If you want to create stacks of leads, fill your client base or sell more widgets, you need to do the total opposite of what the vast majority of small businesses do online. You need to be original.
That’s because there’s a serious problem with the generic, copycat approach to Internet marketing:
It doesn’t work!
It’s easy to see why so many people just copy the marketing they see on other sites. After all, the ability to develop an effective Internet marketing strategy and write copy that compels people to take action, is very rare. Knowing how to motivate someone to click your links, send you an email, subscribe to your newsletter, call you, visit you or buy from you is perhaps the rarest, most valuable skill in marketing today.
For example, I was called earlier this year by one of my readers, who is a marketing consultant. He wanted to know if I would quickly review his blog, (quickly meant do it for free, apparently!) I don’t work for free, but I did take a quick look at his blog out of curiosity. I was unable to figure out what his service was, let alone why anyone might need it. His blog was packed with buzz-words, marketing bullshit and stacks of rambling, pedestrian copy that went nowhere. In the time it took me to finish my coffee, I was able to spot well over a dozen, serious, marketing-related problems. It was easy to see why he needed free advice!
Why your business needs its own Internet marketing strategy
So, this is the part of a blog post were an Internet marketing guru would give you a list of; “killer Internet marketing tactics that are guaranteed to work” – And that’s part of the problem. Business owners are being told all the time that there’s a generic, one size fits all way to maximise the potential of their sites or blogs, when the reality is the complete opposite!
An effective Internet marketing strategy differs massively, from; industry to industry, country to country and business to business. It needs to take many factors into account, like; the size of the business being marketed, what they want to achieve, where their prices or fees are pitched, who their target customer is and if they are selling business to business or business to consumer etc, etc.
It’s really important that you don’t make the same mistakes. If YOU want YOUR blog or website to be a business generating machine, use an Internet marketing strategy that’s been developed for YOU and YOUR business, based on YOUR unique situation and YOUR unique goals.