While putting together a web event I am authoring, I’ve been reading a great many blogs, books and comments on the subject of online marketing. A common thread among novices is their desire for immediate results.
There appears to be a massive disconnect when it comes to the notion of hard work through considerable effort. Rock star successes online have contributed to the fallacy that riches are fast coming and easily gotten.
Even if a massive opt-in list were to fall into your lap, you still have to have a strategy in place to some how use these contacts to your advantage.
Online marketing is NO DIFFERENT than traditional offline marketing. The reason being, it is the same human beings from the same planet making the same purchasing decisions. Online scams are NO DIFFERENT than offline scams in that they promise a quick return for little to no investment. In both case the old caveat IS true: “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.” I’m currently coaching a few companies with their online promotional activities. The hardest thing for them to hear when we start is the nasty comment: “You realize this is a long term strategy, don’t you?” It’s not as if I wish the process to be long, because I too, would love a faster sale. But as any good sales person will tell you, it is a long buying cycle. Nothing is guaranteed, and results are not consistent. Frankly, as I’ve mentioned it’s all hard work.
One truth with online marketing is that it can certainly be less costly to implement. Email harvesting, email mailings, blogging, commenting, social media and more can be more about effort than cost. You can as some of my clients have, job it out to professionals. Which ever way you do it, the return on investment can be greater than traditional offline models. Take direct mail for instance. Sending out 1,000 brochures and having 4% open them is considered awesome in DM circles. On the other hand a 15 to 25% open rate of emails is not unheard of in email marketing. I’ve had open rates as high as 35%, but 15 to 25% is my average. Tracking is also an immense benefit of online marketing. In traditional terms, unless you got a phone call, you really can’t tell if the DM piece was effective. Sales directly related to a special offer exclusive to the promotion is another way to test DM. With email marketing you can see where recipients click further. This helps to further divide your initial list into niches. Tracking is beautiful.
Everything in online marketing rolls back to your opt-in (or permission based) email lists. My event called ChaChing! Your How-To-Grow Business Expo is targeting small to medium size businesses to join together and promote to a large cooperative list. The result hopefully will be that thousands of small business Expo Guests will come to ChaChing! and register for FREE. Here, they will be able to gather tons of free information that will help them to grow their own businesses. I’ve been developing this project since last summer and hopefully the event will open this summer. So, as you can see, it takes considerable effort to bring an idea to our audiences. When I do start promoting, it will be fascinating to see what your response will be to my concept.
As I have said there are no guarantees, but with no effort, your ideas will fall of the tree before they blossom. Give yourself a chance and start right now to harness the value of your audience. It’s kind of sad, when a client who I’ve been trying to start blogging, finally does and starts to see the benefits of their effort, lament about how much farther along they’d be if only they had listened to my advice in the first place.
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I forgot where I read it but recently someone wrote (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that you can tell the difference between the scams and the real advice because the scam will be about how to ‘make’ money while the real advice will be about how to ‘earn’ money. As you say, online marketing can be cheaper in terms of costs of entry and ongoing expenses but that doesn’t change the fact that unless a suitcase of money falls in front of you out of the sky, ALL results in whatever field are a return on investment and that means to get the return you have to put in the work.
Yes, Richard, I agree that you have to put in the work. You know I should have not implied that there is no cost of effort. I should have said hard costs. I love your difference between “make” and “earn.” I assume that you, like me, only get good results from consistent effort.
uberVU, thanks for the heads up on the Twitter note.
By the way you and Richard may both be wondering why I’m replying. You see I had trouble posting this article and Vera had to post it for me – so the system credits her as the author.
I can’t tell you how many times I still have this conversation with potential clients. It’s gotten a lot better over the last few years with SEO being a little less mysterious, but I still have to explain this way too often.
Fast. Cheap. Quality. You can have any 2, but not all 3.
Josh, you like me realize that people are not doing due-diligence in terms of rankings, they appear to be relying on SEO promotions which tend to keep it mysterious to keep their rates high. I contend that rankings aren’t everything. If that click doesn’t produce a lead what good is it? Like your 2/3 example, Quality over quantity opt-in lists have their own reality.
Thanks for your opinion.
Yeah online marketing has a strange vibe to it. Everybody is either thinking that it its easy earned money and not really work and the others just dont take it serious at all.
About online scams: I never understood how people could be tricked by rebills. It is so obvious…
Alot of my friends wanna get into internet marketing now that they have seen what I earn a month but I already know how thats probably gonna turn out. They have only seen me now not the 6 months I spent losing money and not earning anything.
May be people same but they are changing their shopping habits. People like surprises encountered while walking. Some times promotions, some times gift points…
Alex,
Your friends certainly don’t sound prepared for the effort that lies before them. Nothing comes without effort. I always stress that it’s a long-term strategy. I love to help people who understand this and irritated by those who want short term gain.
Thanks for commenting.
Ed