It’s overwhelming.
When it comes to marketing online there’s PPC, SEO, blogs, article marketing, video marketing, wikis, social networking, social bookmarking, and on and on and on.
Throw in the fact that many people starting businesses online have never run or marketed a business before and overwhelming is an understatement.
So where should you begin?
I’ve found there are a few core concepts to keep in mind that have helped me immensely when marketing online. So to start out our “Fundamentals of Marketing Online” series I’d like to share them with you.
The first of these concepts is: The secret to marketing online is offline.
What I mean by this is if you look at the marketing tools, strategies, and techniques that are proving effective online, they all have their roots in firmly established offline marketing tactics. The Internet may let you market in ways that are easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before, but the underlying principles come from offline marketing fundamentals that have been working long before the Internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye.
Take Google AdWords for example. Instead of getting caught up in all of its intricacies, first focus on the fact that AdWords is simply direct response marketing on steroids. If you’ve get a solid foundation in the direct response marketing strategies that have been working for decades, creating an effective, successful AdWords campaign becomes much easier.
I think this concept is especially important for those who tend to get intimidated or caught up in technology. My advice is forget about the technology. Become a marketing expert first.
Focus on learning the proven, time-honored, battle-tested marketing practices that have worked offline for years.
Determine which of these practices make the most sense for your market, your product/service, and most importantly, your prospects/customers.
Then find the best tools, techniques, software, etc. available to apply them online.
To get a good foundation in the basics of marketing, there are 3 books (all published long before the Internet reached the masses) that cover core marketing and advertising techniques (particularly direct response) that I’d recommend:
“Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy
“Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins
“Tested Advertising Methods” by John Caples
Some more recent books I’d recommend are “Duct Tape Marketing” by John Jantsch and pretty much anything by Seth Godin.
Bottom line: Learn the fundamentals and keep them in mind as you market your business online. Then strategically select and adapt the online marketing techniques that make the most sense for marketing your business.
I’ve found this makes things much simpler than getting caught up in the latest and greatest online tools everyone else seems to be using and trying to adapt them to somehow fit your business.
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Interesting stuff, definetlly worth reading.Keep up the good work!/Rob
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