The ‘Internet Marketing’ Industry is being hammered; it’s a highly unregulated, fragmented industry with little oversight, far-reaching best practices and simply poor business models.  The results have been businesses with little results, agencies and ‘experts’ with poor communication & execution and simply an industry with a poor image. 

Marketing a local business on the Internet seems much more complex than it really is.  Let’s face it, you’ll find the 80/20 rule in many areas of most businesses, whether it’s the finance department, operations, sales, marketing or even with human resources. Something I learned early in sales was that 20% of the sales force brought in 80% of the business. Interestingly, the Internet is no different.

80/20 Rule

I find the 80/20 rule all over the place.  Imagine if there were 100 different things out there a search engine looks at to evaluate which website it should rank first, second, third and so forth.  You’d suspect that changing the top 20 of them would make the greatest impact, if the 80/20 rule applies.

Well if you suspected that I’m going to say, it does apply, drop the suspense, because I am saying that.  But it does get interesting.

While Google is a search engine, which is essentially a mathematical computer algorithm with human programmers, it does consider only metrics, numbers….as in factors that can be measured.

So it’s natural for our industry to try and understand these things and then try to replicate what we suspect the search engines want.  Truth is, this is where 80% of the SEO industry plays.

I don’t.  Those 20% of the factors I’m talking about can surely be measured.  We surely can replicate them and satisfy the needs of the search engine.  But the easiest way to do this is with marketing.  Real, Old School Business Marketing.

It’s just Marketing

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as:  

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”

A simple Google search defines marketing as:

The action or business of promoting and selling products or services

At the end of the day, marketing a business requires creating material consumable by your audience and distributed when they may reside.

You hand out your business card at a trade show.  You put an ad on the radio in the right time slot. You create a multimedia presentation. You rent bill board space, decal your cars, sign on the front.  You get the point.

I’m going to show you how to rank your business number one on Google simply by focusing on simple marketing principals that you’ve been accustom to for decades, except applying the principal of the Internet.

Changing the Paradigm

Google’s mission has provided the opportunity for every type of business to flourish in ways that weren’t impossible before.  

When people want to find something, buy something, research a purchase, they jump on the Internet – at home or on their phone and do a search.  If they don’t see your business in the results, they won’t know you exist; won’t buy from you.  It’s that simple.

Whatever you are paying for newspaper, radio or other such traditional advertising – your dollars will go much further online.  However, getting Qualified Online Trafficinto your business can be very confusing.

• Web designers will say you need a new website.
• Search Engine Optimization Experts will argue that the problem lies in your low ranking.
• Copywriters will say that it’s your marketing message.
• Social Networking Experts will say you need to be Tweeting, and Facebooking.
• Yellow Pages Reps will say you must have an ad in the Online Yellow Pages.  
• Branding Experts will say, yes, you guessed it, the branding and positioning of your company is the problem.

And then there are the larger advertising agencies that take care of all of the above.  They’ll say everythingis the problem.

I wonder.  Who is really on your side?  Who is looking at the big picture?

Unlike any other type of traditional advertising (newspaper, magazines, radio, tv),…

• Internet marketingcan be trackedfor results: number of searches, clicks, page views etc. So, you’ll know right away whether your online presence is bringing in business.

• Search engine rankings are self-evident. Higher rankings = more traffic coming into your business than lower rankings (your competitors).

• Internet marketing can be optimizedover time to ratchet up traffic coming into the business.  With analytics installed, it’s easy to see where the weak links are and optimize them for ever more traffic and conversion.

There’s nothing pie-in-the-sky about marketing online. It’s safe, can be tracked and is by far the highest return on investmentcompared to any other advertising outlet.