Today we have Jayson DeMers sharing his experience on online marketing lessons he’s learned the hard way.
Over the years, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in online marketing. The following are five of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a result; my goal is to help you steer clear of these mistakes, and benefit from the lessons I learned the hard way
1. Build Your Website on WordPress
I began my online marketing career working for a large firm whose website was running on a custom CMS which everyone hated; it had no flexibility and was terribly inefficient. The company knew a change was needed, so they decided to switch to a different CMS. However, WordPress was not part of their consideration. To them, WordPress was just a free CMS; it couldn’t possibly provide the level of functionality they needed. Right?
The new CMS took about 6 months to fully migrate to, required hundreds of hours of training (read: wasted employee productivity), and seemingly non-stop frustration, head-banging, and missed deadlines.
A year after the implementation of the new CMS, I had become good friends with the in-house website developers. I was on the marketing team, so I needed to work closely with them to implement marketing initiatives. Some requests were able to be fulfilled fairly quickly, but far too many requests had to be tabled due to the CMS not having the required functionality. The refrain I heard, day after day? “We could do that if we had WordPress.”
WordPress is certainly not the best CMS for every type of website. But for many of the clients I’ve worked with, not having WordPress was a major barrier to properly and quickly implementing recommended marketing initiatives.
2. Choose the Right Target Keywords Before Anything Else
Part of the reason why I now offer free keyword research for my clients is that I’ve seen way too many business owners insist on targeting certain impossible keywords for their rankings. When performing keyword research, it’s important to take into account the competition, monthly search volume, and buying intent of each keyword.
Generally, it’s best to leave the keyword research up to an SEO professional. If you want to try it yourself, check out this guide on how to perform keyword research. But beware; misfire on this critical step and you could set your entire campaign back by a year or more. Just remember: SEO takes time, patience, knowledge, and money to execute effectively.
3. Build Your Business with SEO in Mind
SEO permeates all aspects of online and even offline marketing; it’s an investment in the future of your business. Every aspect of your business affects SEO; not just what’s on your website. Offline advertising, such as TV and radio ads, even affect SEO, albeit indirectly.
For example, if your TV ad is especially funny, your business might get mentions in the press, which would result in inbound links to your website, which are the primary factor in organic search rankings. Similarly, if your radio ad tells a short story that leaves a cliffhanger which listeners must visit your website to learn more about, you’ll see increased social activity and inbound links to your website as the community buzzes about your ad.
Everything from your business name to your domain name, to the way you name your products affects SEO. Hire a professional SEO and integrate him or her into your business strategy in order to maximize the value of each of your marketing investments.
4. Engage in Social Media
Social media and SEO are becoming more intertwined each day. I recently wrote a piece at SEOMoz on how social signals impact SEO and how their effect will continue to strengthen over the course of the next few years. I’ve had too many clients dismiss social media marketing for one of the following reasons:
- “I don’t have time”
- “I don’t have proof it will yield a positive ROI”
- “I don’t know how to measure its ROI”
- “I don’t have budget for it”
- “My industry doesn’t fit with social media”
Don’t have time? Hire an intern, or a professional social media marketing service.
Don’t have proof it will yield positive ROI? No marketing investment can guarantee proof of positive ROI; every investment is inherently risky, it’s only a matter of how risky. Social media falls under the “must-have” category.
Don’t know how to measure ROI? There are lots of tools for that. Try KissMetrics.com, which was founded by internet marketing guru Neil Patel.
Don’t have budget for it? Then your online marketing strategy is severely crippled. Cut other costs and reallocate budget.
Your industry doesn’t fit with social media? With the right creative minds, you can probably make it work. Take a look at this list of companies doing social media right; it includes home builders, restaurants, and even a B2B company that sells industrial LED lighting. If they can do it, so can you.
5. Get Analytical Before it’s Too Late
I’ve spoken with many business owners who couldn’t answer the most basic question: “How many website visitors do you get per month?” Beyond website analytics, (for which I recommend Google Analytics), business owners should also have analytics about their SEO and social media marketing campaigns.
For SEO campaigns, I recommend MySEOTool. It automatically tracks your website’s rankings in Google and Bing for each of your keywords, and integrates easily with Google Analytics so you can see how your ranking improvements have correlated with increased website traffic.
For social media marketing campaigns, I recommend Sendible, which is a robust tool for social monitoring and management. It’s cheap, easy to use, and provides great analytics on your social campaigns.
For a thorough understanding of your business, you need access to actionable information, and analytics tools such as these will provide that information.
Conclusion
I hope this guide helps you avoid these mistakes and kick-start your online marketing initiative while dodging some of the obstacles along the way. Have you learned any lessons the hard way? What else would you add? Leave a comment and let us know!
Author bio: Jayson DeMers is the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based SEO agency, as well as Crackerize.com, a lyrics-humor website. You can contact him on LinkedIn, Google+, or Twitter.
