Marketing

What is Marketing?

Typical (Lame) Web Marketing
(aka: Unrealistic Expectations)

     First, I make my own web page. Then wait for millions of people to come and offer me lots of money. I'm a little concerned that my small staff won't be able to handle all the extra business, but, I'm not really sure what my customers are going to want me to do anyway. Hopefully, the influx of customers won't be too astronomical and I can hire employees fast enough to handle the load.

     As I surf around the web, I notice that some web sites have hit counters. Well, I better get one of those. I'm sure visitors will be suitably impressed by the huge amount of traffic I must be getting.

     I finally get my hit counter working. Within a couple weeks, I discover that I'm probably the only person on the planet visiting my web site.

     My computer genius buddy told me "if I want to increase web site traffic, search engines are the answer." I found a really cool place that instantly lists me on 14,000 search engines. It's free too. I wonder how they can afford to do this and pay for banner ads too? They must be making tons of cash from their own site and just giving everyone else a free "leg up." :-) Well, time to wait again.

     Wow, I'm starting to get tons of email. Someone must be noticing my web site. Unfortunately, the emails I'm getting are trying to sell me stuff I really don't want. My hit counter doesn't seem to be increasing much either. Hmm... I wonder what's going on?

     After a couple of months, the hits still aren't coming. Wonder where those poeple are getting my email address? I try to find myself with the search engines and nothing comes up. Well, actually lots of things come up. Went down about 15 pages and still couldn't find myself. Wonder how many people will go further. Someone must, after all, how do all those .COM companies make their billions?

     Maybe I come up when someone searches for a different word. I wonder what it is? After several hours, I finally discover that if I search for my last name, my company name, the first 4 digits of my address and my zip code, all at the same time, I come up first. Wow, this is really great. Looking forward to the big bucks now.

     I had a friend write me a really cool flash page. People should be really impressed. It takes quite awhile to load though.

     Someone tells me to focus on a good keyword. I heard that travel is one of the biggest industries on the net. Maybe I can get all those travel people to wander into my site. I set up a page in my site for travel. The search engine stuff that I read from some internet guru says to say my word a lot and I'll reach the top quickly. I go to the bottom of my page and write in the word "travel" 4,000 times. I use a teeny tiny font so this won't annoy my visitors. This should do it. Wait a couple more months.

     Seems that my page doesn't show up at all in the search engines now. What should I do now?? I'm getting REALLY FRUSTRATED! I've been at this for almost 6 months and I still haven't made my FIRST BILLION DOLLAR$!!.....

On and on and on!!! Are we wasting time yet?! Can you spot some of the problems? Done any of this yourself? (hehe.. yeh, me too)

Marketing is a Science

     The previous (lame) example has many problems. One problem that permeates the entire plan is a loose grip on the laws of cause and effect. Some of the expectations are unrealistic. Unless we are willing to do some work, we won't get the desired results. But, we all learn from experience. This person at least has some enthusiasm and maybe persistence will pay off.

     When we see someone succeed, it's easy to say "they were lucky" or "they were in the right place at the right time."

     Sometimes marketing seems like magic. Anyone in any profession can be percieved occasionally as a magician. If we know our subject, we know it isn't magic, just skill and "know how." Magic is something that we just don't know how to do ourselves.

     Keyword marketing is really based on some fairly concrete concepts. We will talk about the "Supply and Demand" theory. About the "Win-Win" concepts? Really, marketing is a way to connect people who have an item or service with people who need that item or service. Simple as that (not to be confused with easy).

     Marketing should be an experiment. We all know it's quite difficult or impossible to predict what one person is going to do. People are much more predictable as a group.

     If a sales method works about 7% of the time on the type of customers that see it. We can expect similar results in the future. If we increase the number of people who see it, the 7% statistic should remain about the same. If it doesn't, then check the source of people. They are different somehow. If we adjust our wording a little, the statistic could go up or down. If it goes down, change it back (quickly)!

     To test this, try a couple strategies with methods of tracking the results built in. Then wait a bit and see what happens. Adjust one thing at a time. We don't want too many variables at once. Once the results are in, tracking tells us which ways are working.

     In traditional marketing, research is often done by sending out groups of people with surveys. This can be time consuming, not to mention expensive. On the internet, information is constantly being tracked by computers for just about every statistic you can imagine. You can get the results of these statistics if you know where to look.

     When done right, our marketing plan should work better today than it did yesterday. We should spend less time, money and resources while achieving more.

What Do I Want To Do?

     The first thing we need to know is ourselves. What do I want to do? It is so much easier to hit a target if we know what it is. If we enjoy doing something, then we tend to do a much better job. If I think "I can make my own web page for profit", then I probably have my own business (or want to). Let's design that business to be the perfect fit.

     Self employed people who don't like their jobs didn't plan very well. If we are creating a business, build something we love. Of course, we should be good at it too. It is much easier to become good at something we love doing. On the other hand, if we are good at something, but don't like it, we probably won't ever like it.

     The best marketing guru's say many of the same things. One of them is "find your niche, and dominate that niche." It is easier to become the best at a small thing than a large one. The world is huge, expand into it later. This is after all, the World Wide Web (WWW).

     I should pick one subject that I really love to do. That can be really tough (just ask any career councilor). Some of us love to do so many things, that we have trouble picking just one.

     I would suggest reading a book called Do It! Let's Get Off Our But's which postulates the theory that "you can do anything you want, just not everything you want." They have developed a systematic approach to designing your life for those people who try to do too much. Beware, they expect you to do some work. It's a fun read!

Phone: (208)467-6236
FAX: (208)463-9363

mtg@makemyownwebpage.com

MTG EnterPrizes
511-9th Ave. N.
Nampa, Id 83687-3347

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