In the traditional, offline marketing models, often things were compartmentalized and kept completely separate. Your newspaper ads probably had little to do with your mailing list, except that the overall goal was to bring more business in. These days, the online marketing model is a little bit different, with every aspect contributing to the overall goal of gathering an audience so that everyone can join in on the conversation, in the expectation that some of those audience members will become and remain customers.
The interesting thing is, it’s the actual building of the audience that helps you build the audience. In other words, if you can get a few people interested enough to share and tell their online networks, that in turn attracts more people. This generally happens in three different ways that all work together.
Quality Content – Without content, you have nothing. Your content is how you create value, offering information that will be of interest to your target audience. You should spend most of your time, effort, and budget on creating the best content you possibly can, because it’ll be the backbone of your online marketing strategy.
SEO – When people see your quality content, they link to it. They share it on their blogs. Links build, and search engines notice. In turn, your site ranks higher for the keywords that are associated with you and your business. Never underestimate the power of search engines, especially Google – they are indispensable in bringing the right people to you.
Social Media – There’s nothing like a business growing by word of mouth. People trust each other’s opinions where they won’t trust advertising, and this is where social media really comes into its own. When people share your content on Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks, it’s like having really fast and broad word-of-mouth chain, and the potential for explosive growth is great.
It’s important not to think of any of these branches as being separate from the others. They all work in conjunction with each other, and you have to consider them as such. The most effective online marketers spend time creating good content, and then encourage others to curate and share it. If you can balance high quality content with a high level of enthusiasm for sharing your expertise with the world, you have a good chance of growing an audience who will convent to customers.
How are your integrated marketing efforts going? How do you balance your time between content creation, SEO, and social media?
