I am tired of the notion that all good search marketing has to be paid. There has been too much emphasis on this idea. The easy way out is to put out some paid ads on Facebook or Google, and you will get traction. However, these same people who are clicking your paid ads are also not your real customers. I can only speak for myself here in that last sentence. I am sure others have found much success here, but the customers I typically market to are B2B.
The other topic I have looked at hard in 2017 is the topic of local search. Yes, mobile search is increasing and it does help if your clientele is local. However, if you have clients across multiple states, I would tell you that organic search can still work. Be on close alert here, your competition in other locations may be taking work away from you if you are not out there working on your content marketing initiatives.
Finally, I think it is critical to get content published on a variety of platforms and sites. We all need someone to talk about our content. The truth is the days are over for driving all traffic to our websites. Websites are one place for people to find us, but it is not the only place. My goal now is to get our content on different platforms: television, publications, advocates, social media sites, posters, billboards. It comes down to word-of-mouth. Not a new term, but news travels fast these days, and we need to be in places where people can see our news without being sold to.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to an NAIA Basketball Game, and the game lasted one hour and 20 minutes because there were no radio and television timeouts for advertisers. Why is Netflix so popular? Answer: No commercials. We are moving toward a world of fewer ads, and the best way to deal with this is to become a better media company.
Becoming a media company takes a lot of work and planning. What does it look like for my company to become a media player? Becoming a media company is where I am going to be focusing my time in 2018. Getting more organic is one area where I want to go. I find this whole process fascinating, and I think it will be of a higher quality than going after advertising dollars. Companies may be starting to gain more control of this process after all.
Many people want me to focus on impressions and clicks. For me, I find more value in bringing on new clients. The number of new clients will be substantially less than clicks or impressions, but the one item they bring in dollars $$. It is time to refocus and start putting resources into areas that make a difference.
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