Sometimes when I start talking about marketing, people’s eyes go vacant and they start looking around the room for an escape route. But as a website owner, you cannot afford to be bored by marketing. It is the lifeblood of your website! It’s true that not every marketer is a website owner, but, like it or not, every website owner should be a marketer. That is, unless you don’t care whether or not your site is successful! But the good news is that you don’t need a degree or years of marketing experience to do it, and this blog post will start you out in the right direction.
Warning!
If you don’t care whether or not your website brings you business, you will be extremely bored with the rest of this blog post.
Here’s The Big Secret to Having a Website That Brings You Business
Give away information. If that sounds counter-intuitive, it’s because you don’t understand the new rules of marketing.
Old School Marketing
The way things used to be done (before the new social web) is called outbound marketing. Basically, it entails companies pushing their products onto people. The philosophy behind outbound marketing is: If you throw enough “sales pitches” at the wall, something is bound to stick. So outbound marketing includes lots of radio and TV commercials, cold-calls, newspaper ads, and so on.
Old School Doesn’t Work Anymore
People never have liked being told what to buy, so they invented ways to block all these sales messages – like Tivo, Do Not Call Registry, Ad Blockers, Satellite Radio, etc.
Inbound Marketing: How to Market Now
Inbound Marketing works more like a magnet by drawing people who are actually looking for your product or service to your business. Instead of throwing a lot of money into the void to interrupt people and get their attention, Inbound Marketing uses information to attract people who are already looking for your services.
How Inbound Marketing Works
Now, more than ever, people are talking to each other and relying on peer reviews of a business before they commit to a purchase. Sites like Yelp, Facebook, and LinkedIn are creating a network of information and resources. In order to participate in these conversations your business needs to become a valuable resource.
How to Become a Valuable Resource
Give away information. Now we’ve come full circle. When you have information that people want, you are automatically elevated as a resource. Through blogs, email newsletters, e-books, and whitepapers, your information can be found via search engines, social media sites and viral networking. You already have the website, now make it start working for you!
Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Inbound Marketing is easy to do and you don’t have to have an MBA to do it well. Inbound Marketing is not just for corporations with deep pockets, it is for every business even if you’re a start-up. This simple introduction will be referenced in more articles we have planned to help you take advantage of Inbound Marketing strategies and make your business more successful.
Don’t Miss Out
Inbound Marketing is the future of marketing and it is here now. You won’t want to miss the webinars and videos we have planned for you. If you haven’t already subscribed to our blog, take a moment to do so at the bottom of this page or in the upper right column.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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