#MarketingFail : Don't Hire An IT Guy To Do Your Marketing
Ever hear the expression set it and forget it? I think lots of folks think that SEO, Digital Marketing and Content Marketing are all technical. Some technician wearing a pocket protector sits behind a terminal and tweaks, makes some adjustments to your website and BAM, instant success. When I’m out speaking to organizations I often ask what they think an SEO guy or girl looks like and 9 times out of 10, they describe that tech geek.
Digital Marketing is ever evolving. It demands a strategy. It demands attention, it demands change and oftentimes, needs to rapidly be adjusted in order to work. Companies that rely on that tech geek to drive traffic to their website are failing. Why? Here’s a few reasons:
1.) The corporate web site sucks.
It doesn’t matter how much traffic you through at a bad website, it still won’t convert.
2.) Mismatch.
If you’re trying to get your tech geek to get you ranked under search terms that don’t make any sense to your consumers, when they land on your website, they are going to bounce straight off, because the search doesn’t match what they (the consumers) are after.
3.) Social Media Automation.
Scheduling a bunch of social media posts that are all about selling your products and services is a great way to fail at Digital Marketing. People on the Internet are NOT looking to be sold to. They will un-follow your business / brand quicker then crap through a goose if they feel like you’re trying to sell to them.
4.) BORING, automated content written for search engines and NOT humans.
This is probably one of the most common infractions on the web today. Search engines crave content, so do people. It is often VERY tempting to hire an off-shore company to create content in order to hyper-inflate your SEO. This MAY work for a bit, but as soon as one of your customers / prospects / website visitors reads this jumbled up nonsense, they hit the back button and move on to your competitor. Crappy content can do more harm to your brand then anything.
5.) PPC / SEM FAILS.
Believe it or not, running a successful pay per click or Gooogle Adwords campaign is NOT easy. I actually think that Google has done a disservice to small businesses by offering them the $50.00 coupons that they send out to new businesses. Business owners, hungry for their own piece of the Google real estate jump in, create a campaign and flip the switch. They often BURN through all of their money within 8 hours with oftentimes, ZERO leads, sales, results, etc.. There are many nuances of running a successful PPC campaign that experienced Digital Marketers know.
It’s like this.
The web changes daily. You need not only a strategy to reach your core demographic, you need a partner who understands how to execute, analyze, re-adjust and tweak constantly. If your digital marketing strategy isn’t changing frequently, odds are you’re doing it wrong.