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Unleash Your Marketing Mojo
Running a business, online or offline, means you are a marketing and salesperson, even if you don't see yourself that way. Don't stress if you're not a marketing expert! There are two key things that can make a real difference: your attitude and your belief. Let's dive in and discover how these two items are a valuable asset to your bottom line, along with some tips and some examples from my own beginning marketing experiences.Attitude: Let Your Enthusiasm Shine
Be enthusiastic and passionate about your value proposition to the marketplace. If you know your product or service can make a positive difference and have a beneficial impact for your customers, you should be enthusiastic about helping them. Your enthusiasm and passion will be attractive to prospective customers. When you believe in the value you offer, it becomes contagious and sparkles in your words, whether in writing, in video, or in person. Prospective clients are drawn to that passion. And that, my friend, means more sales and more success.Belief: Have Faith in YOU
You don't need a fancy marketing degree to rock the results with your marketing efforts. What matters most is your belief in yourself and your abilities. Belief has been called self-fulfilling prophecy, and for good reason. A quote often attributed to Henry Ford goes, "If you believe you can or can't do a thing, you're right." In other words, your belief makes it so. Your mindset is the key to your success. If you lag in this area please see my article, The Real Secret to Success.The Path: Building Bridges to Success
Too many small business owners know where they want to end up, but fail to build the bridges that take them from where they are to where they want to go. Those bridges are different for everyone, but include things like: an always expanding knowledge base, self-confidence, the right attitude, a step-by-step plan, self-discipline, a focus on making profit rather than providing value; to name a few obstacles that can become stumbling blocks if they're not dealt with appropriately.Hint: If you focus on providing more value than the cost to obtain it, the profits will be there.
Unleash Your Marketing Potential
When you combine the right attitude with unwavering self-belief, you tap into a wellspring of personal ability that will help you discover the marketing knowledge to gain marketplace traction and bring in new clients consistently! This can propel you forward. Get ready to gain traction in the marketplace and consistently attract new clients. I've experienced this firsthand, and I believe you can too!The Finer Details
The broad strokes of this article are finished. I hope you learned something from it, but now we'll take a slightly more detailed look at online marketing. Remember though, becoming proficient in marketing takes time and effort, but you can do it if you make a commitment to it.- Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest marketing trends, strategies, and technologies. Read books, follow industry blogs, listen to podcasts, and attend webinars or workshops. The more you learn, the more effective your marketing efforts will become.
- Define Your Target Market: Understand your target audience inside out. Research their demographics, preferences, needs, and pain points. This knowledge will help you tailor your marketing messages and campaigns so they will resonate with them.
- Build a Strong Brand: Invest in creating a compelling brand identity that reflects your values, unique selling proposition, and resonates with your target audience. Consistently communicate your brand message across all marketing channels to build brand recognition and trust.
- Content Marketing: Create high-quality, valuable content that educates, entertains, or solves problems for your audience. Use various content formats such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media posts to engage with your audience and establish your expertise.
- Embrace Data and Analytics: Utilize data and analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Analyze key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, engagement, and ROI. This data-driven approach will help you make informed decisions and optimize your strategies.
- Test and Iterate: Implement A/B testing to experiment with different marketing elements such as headlines, visuals, calls-to-action, or email subject lines. Continuously analyze the results and refine your tactics based on what works best for your audience.
- Stay Customer-Centric: Put your customers at the forefront of your marketing efforts. Understand their needs and preferences, actively listen to their feedback, and provide exceptional customer experiences. Happy customers become loyal advocates for your brand.
- Utilize Social Media: Leverage social media platforms to reach and engage with your target audience. Develop a social media strategy, share valuable content, actively interact with followers, and leverage advertising options to amplify your reach. If you can find active forums in your market space this is also a good place to help establish your brand, both with potential customers and with other business owners.
- Collaborate and Network: Build relationships with complementary businesses, influencers, and industry experts. Collaborate on joint marketing initiatives, guest post on relevant blogs, or participate in industry events. Networking can expand your reach and open doors to new opportunities. By the way, even building relationships with competitors can be rewarding. Competitors don't have to be enemies. Look for mutually beneficial opportunities.
- Adapt and Evolve: The marketing landscape is ever-evolving, so be adaptable and open to change. Evaluate new technologies, platforms, and strategies as they emerge and embrace the ones that appear to have potential. Continuously evaluate and adjust your marketing approach to stay ahead of the curve.
