How to Get Started in Online Marketing

How to Get Started in Online Marketing

How to Launch Your Brand like a New Product My second business was an SEO agency. But there are two problems with this approach: Referrals often come inconsistently The number of people who can refer you will always be relatively low So you end up hitting a cap at a certain point. But pretty soon, you’re going to have to figure out a way to start bringing in more customers if you ever want to grow. And that means you’re going to have to start bringing in more traffic, attention, backlinks, and leads to hit those lofty sales targets. They worked for years on building an audience and a reputation, which they’ve been able to successfully parlay into bigger and better things. That’s not easy, and it’s going to take time and money to pull it off successfully. That means you have to go out and get attention or eyeballs back to your site. The point is that you need to make a name for yourself in other places, first, to drive all of that interest back to your site. Start by seeing who already accepts guest posts by doing a simple search. If sites already accept guest authors or contributors like this, you’ll often find a link with details somewhere in the sidebar, About page, or below in the site’s footer.

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I’ve grown several multi-million dollar businesses over the past decade.

And that includes multiple websites that have all grown into hundreds of thousands of visitors each month.

Interestingly, there’s a similarity between the two. Nobody knows you exist, so it’s tough to get off the ground. But then once you do gain momentum, your past efforts can help fuel your future growth.

I explore some of my strategies for learning online marketing in this video.

The key is getting to that ‘tipping point’ as quickly as possible.

And you can do that with one simple trick:

What you do away from your site is almost as important as what you do on it.

In this article, I’ll explain exactly what that means and how you can do it.

But here’s why you need to change your mindset about how to successfully launch in the first place.

How to Launch Your Brand like a New Product

My second business was an SEO agency. I’ve already told the story in detail before, so I’ll just give you a quick summary.

At first, I grew it the same way most other service businesses grow: Word of mouth.

People like you, like your work, and refer you to other people they know. Pretty soon, you can rack up six-figures just on a steady stream of referrals alone.

But there are two problems with this approach:

  1. Referrals often come inconsistently
  2. The number of people who can refer you will always be relatively low

So you end up hitting a cap at a certain point. There’s only so much you can do to get new referrals, and there’s only so many people who can introduce you to others.

This same exact thing is probably happening to your business right now.

Think about your friends on Facebook who annoy everyone with constant messages about their business. (Realtors are often the worst offenders.)

facebook fan page example1

Obviously, their intentions are good, but their execution isn’t.

They’ve hit this same glass ceiling. They’re not able to reach new groups of people, so they keep going back to annoying the same ones they have.

In the early days that might have worked. Six figures might be enough for a one-person company. But pretty soon, you’re going to have to figure out a way to start bringing in more customers if you ever want to grow.

And that means you’re going to have to start bringing in more traffic, attention, backlinks, and leads to hit those lofty sales targets.

Instead, you should think of launching your online marketing like it’s a product or company.

The tactics will be important, but you’ll also need a strategy behind them that will transform that attention into interest, leads, and sales.

That means you:

  1. Have something awesome to talk about, share, and promote that provides utility (or some usefulness).
  2. Have a plan to reach a much larger audience than your existing Facebook fans (they’ll thank you later).

Let’s get started.

First Build Something Worth Talking About

The landing page software company, LeadPages, acquired the email marketing company, Drip, on July 7, 2016.

It was a major milestone for LeadPages, who already had 40,000 worldwide customers that were using their software to generate 150 million leads.

But here’s the thing.

LeadPages had only been officially founded only three years earlier in 2014.

How did they do it? How did they grow so fast in such a short amount of time?

Before LeadPages, there was a simple WordPress plugin named Lead Player (for videos).

LeadPlayer DefaultVideoSettings Optin

Before that, there was a completely different piece of software called Welcome Gate that they gave away for free and attracted tens of thousands of downloads.

And before that, the team behind LeadPages had already built up a name for themselves offering SEO and freelance consulting. They worked for years on building an audience and a reputation, which they’ve been able to successfully parlay into bigger and better things.

The point is that this massive success didn’t fall out of the sky. At each step of the way, LeadPages had built something of incredible value and then was able to bring attention to it.

And a simple study from Brian Dean at Backlinko backs up this two-part formula.

So why does one page rank higher than another? While there are many variables, you can boil them down to two big ones (here are the direct quotes):

  1. “The number of linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor.”
  2. “The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.”

Backlinks (a proxy for attention) still reign supreme. Those (typically) won’t come unless you also have something worth linking to. Which in this case, means something long and in-depth.

That’s not easy!

Orbit Media’s research shows that the ‘quality bar’ for content continues to climb over previous years.

length of a blog post

And that means we also have to spend more time and money on creating it, too. It’s not uncommon for a single blog post today to take anywhere from three hours to a full day.

average time spent writing blog post

It’s like the common problem of the chicken and the egg. Before getting eyeballs and leads, you need something worth talking about.

That’s exactly what ThinkApps did with their unique piece of content, “Apple Watch: What Your Favorite Apps Will Look Like” (as retold by Benji on Grow and Convert).

They capitalized on the news of the Apple Watch coming out a few years ago with this piece that enlisted the help of partner agencies who created design concepts of their favorite apps.

image 35

Nobody had ever done this before, and this concept artwork didn’t exist anywhere else. So they had the perfect ammunition to use to entice journalists with their unique story.

The end result?

  • Over 20,000 visitors
  • Over 200 backlinks
  • Including press from 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo, LayerVault, Paris Lemon, etc.
  • And it was syndicated to over 200 related websites

Not bad, right?!

I’ve successfully scaled the same strategy with my ‘Ultimate Guides’ (which was inspired by the Moz Beginners Guide to SEO).

image 29

My first experiment with this strategy brought in 212,584 visits with thousands of social shares and hundreds of comments. But since the second one, they’ve each pulled in over 361,494 visitors to date.

So the first step is to have something worth promoting. (Even if you just use content before you have a product or service ready.) That’s not easy, and it’s going to take time and money to pull it off successfully.

But when you do have it ready, the next step is to get…

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