One of the problems with people who use a DIY approach to marketing, is that they often waste time and money, looking for answers to the wrong questions. As a result, the very best they can then hope for, is that they learn how to do the wrong thing, correctly.
I was prompted to write this, after hearing someone talking earlier about the problems they have, because of the URL they are using for their website. It is hard to spell and apparently, even the site owner’s friends often misspell it. The URL also has no SEO benefit, as it does not contain anything that a potential customer would associate with the actual products offered by the site.
One of the reasons this blog is on page 1 of Google (and has been for a year) for the term “marketing blog” or “marketing blogs” is that the words marketing blog appear in my URL. As a result, almost 100% of the 20,000 links that point here, have anchor text that tell Google this site is related to the term marketing blog.
The site I mentioned earlier is pretty new, has just a handful of links pointing to it and apparently, it gets very little traffic. So, the solution to the guys URL issue is simply to get a more people-friendly and seo friendly URL – and THEN to market the site effectively. However, the site’s owner was focusing on how to overcome all the problems with the existing URL. In other words, he was looking for answers to the wrong question.
This is easily the single most common marketing problem I see among business owners and entrepreneurs. To quantify that, I would guess that well over 95% of the marketing questions people ask me, fit into this category.
Of course, the reason this is such a widespread problem, is that the people who are right now wasting their time and money looking for answers to the wrong questions, are totally unaware. They will think that I wrote this post for someone else.
I produce a great deal of free marketing material, in an effort to help as many people as possible. As someone who’s passionate about helping people, this conundrum is perhaps my biggest frustration.
Is there an equivalent frustration in your industry or profession or am I alone here?
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Sound advice. I had a company name that I just changed as the URL didnt work and people couldnt spell it so we went back to basics for ourselves! For clients who have long URls that can’t be remembered or typed without errors I re-register for them. Classic example http://www.georgeanddragoninnburpham.com (!) changed to the neater http://www.gdinn.co.uk on marketing for clients to use/remember but redirects and remains the original long version on the site URL for Google…
Jim, I struggle a bit with this issue as an attorney who has decided to go solo. I’d rather not “do it myself” and would love to have pro guidance every step of the way. But I need to get things moving a bit before I can do that. So, it is a little bit of a Catch-22. Fortunately there is a lot of good advice available out there on the blogs, so a person is not entirely on their own, even at the beginning. Thanks for a great blog. I look forward to your posts.
.-= Mark Tanney´s last blog ..Congress Considering Bankruptcy Relief For Private Student Loans =-.
Hi Mark. The catch 22 argument is one I hear all the time. It’s how most small businesses begin, and how almost all of them stay. Without even knowing the cost of expert help, people decide that it’s too expensive.
The irony? These same businesses will then waste many times more money on poor marketing decisions, than they would have invested in something that could transform their business, their income and their lifestyle. I guess you see that with people who decide they can”save money” handling their own legal affairs.
Thanks for the comment.
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