, its not difficult at all. What makes marketing your business online confusing is that there are so many avenues that you have to hit, there just isn't enough time in the day.
A few years ago, there were only a few methods you needed to worry about.
Direct traffic (people typing in the domain)
Advertising your website offline - billboards, bus stops, radio
Search engines - remember when you could type in "Tennis Racket" and get a porn site?
Email marketing - spam spam spam..
You get my point.
Well, things are different now. Some better some worse.
In most cases, gaming search engines is over. Unfortunately in a lot of cases, if you didn't get your place online years ago, its going to be hard to catch up. Links are key because Google rules all. Bing.com supposedly is going to be much more strict than Google in an effort to beat them through accuracy. It should be interesting.
Lead generation is a biggie, you need to gather as much information on your customers as possible. List segmentation is absolutely key.
Now enter social media, networking, and user generated content. Good and bad. Reviews and testimonials are absolutely essential for success online.
Video marketing, do you know what it is? You better. Did you know you can get on the front page for local search results in about 2 hours? You can.
You can learn all this, you can, but thats not the point. Just the sheer volume of work it takes to hit all the right buttons would take you 35 hours a day.
Find a company that understands everything I listed earlier. They have to know about it all and they have to bring it up to you, not the other way around.
Best of luck - if you have any questions - please drop me a note.
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