Marketing online in the US is $148 billion a year business. SEO alone is an $80 billion a year business. So it goes without saying experts in the industry drive results for their clients. That being said, industry experts have a formula those outside the field can digest at a high level, but not the nuances to quality internet marketing.
Marketing Online is a Skilled Profession
Latent semantic indexing. Link building. Click-through rate. Wrong-page indexing. 404s. These are a handful of terms you might not know. And that’s ok. You don’t need to know them because they’re only applicable to internet marketing.
Whatever profession you hail from, you know way more about it than your every-day, run-of-the-mill internet marketing agency associate. We don’t know what tort is from an affidavit. Or what on earth pruritic means. So why would it be any different with the shoe on the other foot?
From SEO and paid advertising to site auditing and traffic reporting, there is an ordered best practice for driving any traffic, let alone significant traffic. For instance, did you know deploying paid ads without any semblance of optimized content on your website could cost you thousands of dollars? Or did you know search engines disregard your website if there are coding errors present?
If nothing in these previous two examples makes any sense to you, please don’t attempt your own internet marketing. That also goes for any hobbyist you may have appointed to “write your blogs” or “run” your social media accounts. So the answer is “yes,” if you’re leaving your internet marketing and ad design to your receptionists, you will definitely want to rethink your strategy.
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
Wondering why you aren’t seeing any boost in traffic after 3 weeks of organic marketing with your agency’s entry level tier? Are you approaching the criticism even more obtusely and wondering why you haven’t seen any new business since the first day you hired said agency?
First off, you’re asking the wrong questions. Second, it takes time to start seeing a return on content marketing in the way of traffic and conversion– typically anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. Especially if you’re focusing on building an organic content marketing foundation in a saturated niche. Cupcakes aren’t as isolated a vertical as they used to be.
But if you think you can run Ads campaigns and organically drive traffic to your website faster without any background in internet marketing, try a little experiment. After you have a firm grasp on how to understand and access your traffic measuring platform, fire your agency.
Now sit back and watch your traffic and revenue plummet while your paid ad rates double. Then triple. Then quadruple. I wouldn’t recommend trying this test out too long though– I imagine you’d like to turn a profit this year. So call your agency back and beg them to come back.
When it comes to your internet marketing efforts, like most initiatives, timing is intrinsic to your success. Doing your research, knowing your market and investing in your marketing wisely and consistently is imperative. That’s it. Or better, yet, leave it to the marketing agency experts.
