Online Marketing: It’s Like Going Down a Rabbit Hole
If you’re looking to learn about social media and online marketing, you’ll find there are plenty of courses to choose from. Many focus on specific aspects of social media or online marketing so you can pick and choose the courses you want.
That’s great. But there’s one drawback….it’s all piece meal. You learn about landing pages from one source and Facebook marketing from another. You get tips on building your LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter) profiles from another. You can even take courses about content marketing and get tips on blogging. It’s overwhelming.
How do you know what’s right for you and your circumstances?
Just because someone is having tremendous success with Facebook doesn’t mean you will….not if your ideal customers are spending the bulk of their time on another platform like LinkedIn or Instagram or YouTube.
So you have choices to make. You can try to figure it out on your own, enrolling in many of the excellent courses by the various online marketing gurus, or paying $30 a month on Lynda.com for thousands of different courses. Or you can take advantage of my special $600 discount pricing through June 29, 2024 and get my help to set up your marketing campaign plan. Click here for details.
I use a systems thinking approach® to marketing that starts with where you want your business to be at some future date and why you chose to be in business, rather than just how to do various online marketing projects. I also incorporate best practices from the online marketing gurus I’ve come across in the past 30+ years, and apply them to a specific focus – helping small business owners, consultants and solopreneurs put together a marketing program that works for them. It’s an integrated, multi-channel approach using social media, landing pages, email marketing, blogging, webinars, and content generation as tools to attract your target audience, (your ideal prospects) and eventually convert them into customers.
I also provide resources that I’ve found very helpful that are either free or affordable to help you implement each phase of the marketing plan. And I’ve created many templates and worksheets over the years to simplify the planning process into manageable bites.
With online marketing it’s easy to get drawn down a rabbit hole
However, I’m the kind of person who needs to see the big picture first, to know what I want to accomplish, identify the steps to get there, and then set them in motion. In my years of doing online marketing, I’ve found how easy it is to get drawn down a rabbit hole and lose track of what you were trying to do in the first place.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you need to create a landing page. So you set up an account on leadpages or Instapage and choose one of their templates. You start customizing it, and then you realize, “oh wait. I need to provide a lead magnet people can download.” (That’s the free item you offer in exchange for the visitor’s contact information). But guess what? You haven’t created it yet. Crap! You now need to get out of the program, and go record a video or write an article or an eBook, or find something else of value that’s relevant to your target audience.
So you get that done, and you get back into the program, and you realize, you don’t have any custom images. Crap again! You need to go find some images you can use (by paying for them or using a site like pixabay.com where you can download them free), or create your own. And you’ll need to resize them and make sure they’re the right resolution for online vs. print. Then you need to upload those images first before you get back into designing your landing page. “Why were you doing this you ask yourself? Oh, that’s right, it’s step one of my plan to attract a certain prospect and build my list. Hmmm….I need to make sure the images, video, ebook, article are the right ones for this target audience.”
Ok, so now you’ve got it all completed. You need to decide how you’re going to promote the page. Are you going to embed it on your website or use the landing page host? Darn. You need a custom domain, if you’re going to embed it or add it as a page on your website. Now you have to log into GoDaddy or some other platform to buy a custom domain. Of course you want to use search terms that your ideal customer would use to search, but guess what, you haven’t done the keyword research yet. So first you need to do that. Then make a list of keywords you might use. Then check to see if they’re available as a custom domain (which they probably aren’t if they’re very popular). Wait. Why are you doing all this? Oh, right! You need this in order to put the landing page on your website!
See what I mean? It’s an endless rabbit hole, and sometimes, one thing leads to another, which leads to another, to the point where you just want to throw up your hands and say, “Get me outta here!”
That’s where online marketing consultants come in. as a consultant, I try to make this process simple when working with my clients. I’ve also created step-by-step examples and templates to help clients do the work themselves. At other times, I ask key questions and do the work for them. These may include …. What is your business? What’s your overall goal you want to accomplish by when? Can you describe your ideal client? Have you created a buyer persona? Do you know which social media sites they use? Do you have a website and a blog? What marketing have you done so far? Do you use an email marketing platform like Constant Contact or MailChimp? Do you have an ad budget?
So now it’s up to you. There’s no time like to present to get started on your marketing. I’m here to help. Just reach out to je**@de*********.com.
