Why Your Internet Marketing is Horrible

Whether your organization or business is 20 fold with money guns blazing daily, or a one man show constantly performing, we all have experience with some form of internet marketing. The Information Technology field is a tricky one though. Most business owners know nothing about computers, infrastructure, or internet platforms, let alone search engine rankings or social media marketing.

That’s why usually, businesses choose to hire an IT guy or someone else to do their internet marketing for them.

He’s supposed to know all of this stuff, and he’s supposed to help us along and tell us what we don’t know.

But that’s not always what happens is it? See, I don’t want to piss off the IT alliance here, but most people working in the technology field for others have no clue what they’re doing.

Now I think it is important for me to make a distinction here – when I say that they have no clue what they’re doing, I don’t mean in the actual application and process itself – they have that down. If you tell them to set up your CRM, set up a website or tweet out a promotion, they’ll have it done before you can finish your sentence (if they don’t give you a week or so turnaround time for laziness).

When I say they don’t know what they‘re doing, I mean in the grand scheme of things.

I’m Talking About Strategy.

I’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years, and the one thing I see that is immediately apparent in almost EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS is a lack of strategy.

So what exactly does this mean?

Well, internet strategy is just like any other strategy really…but so many people have no clue that it even exists.

See without strategy, your IT or internet marketing guy is kind of running around doing whatever you tell him to do. If you know everything there is to know, that could work out pretty well, but you don’t (unless you’re like a superhero or something).

You hear everyone talking about Facebook marketing, so you tell him to go start a Facebook page and do the Facebook stuff. You hear everyone talking about Twitter marketing, so you tell him to start a Twitter account and go do the Twitter stuff. Aaaaaaannnnnnnnnndddddddd you hear all about how you need to dominate the market on Google, so you have him optimize your search engine rankings for every single keyword you can possibly think of.

Perfect right? Wrong.

See in reality, Facebook marketing can hurt a lot of businesses. In reality, Twitter marketing doesn’t work for everyone. In reality, what you’re ranked for in the search engines isn’t about the quantity of keywords; it’s about the quality keywords with high search volume.

But you don’t know that, so in a sense, you’re paying him to halt your progress and hurt your business. If you had an internet strategy, things would be different.

Internet strategy, especially when you’re dealing with internet marketing and social media, is critical. It’s the compass when you’re lost at sea. It’s the road map to get you where you’re going. It is the battle plan to mount your attack on the competition.

Without internet strategy, all of your different projects are pretty much the equivalent to people wandering around a mall rather than a unified front of marching soldiers.

When people wander around a mall, they all have different motives. Some want shoes, some want cloths, some want toys, and others don’t want anything, they’re just wasting time. Marching soldiers on the other hand are different. They all have a single goal, and they never take their eye off of the target. They walk in perfect sync at a steady pace and will stop for nothing.

What do you want your business to be? A crowd? Or an army?

When  I go into a business and create an internet strategy for them, I organize their website, their ranking, their search terms, their social media accounts and all the rest of their internet marketing into a unified attack plan.

This plan is step by step with a clear goal to accomplish for each phase of the business. All redundancy is removed (there is usually a LOT of it), everything that can be automated will be, and at the end of the day, the internet side of your business will run like a well-oiled machine – needing only fuel to stay alive.

Folks, do yourself a favor. Get strategic.

The Internet is Changing

See we’re entering a new age – one I call the Age of Interactive Business.

In a world of smartphones, tablets and high-speed internet connections, you really CAN’T do business offline anymore. Just a few short years ago, businesses used their website to promote their physical locations. Today, it’s the other way around. Businesses use their physical locations to promote their website.

What it comes down to is this – if someone looking for you online can’t find you, you don’t exist.

I’m not talking about Googling your name either; I’m talking about Googling your product or service. If you’re a plumber in Los Angeles, and you don’t show up when they search the term “Plumber in Los Angeles” you’ve just lost a client.

If you teach people how to grow magical beanstalks out of their backyard, and you don’t show up for the search term “How to grow a magical beanstalk” there goes some free money. It just blew away in the wind. Go ahead and chase after it…you’ll never catch up. OH! Someone just searched that term again. There goes more free money. Oh well.

It’s time you realized all of the money you’re not making because your current marketing is equivalent to an SEO chicken running around with its head cut off.

But it’s not even just about being visible anymore though. These days, you have to be dynamic, you have to interact with your customer, and you have to reach them via the channels that they use on a daily basis.

You also need to realize that pelting the same person with offer after offer, or email after email is not going to make them buy, it’s going to make them hate you.

By planning out what you do, when you do it, and who sees it, you can make a world of difference and a boatload of cash.

No matter what you’re doing though, it all comes back to strategy.

You need someone on your team that understands the grand scheme of things. You need the bigger picture and the detailed attack plan wrapped into one. You need all of your marketing working together to achieve the ultimate goal of getting your business out there and making you more money.

Get strategic, and bring your business to life.

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