How To Create An Online Marketing Stategy

Good morning, internet fans! It is Thursday, June 4th and today is Internet Marketing Thursday, and I have a very special guest and that is Annette Penney with Inspire and Acquire, who’s up in Canada. Good morning, Annette. Annette Penney: Good morning!

RP: Good morning, I appreciate you spending some time. Typically, I have this internet marketing Thursday with Virginie Dorn, she is on vacation in Las Vegas having fun with family. And Annette and I, we actually met through Twitter, so social media does work, and she has a background in social media, strategy for online marketing, and she has a degree in psychology, which fits very well with internet marketing, especially social media. Annette, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day and helping me out with this broadcast.

AP: Thanks for having me. I’ve watched a lot of your videos with Virginie actually, they are quite good.

RP: Alright, perfect. Well, I’m sure this one is just going to be as good or even better. We’re going to talk about strategy and that, you know, I work with small business owners, you work with small business owners, and one of the struggles that a lot of small business owners have, especially when it comes to the internet marketing side of things because there’s so much out there, is kind of this… One of my buddies came up with, he calls it “hope marketing” and a little… “Maybe if I throw a couple of posts on Facebook, I hope something works,” or, “Maybe if I throw a couple of tweets out on Twitter, I hope something will work.” In today’s show, we’re going to talk about the… It really doesn’t work that you need a strategy.

AP: Yeah, Ryan, I have to agree with that. Here is what happens when these small business owners do that. They try it for maybe a month or two and then they say, “See, social media doesn’t work.” But that’s not actually true or businesses wouldn’t be spending as much money as they do and time that they do online, if it didn’t work. It does absolutely work, it’s just that you need to have a strategy before you begin. I think it’s really, really important to know where your audience is, what your target audience is, who your target customers are, what their ages are, where they’re located, so that you can design your strategy to target them, basically.

RP: Yes, definitely. I think one of the things that we talked about before we actually went live, was the fact that, well, there’s really two big issues: One is the fact that there’s just so much information out there; so if your a dentist, as an example, you just got out of the dental school, you went, you maybe worked for a practice for a couple of years and you’re like, “Hey, I want to start my own practice.” Now, it’s all on you to figure out, “Well, how do I build out my website? How do I set up a Facebook page? Do I need to be on Twitter? What about Yelp and all these local directories? Then there is SEO and Google’s got pandas and birds and all kinds of weird things that people are talking about but I don’t understand what it is.” So it becomes very overwhelming and part of my strategy, when I put this video series together, was that I wanted to give free information to help people move along and your comment was, “Well, this is really kinda complex. You can’t initially do it on your own, you actually need a little help.”

AP: Yeah, absolutely. The thing is, if you are a dentist, I think that what you should focus on is being a good dentist. Well that doesn’t mean that necessarily that you don’t understand the basics of social media marketing and online marketing but… Like my agency handles all aspects of online marketing but I don’t do them all, I’m not a search engine optimization expert, actually, ’cause that is a field of expertise all on its’ own. What I’m good at is developing the strategies and then I use other members of my team to help me implement the strategies for our clients. When we work with small businesses owners, what we do is we teach them how to perform some of the tasks but not all of them, because you can’t… It’s like if you have three or four different businesses, you’re spreading yourself kind of thin and then your focus is not where it should be. A new dentist needs to focus on building the practice and building some relationships with the clients, that is patients, I guess, he’s going to have or she’s going to have. And so, hire people that know what they’re doing but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do some of it yourself. You can, but you need to be taught.

RP: Right. I think that’s really important and, essentially, what you’re saying is, “Look, if you want to get… ” I’m going to say your foot in the door, but it’s really not, if you want to get a leg up on your competition, out of the gate is probably a better analogy, you’re better off spending some money upfront with an internet marketing company that knows what they’re doing, who can at least say, “You know what, you don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to be on Facebook and Twitter. You don’t have to be on LinkedIn and Snapchat, and Instagram, and all these other social media channels. But instead, doing some research, understanding your audience and really, it’s important to understand where does your audience play. If they’re on Facebook then, ‘Okay, let’s just focus on Facebook.'” And by working with an internet marketing agency, they can actually give you direction, and through that direction, you can become competent and faster. Is that essentially what you’re saying?

AP: Yeah, yeah. See you don’t even need me. You get it.

AP: One thing that I tell businesses who call me and inquire about my services and stuff, it’s not all about “Hey, I’m just trying to sell you my services,” because I’m just trying to help you to do the best that you can online. Whatever you do online, like if you put up a Facebook page and you have a lousy graphic and you post things and they’re not right and they’re not directed towards your target audience and all that. The problem with that is, that it’s out there for everybody to see. It’s not like when you put a little ad in your local newspaper and people throw the paper out in two days. Right? Then they forget it. It’s up there online, anybody can see it kind of a deal. So you don’t really want to be making big mistakes at the beginning and also, too, there’s a lot to be said for your online reputation. So if you get your graphics done and you know what your message is going to be and you have some consistency across all of the platforms, you can look professional without spending the big bucks that the professionals do. Know what I mean?

RP: Yeah, totally. I think part of that of is just not rushing into things. One of the things that you said that really caught my attention was, “When you put content out there that’s not relevant to your target audience,” is what happens when your target audience who is interested in using your services lands on your website or your Facebook page and they see content that’s not relevant to them? You’ve just essentially scared them away or they’ve lost confidence and you’re going to have to rebuild that confidence and that credibility which is very, very difficult, near impossible in the Internet age because of how instantaneous we want everything. “Well, you don’t have what I want so I’m going to go over here and check out this other guy.”

AP: Yeah, you know I’ve actually had companies come to me that have put up their own Facebook page, as an example, and they come into my office and they show me what they’ve done and then I tell them, “Okay. Look we’re going to need to spend ‘x’ number of dollars and whatnot.” And in two instances where the companies said, “Well, You know I’m just a start-up. I can’t really afford to do that right now. Maybe down the road I’ll come back to you.” I’ve advised them to take their Facebook pages down. You’re better off not to even have it up if you’re going  to be doing everything ass backwards ’cause it’s going to damage your reputation.

AP: And online… Like I explain it this way to everybody; online, you basically you do what you do offline. You’re building relationships, you’re getting to know people, you’re building trust, credibility, and you do that online. You just have to know how, technically, that you do it online. But it’s still about relationship building and trust building. And so you get online and you’ve got your business page and you put a picture. I’ll tell you what I see a lot of, is on LinkedIn, people…