If you run any business that involves you having a web presence, then you’re going to need to tackle internet marketing sooner or later.
If you run any business that involves you having a web presence, then you’re going to need to tackle internet marketing sooner or later. Of course, in the digital age we all currently inhabit, this is the same as saying that if you run any sort of business whatsoever, you’re going to need to involve yourself in digital marketing.
Knowing where to start with digital marketing isn’t always easy. You can always look for the top internet marketing site to get the perfect set of pointers, but unless you come up with some strategies that you’re able to apply consistently over time, your efforts aren’t very likely to pay off in a meaningful way.
Often when people think about web marketing, they think about grueling cold-emailing campaigns with virtually no return for the energy and time spent, and other not-so-desirable activities.
Here are some tips for making internet marketing less painful, so that it’s something you can actually do and stick with long-term.
Pre-qualify a list of prospects before pitching to them
If you have the goal I mind of pitching your services to everyone on the internet who might conceivably be a prospective client, you’re going to have no time for anything else whatsoever, either in your professional or private lives.
Not only that, but you’re likely to get virtually no return on investment for the time you spend throwing all those emails out into the ether and hoping against hope that a lucrative client will emerge from out of the swirling maelstrom and request to begin a working relationship with you.
A much better option is to begin your marketing campaign by pre-qualifying a list of “likely” prospects, who have a good likelihood of needing your particular services, who probably have the budget to pay you well, and who you might enjoy working for, and then pitching to this list (and following up as appropriate).
This is obviously a research-intensive approach, but it’s more likely to yield actual clients down the line.
Contact prospects through LinkedIn rather than via email
Cold emailing isn’t the most winning strategy of them all, not least of all because the spam folders of many businesses will catch whatever unsolicited message you send in, or because most people these days are pretty jaded to people pitching them services via email.
An option that’s more likely to yield responses and to get a positive reaction, is to contact prospects via LinkedIn.
To message prospects freely on LinkedIn you’ll need to pay for a premium account or connect with them first. This, alone, removes some of the white noise and makes people more attentive to their inboxes.
Emphasise SEO so that the marketing situation becomes more automatic over time
SEO is an essential part of any internet marketing campaign, but it’s also one that typically takes a while to pay off. For this reason, it can be easy to neglect.
If you work diligently at improving your site’s SEO, however, you are likely to find, sooner or later, that the job of marketing “automates” itself to a substantial degree, and more clients start reaching out to you.
This is, of course, a welcome breath of fresh air.