Personal Examples
Things were much different back in 1997 when I started this site. I'm providing personal examples of my early marketing efforts to show how a person with no marketing experience at all managed to gain traction and grow a site to well over a million visitors per year. [ Proof ]It's possible none of these examples would work today. I'm not including them to give you a path to follow, but to show you how thinking outside the box can be as impactful as traditional knowledge.
In fact, some "marketing strategies" I learned from marketing forums later on were far less impactful than my own "made up" stuff. A few may have even done more harm than good, but I have no way of proving it. While it's great to continue learning and evolving, be aware that not everyone who you might learn from is offering good advice. With the proliferation of PLR over the last two decades, many who profess expertise do not speak from experience.
Unique Link Strategies
Some of these may seem kind of lame, but remember these was mostly from the early years, roughly 1997-1999. The whole Internet thing was new to a lot of people, including me. Reciprocal linking was a tried the true practice. I wasn't trying to make money at the time, that came later. I just wanted to make graphics and share them. Microsoft even linked to my site as a graphics resource. Rodney Dangerfield gave the site his "respect" award. Different times, for sure.
One of the things I did was make very unique graphics for people to use to link to my site. The "stole this award" image was one of the most popular ones. Out of curiosity, I just ran the image through TinEye and there's still one site displaying the image some 20+ years later.
I made, I'm guessing as I don't remember, about 20 unique images to for others to link to the site. Buttons, fake awards, joke images (sort of a pre-meme meme) and others. The site got a lot of links with that tactic.
Another tactic was to have a contest to see who could come up with the most creative link to the site for a chance to win custom graphics for their site. This gained a worthwhile bunch of links, but nothing like the previous tactic. I didn't expect a one-time contest to do as well as an on-going event, but it was well worth it.
There were a lot of link pages back then, including sites that were nothing but links to other sites. One of them, Beyond the Black Stump, much to my surprise, is still around. Anyway, I approached sites/people way out of my league to request links or reciprocal links. I mentioned I got one from Microsoft, I also got one from Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys. The point is, you never know what will work until you try it.
Finally, I also submitted articles to online magazines, newsletters, and article sites. I got a lot of links and free publicity that way. This is the one tactic that I know still works today.
Oh, I also gave away free stuff. That's always popular as long as the freebie has value to the user.
Pay What You Want
My first foray into making money was to offer custom graphics, and the recipient could pay what they thought they were worth if they used them. If they didn't use them they didn't have to pay anything.Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It worked back then, not sure how it would work out today. Like I said, these are different times now. Back then people would recommend me to others for custom graphics. I was good word-of-mouth recommendations that brought even more traffic and recognition to the site. And . . . most people were good about paying a fair price. Some were cheap, some were generous, on average it worked out pretty good.
I stopped doing that because of one person. I made a complete set of website graphics for him. He claimed he didn't like them and didn't pay me anything. That would have been OK if he didn't use them. That was my policy. He did use them though, and won an award for them. Boom—done with it!
Contests
I ran several contests. Prizes were either something I created or prizes donated from other small businesses who donated them for the publicity. This brought in a lot of links as well.The most popular was the Guess the Celebrity contest. I'd distort the face of someone famous and contestants would try to guess who it was. If more than one person was correct, I'd have a random drawing to choose the winner.
Not only did this create links and publicity, but it help build a mailing list.
Interviews and Snowballs
I interviewed people for my newsletter. I'd do my best to make them look good. Naturally they liked that, and would share the interview with their own audience, which made people aware of me who may have never heard of me before.As I gained a little public awareness, I made myself available to be interviewed. Of course, that meant my site kept growing. That led to an interview on the local cable access channel, which led to me giving a presentation on web design at the local library, which led to another presentation at a local business council, which led to an invitation to join the marketing board for a local technical college (I served two terms). And with that, my "marketing knowledge" was legitimized—but I still didn't really know anything about marketing. I just did stuff I thought would work. That's all you have to do, too.
That's a long way of saying you never know what will happen when you put yourself out there.
I would like to add one comment that is off-topic: those freaking lights in a television studio are really, really HOT!
As you can see, there were no "strokes of genius" in anything I did. I just tried stuff. Much of it worked, some of it didn't, but the point is, you don't need much more than determination to find successful marketing strategies.
Conclusion:
You play a pivotal role in the marketing success of your business. Embrace that role by bringing your passion and enthusiasm to the forefront. Believe in yourself and your ability to make a difference. Don't let obstacles stand in your way—build those bridges that connect where you are now to your desired destination. Remember, becoming skilled in marketing is a journey that requires a combination of knowledge, creativity, experimentation, adaptability, and analyzation.
By consistently staying committed to improvement, your marketing mojo can grow into an unstoppable force. Now get out there and show the world what you're made of!
