No wonder you can’t figure out where to start with online marketing! For example, my favorite is when people talk about how they’ve been doing SEO for “10 years,” or they’re looking to hire someone with experience who’s been doing it for “10 years.” Do you really want to know what worked in SEO 10 years ago? Simplify your online marketing by matching it with how your customers make buying decisions Here’s a shortlist of marketing tactics you can try using today: Social media People often start by searching on the Internet for answers to a specific question (like “how to get website traffic”). Instead, they might look at your website a few times, interact with you on different channels like email and social, and eventually return to your sales or product page to make a purchase. Towards the right-hand side, they’ve now narrowed down their list of potential new products to a few that they search for by name (brand paid search) and reading reviews (referrals). Creating this funnel is your first step. They want to do a little gambling in town, and that means they’ll most likely choose the hotel with the best gaming options. But link these together based on your customer’s journey from the last step, and your online marketing strategy will start to become crystal clear. The trick is to figure out how your customers are already buying so that you can create strategies and systems to get traffic, leads, and customers.
There is more competition for your customer’s attention today than ever before.
In fact, almost everything has changed since I first dipped my toes in the online marketing waters.
Imagine this for a minute:
Your parents weren’t on Facebook. Nobody knew exactly what to do with Twitter.
SEO was like the wild wild west, where anything goes, and brand new companies could easily dominate big brands.
Only a fraction of the competition was on AdWords (so it was still super cheap).
You wouldn’t have heard a single person discussing “marketing automation” or “conversion optimization” because nobody knew what they were.
And the iPhone wasn’t even around yet!
Obviously, things have changed a little bit today. Competition is stiff and money is often scarce.
Complexity and confusion have increased dramatically. That means you now face an endless onslaught of new information (that shows no signs of slowing down).
No wonder you can’t figure out where to start with online marketing!
Here’s why things have gotten so difficult (and how you can solve this problem once and for all).
Why online marketing is more difficult today than ever before
My very first company was a job board. It didn’t last very long, but it led me to where I am today.
See, I tried hiring an Internet marketing firm to start driving new traffic and customers after I launched my job board.
But within a few months, they still hadn’t provided any results.
So we parted ways, I tried two other firms, and I received similar results each time (zero).
Out of time and out of cash, I was forced to start learning Internet marketing myself.
Obviously, things have worked out well since then.
However, online marketing was a little easier a decade ago.
Social media was just starting up, advertising costs weren’t as high, Google’s algorithm wasn’t as sophisticated, and the level of competition was much lower.
Today?
The volume of information and speed of change is completely overwhelming.
Just consider what’s changed in the 10 years that have elapsed since I started in this industry.
For example, years ago “online marketing” was a tiny niche. Now there are over 100,000,000 other people talking about it!
Each day, there are over two million blog posts published and over 269 billion emails sent!
That’s insane, right?!
Your problem isn’t just this massive volume, though. The quality keeps getting better and better, too.
The average length of blog posts continues to rise 19% each year.
That means each blog post is taking exponentially longer to create.
Today, a blog post will take you three hours, at a minimum, to write (a 26% increase from the year prior).
Some marketers even admit spending a full day on a single post.
And we’re just talking about content here.
How about social media?
Today, Instagram is almost a requirement for businesses. The platform has amassed over 700 million users, so it’s an incredibly easy place to get noticed.
But it didn’t even exist a decade ago!
Snapchat didn’t exist a few years ago, either. However, today it’s a public company with billions of pieces of content shared daily.
Do you want to hear something else that’s surprising?
The iPhone just turned ten years old.
Remember trying to access the Internet the iPhone and other smartphones became ubiquitous?
The experience was awful, and connection speeds were even worse. You could barely read and reply to emails.
Today, though, mobile Internet usage has already outstripped Internet use on desktop.
The interesting thing about mobile’s rise to prominence is that it’s actually stealing time away from other devices.
The majority of Google searches (at least 60%) also happen on mobile devices, too.
Unfortunately, the inherent differences between mobile and non-mobile devices create a new set of problems. You’re faced with conflicting needs.
For example, you want to build these beautiful websites with video and interactive elements. However, if the website’s too slow on mobile devices, your risk of traffic bouncing might increase by 113%!
Your marketing strategies probably didn’t vary much 10 years ago. You “did SEO” or you “did PPC” to bring in more traffic and leads.
However, that’s not how online marketing works anymore.
For example, the types of marketing strategies you use and even the type of marketers you need might be completely different depending on what kind of business you’re in.
B2C companies might want to focus mostly on scaling their content-creation and community-management efforts.
On the other hand, B2B companies often have completely opposite goals when it comes to content. They’re focusing on supporting their sales teams to chase fewer, big accounts. They’re writing less content, but injecting more quality into each piece.
We haven’t even touched on the marketers who specialize in marketing automation, conversion optimization, or growth hacking, either.
The reason marketers keep specializing further is that each discipline continues to evolve and get more complicated (faster than ever before).
For example, my favorite is when people talk about how they’ve been doing SEO for “10 years,” or they’re looking to hire someone with experience who’s been doing it for “10 years.”
Do you really want to know what worked in SEO 10 years ago?
This:
Do you honestly think that works today? Especially considering that Google’s now using artificial intelligence to filter junk like this out?
There’s no way.
If you’re still performing SEO the same way you did back then, you’re probably not generating much interest or converting leads into customers.
So now you can vividly see why online marketing is so hard today.
There’s literally an endless amount of information available.
Once you begin to make a little headway, today’s ‘best practices’ no longer work tomorrow.
I can totally understand why it’s incredibly frustrating for today’s marketers.
That’s why I want to help.
Here’s one of the best ways to simplify online marketing so you can get up to speed and start generating customers ASAP.
Simplify your online marketing by matching it with how your customers make buying decisions
Here’s a shortlist of marketing tactics you can try using today:
- Social media
- SEO
- Google AdWords
- Facebook advertising
- Marketing automation
- Email marketing
- Conversion optimization
- Growth hacking
- Content marketing
And that’s just off the top of my head!
Starting like this, with a bunch of haphazard tactics, will only drive…
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