The digital marketing landscape changes so fast you more or less blink and miss it. Here are a few basic online marketing tips to help you keep up.
Basic online marketing tips
1. Think first before marketing in overly-manipulative ways
Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates caught millions of site owners on the hop, trashing their search positions. What’s next? Nobody knows. How to steer clear of future issues? Think before putting new marketing and SEO initiatives in place: are you trying to overtly manipulate the search results? If so, approach with caution! Here’s an example.
One good way to get exposure and grow your social media reach is to ask people to pay for stuff with a Tweet. An increasing number of businesses are doing it, using a loss-leading piece of content, software, a tool or whatever to draw people in and get them to Tweet a message as ‘payment’.
Because search engines don’t appreciate people playing the system, it’s probably best to ask people to Tweet your message once they’ve downloaded, joined, used or otherwise enjoyed your offer. Forcing people to Tweet your message before they know whether or not it’s worth having might lead to trouble later.
2. Find out how popular your competitors’ content is
Social Crawlytics is a free tool that works by analysing page urls to pin down how popular the content is across the social sphere, the kind of content people are most likely to share. Because you can’t get the information through Google Analytics, it gives you vital clues about what to add to your site to draw the right kind of attention. Here’s a link to the Social Crawlytics site.
3. Go where no man has gone before… it’s SMM Jim, but not as we know it!
Everyone on the planet uses Twitter and Facebook… or do they? Here’s a list of 250 social media platforms, each with its own unique character, some of which are very tightly targeted indeed. Would you be better off focusing your attention on a handful of these instead of trying to compete in two of the world’s most crowded, busy and generalist SMM marketplaces? Take a look and see.
4. Persuade more people to buy by messing with their heads (!)
Here are 3 ways to leverage simple psychology and make more people buy from you.
- A recent study showed that labelling a random group of people ‘politically active’ encouraged more of them to vote. Test telling a random segment of your database they’re your best customers and see if they act accordingly
- Let people through the door without paying and you often stand a better chance of converting them to sales than if you make them pay straight away. Offer a free month/free trial on a test basis and see if you ultimately sell more
- Admit your weaknesses to throw your strengths into high relief. Research proves that consumers are surprisingly forgiving of companies that admit their mistakes, much less so when a business tries to shift the blame
5. Expand your ego bait reach into fresh pastures
I’ve covered ego bait before, where you write something justifiably complimentary about a business in the hope they’ll be so chuffed they’ll link back to you. But there’s more. People tend to clump together to form like-minded communities and aiming your content fairly and squarely at their camp can have a powerful effect. Find out what makes your target communities tick then give them what they want. It’s nothing new, just traditional direct marketing practice taken online.
