So you're ready to do your own marketing. You've been spinning your wheels for years with the same stale website, the same 43 Facebook fans, and the same email newsletter template.
Your old-world marketing spending is even a bigger waste of money than it was 5 years ago, but who cares because you weren't really tracking return on investment anyway right?
How close am I?
How many leads do you get from your website and internet marketing efforts each month? Do you know how many people were on your website, where they went, and where they left? We both know the answers, I'll quit rubbing it in and we can start talking solutions.
At Revenue River Marketing we live this stuff all day, every day. We've went through this process countless times and many of us spend our free time reading and studying how to do get better. You're in a completely different situation. You have a business to run, you have your own products, services, and industry to keep on top of. But that doesn't mean you should be doing nothing, you simply have to build your digital brand presence.
Here are eight marketing tips you can employ to get your campaign out of the muck:
First Tip: Do your research first so you can decide how and where to compete
Spend some time on Google Adwords deciding which keywords have the traffic and level of competition you can go after. Don't have a list of keywords you're competing for and know how you rank? Get off your ass.
Second Tip: Optimize your website for search engines
When you have your list in place, work them into your website with meta data, descriptions, alt text, anchor text, and into your content. Get off your ass and find someone to create and load your meta data for you.
Third Tip: Write really good content to drive rank & traffic
Your blog needs to be the spot you launch the majority of your new content, and you need to publish new content often if you want to improve your website's rank. Not blogging at least a few times per month currently? Get off your ass.
Fourth Tip: Distribute your content via Social Media
Once you've published content to your blog, you can promote it to your friends and industry connections via social media. Think newspaper headings, bold statements, etc. Not on social media channels like Twitter & LinkedIn? Get off your ass.
Fifth Tip: Layout your website to convert traffic into leads
Go to your home page, if you can't see at least a couple bold calls to action prompting visitors to act above the fold on your home page you're missing the point completely. Get off your ass, get some help, get it fixed.
Sixth Tip: Nurture your leads to maturity
Once you get traffic to convert and harvest their contact information you have to give them more. Regular emails with additional offers can nurture leads to maturity so your sales guy can do his job and get a contract. Not sending emails as part of your regular follow up? Yep, get off your ass.
Seventh Tip: Understand the sales funnel and consumer behavior
All leads are not created equal, you need to understand how they came to the site, why the came to the site, and where they're at in the sales funnel if you want to be successful nurturing them. Don't know how the sales funnel works? Get off your ass and learn more.
Eighth Tip: Track progress, measure results, constantly improve
Inbound marketing is both an art and a science, it takes constant monitoring and continual improvement in order to build a lasting, sustainable online marketing campaign that produces results regularly. If you don't have the tools you need to monitor your activity get off your ass and get them implemented.
So to summarize, all you really need to do is get off your ass and get started with inbound marketing. You won't be perfect but you will improve. If you can get going, build some momentum, and learn from your mistakes you'll be way ahead of where you are today.
If you found this helpful and want to learn some more, we're written a great whitepaper with expanded instruction on each element, Get 8 Steps to Online Marketing Success