After the 2008 crash of the economy, our business took a hit like most other businesses. Due to our primary reliance on cold calling and active marketing, we survived the storm while many businesses went under. Even though we survived, this downturn forced us to do some soul searching on our business’s direction, and what methods we were using for marketing.
In 2009, decided to take a different route in our marketing. We primarily started with the use of Google AdWords, which was the biggest advertiser at the time. Facebook was coming online, but not as powerful as AdWords. We spent a considerable amount of money on building a new website. We tried search engine optimization to increase our ranking on Google, but it wasn’t easy since we were in a competitive space.
We calculated that we spent over $100,000 between our website upgrades, video, and advertising that year. Unfortunately, we only got about five additional sales from that effort that year. This was a very expansive failure.
Here are some of the mistakes we made with online marketing.
- Not understanding our target audience: This is fairly simple to do with offline traditional cold calling. However, it is not as simple or as easy to do online unless you are a seasoned internet marketer- especially with businesses. We have found the key to online prospecting and marketing in general is to narrowly define your dream clients, and then go to where they are online. They will not come to you just because you have a nice website that is supposedly optimized for search engine optimization.
- Directing prospects to your website without guiding them on what to do when they get there. We made the mistake of directing all our leads to our website without having a clear call to action. Our bounce rate was high. People would leave our website almost immediately for other sites. To avoid this mistake, always make sure you have a proper sales funnel in place.
- Failure to delegate. You can do anything, but you can never do everything. I made the mistake of trying to handle most of the technical aspects of our business because I could. I had a good time doing, but the truth is I ended up using too much time and delivering mediocre results. Delegation and outsourcing save you time, money, and allows you to work with people who are better than you.
Key Talking Points of the Episode:
- Our experience with online marketing
- The essence of having a clear target audience
- Sales funnels
- Delegation/Outsourcing
Key Quotes from the Episode:
- “A confused mind won’t buy.”
- “When things are going great, we tend to party, and when they are not, we tend to ponder.”
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Resources Mentioned:
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