Articles

Some Thoughts After 15 Years in Online Marketing

by Jorge Enrique A. Writer, teacher, translator and online marketer
Hello,

This is my first article on this site, so I thought it would be a good idea to start with the right foot forward, sharing my experience and some thoughts about it too.

The first thing I want to share is that the World Wide Web is a tricky field. It is easy to start in the field —even with a free website—, but it is really hard to succeed. Yet contrary to what you may believe, success is not hard because of the competition or the advertising budget. Success is hard because most people (I have met online, at least) think they can be successful doing exactly the same other people have already done: Or another blog about topics hundreds have written and published about, or another online store that sells the same products many other people sell, or another corporate website that tells you they are their product or service is best solution in the market for your problem, or some other kind of "more of the same". It works sometimes, but, again, that is the hardest path.

I have learnt that people really appreciate two things on the web: uniqueness and extraordinariness. If you want to be successful one day, you need to focus on both. Some people give funny names to simple realities. "Having a unique value proposition" could be the fancy name for this one. Anyway, truth is it still works, even with the most competitive fields. Bob Hoffman could be a good example of uniqueness (read his blog, and you will easily notice why). Matthew Woodward could be an example of extraordinariness (again, read his site, and see by yourself). Most successful websites (and people online) are either unique or extraordinary online. Few are both.

I have also learnt that, despite the fact you have read online over and over again that it is best to choose a niche when you publish a website, choosing the niche path is also an intrinsic trap: it prevents you from going beyond your niche without meeting resistance from your public. Niche websites have the huge advantage of being successful with less effort. PitBullTax, for example, stayed away from becoming yet another accounting software by focusing on being a web application only for those accountants who work in tax debt cases in the United States. Taking that niche was its secret for over a decade of sustained success. But what would happen if they wanted to expand from just serving that niche to becoming an all-purpose accounting software, and serve a broader community of accountants? Its current users may start finding software features they were not looking for, and say "Was this not a tax resolution software? What is this doing here?"; and probably cost them clients. Same applies to every other website out there! That said, if you are going to choose a niche, do it to stay there. If you are going to choose creating an all-purpose website, like Heptagrama, do it to stay there too. There is not any successful "in between" out there.

Lastly, for what website promotion involves, I have learnt that people have complicated it way too much. Web marketing (that is how like to call it, and why could be a good subject for another article) began in the 1990s, when people asked themselves what they could do to get a better position on the Yahoo! directory. It has evolved a lot since then, and more names have appeared (SEO, SEM… you know them) in the mix, yet it is still the same. Do you want to learn online marketing? Simple: Ask yourself what you do to visit a website, and you will find you do six things (not at the same time, of course). Once you have that list, the next step is to ask yourself "OK, how can I get more people to do this, and this, and this…" those six times, and that is enough to create a realistic and sustainable online marketing plan. What is the other ingredient in this cocktail? Making friends. No one —and let me repeat that: no one— is going to give you a link or any other sort of free promotion unless either you deserve it (because of your uniqueness or your extraordinariness) or he knows you. The rest is not that complicated. Even SEO is simple with the correct teachers.

Well, I think that was more than enough for a first article, so let me tell you two final things: One, your comments are more than welcome. Go ahead and tell me what you thought about this. And, two, I came to this site to to find a network of people, a network of future allies I hope to call friends some day. If you are looking for the same, add me to your network.

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About Jorge Enrique A. Innovator   Writer, teacher, translator and online marketer

17 connections, 0 recommendations, 59 honor points.
Joined APSense since, October 12th, 2021, From Lima, Peru.

Created on Apr 28th 2022 21:45. Viewed 280 times.

Comments

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