A couple of decades ago, before online marketing existed, putting together a marketing plan meant outlining an audience and budget, developing creative strategies to reach customers, and then waiting… sometimes for months on end before you’d see any results.
Things happen a lot faster in the digital age. However, that’s not to say results are always instant. When you’re marketing on the internet you might not need to wait for a trade magazine to print your offer, or for mail carriers to drop your postcards off to business owners. Still, you do have to give it a little time before your search engine optimization, social media marketing, and email efforts will start to affect your sales.
Given that, one of the questions we hear at BCM from new clients is: “is there something we can do to speed things up?” The short answer is that you can’t rush the process of gaining search visibility or attracting a social following or take shortcuts that involve buying your way to the top – that’s how blunders are made. But, there are some ways we can give your online marketing a quick boost.
Let’s look at a handful of steps you can follow to speed up your internet marketing campaigns…
Start With the Easy Stuff
Often, business owners come to us with websites that have basic and structural problems that stop them from being indexed by Google or visited by customers. They may have pages that load slowly, outdated plug-ins that cause crashes, or a messy navigation structure that causes problems for browsers and search spiders. When we take these problems away, website traffic and conversions tend to pick up right away.
If you haven’t had a website audit to examine the technical side of your code and evaluate page performance, you might be amazed at what kind of a difference it can make.
Invest a Reasonable Amount of Time and Money
There are two sides to this piece of advice. On the one hand, you certainly can’t expect things to happen quickly with your website and online marketing campaigns if you aren’t devoting any resources to the project. Your competitors are all working hard to win business from buyers, so you can’t expect to edge them out with no effort.
On the other hand, contrary to what some vendors and gurus might tell you, you can’t buy your way to the top on Google, Facebook, or most other major internet platforms. By trying, you’re just running a risk that you’ll blow through your budget, get burned out, and end up losing money in the short term.
Start Small and Build on Your Success
You don’t have to take every market and competitor head-on. In fact, it’s almost always better to begin by working with small advantages, optimizing your website for a certain base of customers that you can target with low-cost ads or local search engine optimization. Or, you could work to attract Facebook and LinkedIn followers who already have a relationship with your business.
These types of marketing campaigns tend to show quick and positive results. Once that happens, you can use the knowledge and revenue you’ve gained along the way to expand your search, social, and advertising strategy to be a bit more ambitious.
Stay Away From Gimmicks and Shortcuts
We have mentioned this already, but it’s worth repeating here. No matter how anxious you are to see more leads or sales coming from your website, resist the urge to put your faith in gimmicks, shortcuts, and quick-fix solutions. They don’t work, and could very well lead you to be blacklisted by search engines and ignored by real-world buyers.
There is a big difference between trying strategies that work quickly and throwing away your time and money on tactics that are never going to work. Use your common sense and get good advice so you don’t end up setting yourself back and having to start the online marketing process over again later.
Want More Reliable Online Marketing Results?
If you’re looking to bring your online marketing campaigns up to speed – or just get them moving forward in the first place – we can help. Contact our team of creative experts today so we can show you how easy it is to get the advice you need.
