Suppose you develop an incredible web site and throw it out on the web. This is very much like building a wonderful theme park out in the middle of a desert; but then you never build any roads to it. Even if people know your website is there, they have no way to get to it unless they know the actual address (URL) of the site. The process of getting people excited about going there (motivating them), building these roads to your web site, and then telling people how to get to your “theme park” and guiding them there is called Internet marketing. That’s what we specialize in doing.
Now there are two basic methods of building these roads to your web site. One of these is called search engine optimization (SEO), the other is called social media optimization (SMO).
With search engine optimization (SEO), your goal is to design your web site in such a way so that if someone searches in a search engine (such as Google) on certain keyword phrases relative to their need for your product, vision, or service, the search engine returns result pages with your site listed near the top on the first page returned. For example, if you wanted some skinny jeans, you could enter that to Google and find the stores that sell them.
With search media optimization (SMO), your goal is to use social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs, YouTube…) and the related objects such as the videos (in YouTube), updates (in Facebook), pictures (in Flickr) to create buzz that draws people to your site.
We can show you how to set up an aggressive marketing program for your site using both of these methods that can help you get that traffic you need.
The Big Internet Marketing Secret
The most effect methods of Internet marketing are vastly different from the old-school marketing strategies of a few years ago. The older methods focused on “broadcasting”; that is, you sent your message out over multiple media sources and times in the hopes of getting a few customers. You still see a lot of this on your television and in your newspapers and magazines. Today we basically tend to tune these out now or use to DVR on the television to skip over the noise. Even on the Internet, businesses are using spam (another type of broadcasting), banner ads, and crazy animations to sell you what you don’t need. (We use an elaborate system to stop this type of spam that comes to us and attempt to take down the hosts doing it. We also vote the wimpy politicians allowing this out of office.)
A Sea Lion
What, then, does work? Let’s look at a story to illustrate this. We have a serious problem here at the Bonneville Dam near where I live. White sturgeon, an endangered species, migrate up the Columbia River and around the dam. For the last few years, the Stellar sea lions came to enjoy feasting on the endangered sturgeon. In a recent period of 29 days, the sea lions killed 1,400 sturgeon – a total that surpassed all of last year. Some of the sea lions stay year-round enjoying their life feasting on the slow-moving, white sturgeon that cluster below the dam to grow and breed. Nothing we’ve been able to do has stopped the sea lions. And we are seeing a sharp decline in the juvenile sturgeon as well as the older breeders. No solution has been found.
Now reverse the story and you see the new marketing strategy. To quote Robert Allen:
Too often people develop a product and then look for a target audience. You need to reverse this. Find a hungry target audience and then feed it. So the real marketing question is how to identify the hungry audience and then “create this feeding frenzy”.
This is also called inbound marketing (instead of the older outbound marketing). When it takes off really well it’s call viral marketing. Other people like your “story” and want to tell your story to others. They do the “marketing” for you. That’s how the Mac was launched.
Here is a new definition of marketing that I like from Jeff Paul.
Marketing is setting up automatic, repeatable systems that create the environment where people want to buy from you instead of you having to sell them.
On the Web, you will discover that niche marketing with this inbound marketing is everything. The more specific the target you can get, the better your chance of success. Going to sell books? You are competing with some very big and well-known companies. If you address a targeted book market, such as rare and out-of-print books of ancient Egyptian history, you might find success.
From these basic concepts, you still need to use as many methods as you can to build the paths to your web site. Why not contact us and let us help you with your web site?
