What if I told you that’s not marketing you’re doing…

Online marketing is a completely different beast these days compared to the old days of “megaphone” marketing.

If you’ve been at this for a while, you might remember how everyone was just shouting at each other on their websites and with advertising and social.  Straight up “Hey come see my product or service right now!”  No relationship starters.  No truly valuable free information.  No story telling.  Just blatant advertising puked onto any page of the web that would accept it.

Despite all the lessons of the last few years as social has cemented its place in our daily lives, and despite endless case studies, books, courses, and blog articles touting the benefits of relationship marketing, there’s still quite a bit of megaphone marketing going on.

The people who are simply blowing through their social accounts with ads instead of useful information, or disguising ads as content on their websites, just can’t seem to figure out why their marketing sucks and they’re getting no results.  The answer is that they aren’t doing anything like real marketing at all.

Negative effects of megaphone or used car salesman marketing:

1. People sense it very easily and tune it out automatically.
2. Anyone who takes the time to build a relationship and help people before asking them to take a look at their product will destroy people in #1, every time.
3. There are alternatives galore – no one HAS to put up with blatant, in-your-face marketing when they know there is usually a better alternative.
4. People will punish you for doing it by ignoring you or getting vocal on their social stream about how much you annoy them.

The right way to gain attention for anything on the web includes:

1. Giving away truly valuable information without even asking for an email.
2. Giving away even more valuable information after asking for an email.
3. Over-delivering on something the rest of your market is under-delivering on.
4. Being genuine.
5. ACTUALLY giving a damn.  People can tell sincere from insincere very easily.
6. Google pays attention to what people say about you in social.  People won’t take the time to say anything at all if they aren’t impressed, but will gush all over your site, information, products or services when you’ve created an amazing experience for them above and beyond just selling something.

Tips for marketing better online:

1. Spend more time on your craft where it counts:  building relationships through great content, great curation, and great sharing on social.
2. Get people talking about you any way you can (usually accomplished by creating something extraordinary in your niche that is uncommon but greatly appreciated).
3. Network and leverage relationships with people who have the attention of your target market.  Get in front of their “crowd” and do something spectacular to make them YOUR crowd too.

Be genuine.  Do helpful stuff the people in your market will thank you for, both privately and publicly.

Pay attention to sites that give YOU that feeling of “wow” and learn from them.  Incorporate what you learn into your marketing and you’ll start seeing far greater results!