With many 8 years of marketing experience with some fairly massive firms and countless successes as a marketing strategist, I would say that I am very good at what I do. So, I decided after seeing how many people are desperately scrambling to make something of their sites, I will give some tips now and then in a series, so to speak, that will hopefully help everyone out. TODAYS TOPIC: HIRED COMMUNITY GROWTH I think as the owner of a web property, there are a lot of things that you must consider when you are getting ready to put your site out there to the sharks (potential users). One of the most major decisions is how you are going to market it. Obviously, without marketing, there will be no 'sharks' for you to throw your site to, which essentially would be a very horrible thing for any site. The first major decision that you have to make is whether or not you are going to do your own marketing or if you are going to hire someone to do it for you. I am going to assume that you have made the decision to allow someone to help you out with the marketing. There are so many ways that this could be a great idea and a lot of ways this could be a bad idea, I'm going to try and help you spot why... IDIOT MARKETING I have been in the marketing arena for a very long time now, so I know what's out there, I know who the idiots are, and I know who the most brilliant marketers in the world are. However, the problem is that there are so many people out there that are pretending to be 'marketers', so I have somewhat decided to 'call' them out. I want to ensure that these users get as few jobs as humanly possible.... TELLING IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO HIRE AN IDIOT MARKETER - The promise you a number position in search engines - No true SEO expert is going to make promises such as this. While search engines may be their specialty, they wouldn't make an actual number promise as it's so hard to determine what the market and the search engines are going to do. The only thing you'll hear a true marketer promise is signup numbers, maybe percentage increases, things of that nature. Trying for number rankings in something that they have no control over is extremely self defeating, and I immediatley point this out as an idiot marketer and generally a scam. - They tell you that they are going to distribute your site to 110 different directories or however many. First of all... this is very possible to do, it's also very possible for you to do it yourself and it's even more possible that you are going to pay $50 for about 2 clicks a year... these directories are generally so obscure that realistically all they are around for is so that IDIOT MARKETERS have a place to farm websites, they just made money off of. That's about the only reason I can think of them being around anyway. - They tell you that they are an SEO expert and the main thing they talk about is keywords and your description, when your site is brand new. This sounds like it would be a common first step, however, keywords and description don't mean a damn thing unless you are able to get some popularity for your site. You aren't going to rank unless you have QUALITY return links to your site, it's that simple. The first thing they should do for you if they are truly the SEO expert they claim to be is develop link partners, which are going to give you back quality links, which essentially will grow your site over time. - There's no such thing as a quick fix, so don't let anyone tell you that there is. You can't just assume that if someone gets you 500 links back, they are also going to shoot you up in the rankings immediately either. - If you are promised so many links back, you are probably going to be scammed. If you get offered this, make them show proof to where every single link is at that they got you. Too many websites just assume that this is being done properly. I would not pay full payment until I have all of the links promised and all were thoroughly investigated. The larger majority of link scams involve users placing links back to you in obscure directories, link farms, and dead, no traffic sites, that are just there so that they can make money along with a bunch of other IDIOT MARKETERS and since the sites have no traffic and have absolutely no relation to your own site, you are not going to benefit At ALL from it. WHAT TO DO? If you are going to hire someone, make sure that you ask them what their experience is. If you don't know any of the sites on their list, most likely they are an IDIOT MARKETER and they really don't have any real experience. I recommend taking the time to feel them out. You can really tell about a person's abilities just by taking the time to talk to them on MSN or YAhoo or AIM or whatever you have... just 30 minutes and you can tell how big of an idiot they are. If they can't talk smooth to you and convince you of the world, they aren't a marketer. Marketers know how to talk and when to say what, if they didn't, they wouldn't be successful and you wouldn't want them on your team at all. But you still need the traffic and doing it yourself isn't working??? Well, you need someone, I suppose, because not everyone can be an awesome marketer without a lot of training and practice... but now you can't trust anyone, because they are all IDIOT MARKETERS. Well, if you are done feeling them out and they sound alright to you, find out about their terms. I personally as a marketing, ask for only half of the payment up front and the rest on delivery. I think this allows my clients to assume less risk and it protects myself as well from the risk of a client bailing. This does a couple of things for you as well... it tells you that either this person pretending to be a marketer is just trying to push you to make an impulsive buy and take on their service, or they are really positively sure of what they can do. But if they are so good, they can also produce numbers in a short trial period of time, just as easily as they can during a much larger/longer campaign. So test them out! Take them for a short, 1 week test period and see what happens. I have a client right now, who took me for a 3 day test run, requesting 100 new users to his forums. If I couldn't produce in that amount of time, and I bailed, he would have only been out a small amount. However, if I did what I said I could, he would have the benefit of knowing I can do what I say, and he would finally have a top quality marketer to help him grow his site. You definitely can't underestimate the power of a little trial period. Don't ever jump into anything huge or else you could fry for it. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Essentially, everything comes to one final conclusion, you can't trust individuals on the internet. Everyone is out to make a quick buck and if they promise you they can deliver that quick buck, they are scamming you. Marketing is a lot of hard work and takes years of practice and concept in order to truly understand the ins and outs and be able to do it effectively client after client after client regardless of the content on their site. You have to feel people out a little bit before hiring them and when you do finally hire them, make sure that you only take on a small bit at a time. You want to assume as little risk to yourself as you possibly can. This could slow you down a little, but it could also prevent you a lot of headaches in the future. Make sure that everything that you do with a marketer is on paper. If they say that they can deliver 500 user signups in 2 weeks, then make sure that it's written down somewhere, along with your own terms, such as "no using google ad words"... things that will make the marketer attempt marketing in ways that you currently can't or in ways that you had never thought of before. This will allow you to do your own promoting, while still attracting a very diverse and normally unreachable audience to yourself. ANY QUESTIONS If you have any other questions on this topic, please feel free to message me. I am more than happy to answer your questions. I won't get into any details outside of the context of this article, unless you are looking to hire a marketing strategist, otherwise I would be shooting myself in the foot.
Seems like pretty good advice for anyone out to hire someone to do any service, marketing or not. I tend to follow the old adage 'If it seems too good to be true, it probably is'. Then again, if I followed that completely, I guess I wouldn't think Adsense was true either.
There are a lot of programs out there now that are starting to be "too good to be true" kinds of things... but somehow they work... then there are the ass sacks out there, they like to scam and "pretend" to know about what they are selling... Just wish people would practice their skill and then market it...
This is excellent, thank you. I came on here with a brand new site which I wanted to get marketed. I have been gullable enough in the past to buy backlinks from people which haven't done any good. Now I am just looking for ways of getting genuine people traffic targeted in the UK, so advice like what you have offered is essential to me, specially as I am marketing on no budget but personal money which i'd rather not waste. once again Cheers