It’s the digital marketing roadblocks (the ones you created) that are the biggest problem you have today.
After working with several clients from all over the world, I’ve only come to realize that almost every single client I worked with waste a humongous amount of time with tactics, strategies, lines of through, deeply entrenched opinions, or fixed ways of doing things that are all putting each of those clients in a world of “no results”.
They can whine, yell, order about, delegate, request, beg, or do whatever but nothing they are doing (and maybe you are doing the same thing) is going to results for them.
Digital marketing, at least in concept and theory, is simple to understand. But the way it’s applied? God help us all.
Here are some of that stuff you are truly wasting your time and resources on (and hence losing out on opportunity):
Build Website and Move On (Don’t Spend Weeks Or Months)
You need a website, for sure. There’s nothing stopping you from building one just by dragging and dropping. Unless you are a hardcore, Notepad++ – loving designer or developer (they sure love to whine about how they want to hand code websites to life), you don’t need to outsource website design. You don’t need to hire anyone to design a website for you.
Start with incredibly fast hosting choices available to you such as Kinsta, Flywheel, WPEngine, or 10Web (Stop overthinking your hosting choices), pick a WordPress template, and create your WordPress website.
Just buy Divi and use it with absolutely any WordPress theme in the world to customize your website the way you want.
Use any of the DIY website builders out there (and that includes Wix and Squarespace). There are so many of them out there today.
Or you could use the ultra-modern, sophisticated and kick ass Webflow if you want to.
The point: Spend no more than a day or two on your website.
Rigid Thinking Hurts You
I know clients who are great at delegating work. Like, sending in 4-6 documents with everything laid out for me to execute. Really, all I had to do was to execute (like a drone).
But then, I am no drone. I usually come right back at you if there’s something wrong with what you are asking me to do. Need examples?
- I have a new store. I want to do Facebook Advertising [ Wrong: Don’t even start with Facebook Ads until you manage to get some traffic and engagement on your website without the need for Facebook ads or any other paid advertising method]
- Build landing pages which should look like all the other pages of my website). [ Wrong: Your landing pages are focused pages that should be built with a specific purpose in mind. What’s with the landing pages being exactly like your home page? Why? ]
- Write 600-750 word blog posts. Titles should have the keyword. Density: 2%. The keyword should appear once at the top, once in the middle, and once at the bottom. [ Wrong: No one cares. This isn’t what you call SEO anymore].
- Write blog posts like you were competing for the Pulitzer Prize? [Wrong: Your aim is to write posts that can help your target audience. Anything less or more is overdoing it]
- I don’t want to use MailChimp. I don’t want to use Drip. I am hiring developers who’ll build
be a brand new Email Service Provider [Wrong: Why the heck do you want to reinvent the wheel?Just use what’s available for you to use]
No, you aren’t always right.
You could be wrong and your mistakes are staring right at you, on your face. Stop being so rigid in your thinking. Further, when you are hiring agencies or freelancers, treat them like real partners when you work with them.
Dumping work on them only saves you time (hopefully), but still won’t get you any results.
I don’t need Landing Pages, Pop-ups or Chatbots
Says who? What’s the basis of your “not” needed landing pages, Pop-ups or chatbots?
Or, I’ll get a developer to build my landing pages for me (your developer or designer is not a marketer. You need true marketers to create landing pages even if you were using landing page builders like Unbounce or Leadpages).
Is it because you just thought you’d sound cool saying things that way. Don’t make random statements to come off as authoritative or because you are paying money to get things done.
Don’t get too involved with the debate that pop-ups are bad or that they are irritating (all kinds of advertising is irritating). Pop-ups just work. Period.
Pop-ups are an easy and fast way to generate leads as visitors come to your website.
You can generate all those leads without ever spending a penny on paid ads.
Using tools like Optinmonster, Leadboxes from Leadpages or Unbounce Pop-ups make it easy to create pop-ups and generate leads (and you have no excuses, really).
Without landing pages, you’ll not be able to generate leads efficiently and quickly (sending people to your website is a no-no).
While Chatbots aren’t the best thing for every business, they have potential. They can lead to high-engagement selling. If your business is a high-touch business model, you should use chatbots.
Email Marketing? Don’t care
If there’s one digital marketing channel that’s sustainable, profitable, and can provide a long-term marketing solution for your business, it’s email marketing.
No, they weren’t kidding when you read that it leads to 4300% ROI. It’s no accident that everyone in the business of marketing can tell you that it’s true. For instance, AppSumo makes millions only from email (not ads and not just content marketing).
If you are not using email marketing, you literally kick a bucket of cash down the drain every single day.
Thankfully, Chris Lawson of Orientation Agency reveals whopping 20 ways to increase email subscriber sign ups that you could use to get started with email marketing right away.
Or, you can start simple with RSS-to-email campaigns, autoresponders that deliver lead magnets, and then autoresponders built to nurture your subscribers. Before all that, however, you’d need to grow your list (and that’s what you need pop-ups, chatbots, Landing pages, and everything else that you are doing in the first place as above).
Before all that, however, you’d need to grow your list (and that’s what you need pop-ups, chatbots, Landing pages, and everything else that you are doing in the first place as above).