Creative Insights

The online marketing industry is a mess.

Somewhere along the way, we as marketers stopped looking at the visitor, at what they’re searching for, which has caused a serious amount of problems for marketers and business owners.

Here, we’re going to cover what WORKS in marketing right now.

This is not going to be a post about hacks or tricks or techniques that supposedly work for every market/ industry/ sector; there are enough post like that on the internet already.

So, in this post we’re going to cover three big roadblocks in online marketing that you might be falling victim to, and how to remedy those so that your company’s marketing efforts will move closer toward its full potential.

Most companies who ask about “what works in marketing” are in similar positions; any of these sound true for you?

• They’ve tried ‘everything’ in marketing, but struggle to create the results they’re hoping for.
• They’ve experimented with many advertising channels, but so far have achieved little-to-no yield from most of them.
• Any growth they’ve managed to create has paled in comparison to their expectations.

If you can relate to any of these situations, let’s put each one to rest, in order.

The first marketing roadblock: “trying everything”

We don’t listen.

We’re told it’s important when we’re young. In school. At our first job. In marriage. That we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

But when it comes to marketing, it all goes out the window. We think it’s by accident. It isn’t.

The truth is, we like the sound of our own voices. We like the features in our products. We like to be sure others understood how great our work is. If we keep talking, we think we have more chances of being heard. If we use more words, perhaps more of them will land.

Marketers don’t learn this lesson easily.

No wonder everyone’s saying marketing is getting harder.

In this post we’re going to cover some examples of where, as marketers, we think we’re listening, but aren’t. Then we’re going to cover some ways we can really listen, and how doing so will transform the way our marketing performs.

I’m talking to you, difference-maker.

Over the past few weeks, my team and I have been reviewing a ton of websites.

Through this process, we came across something funny:

Hands up if you’ve ever traded your email address for a free ebook, whitepaper or super-top-secret-tip.

Most of you, I suspect.

Now, leave your hand up if the thing you received gave you what you wanted without trying to sell you a $47 ‘upgrade’ to actually get to what you thought you were getting in the first place.

A lot of ‘helpful’ content online feels a bit slimy. Titles that are too good to be true, with content that gets your attention but never delivers until you register for some expensive ’thing’. Which also happens to hold back on the real content until you buy yet another ‘thing’.

Here are three things you must do to make sure your content doesn’t fall into this category.

Which of these 7 are you falling short on?

As a business owner of any kind, you probably know how important it is to keep thinking about your customers. You do want to keep those customers, after all, right?

There are some tell-tale ways of spotting whether businesses are really thinking about their customers or not. There’s a lot of obvious ways to tell, but we won’t be covering any of those here. We’re going deeper.

So, business owner: be honest with yourself as you read through these. Are you doing all of these 7 examples?