online marketing

Recently, a new professional services client told me that “no one looks for financial advisors online.” The following email was my reply to his comment.

Just a quick note in reference to Earle’s assertion that “no one looks for a financial advisor online.”

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

• 81% look for information about a product or service before buying it.
• 73% get travel info online.
• 51% take a virtual tour of a location online.

And according to BIGResearch:

Online marketing is going to cost you time or money. Never believe anyone who tells you about free online marketing.

I talk to small business owners all the time who ask me if there are some kinds of free online marketing ploys they can use. And I always respond, “It’s going to cost you time or money. What’s your time worth?”

You have to ask yourself if your time is better spent doing the “free” online marketing strategies which require skills and knowledge you don’t have, or sticking to what you do best and paying on online marketing expert like me to do the work for you.

Yesterday, I was a guest on WCCO Radio and I was stressing that almost any business could be adapted to the Internet. The example I gave was a residential window washing business.

You might wonder how a window washing business could be adapted to the web. Here’s how he did it.

The guy had a residential window washing business. He contacted a web designer and had a web site designed where people could sign up for window washing service in his city. Next they designed a calendar with week days between Monday and Friday and times  between 9am and 5pm where people could sign up for window washing service.

I’ve read some articles recently that claim that free downloads don’t work anymore to get email addresses from visitors. I’ve just seen proof positive that those people are wrong.

Again, I reference Roelofs Remodeling because it is such a fresh example. As part of his online marketing campaign, I created a series of ebooks for Roelofs. He gave me the planning questionnaire he usually goes over with potential customers to help them narrow down what they really want for their remodel.

Using it as a model, I contracted Lisa Drew of Lyrical Biz to create a series of impressive looking ebooks that people could download by simply giving their name and email address.

This was an event worth attending. Even though Bill’s presentation was a very high level overview of SEO, PPC and overall search integration, I learned quite a bit. Bill comes from the data end of online marketing, and in his closing remarks, he made several comments that jibe completely with my own views on marketing.

He stated that most marketing firms are run by “creatives” who manage to sell clients on “really cool” or really slick marketing campaigns. These might win marketing “art” awards, but they rarely achieve the client’s goals.