Editor’s Note: Here at Dispatches, we are always looking for ways to help our readers do things. For some of our readers, that means helping navigate the working world, for others, it means assisting in the ever challenging question, “what’s for dinner?” For still others, it means figuring out how to balance family life with everything else. In an effort to aid in all of these endeavors, we have collaborated on this article written specifically for our readers.
Marketing is going to eat up a massive part of your business budget unless you DIY. You might be wondering if it’s possible to market your business without any additional help. The answer is yes, it can be, but tread cautiously here. Many business owners who pursue DIY marketing end up in serious trouble after stumbling on black hat SEO tactics such as keyword stuffing, which is stuffing your content with keywords will result in poor search rankings.
Get The Knowledge
The first step to ensuring that you can DIY marketing for your business effectively is making sure that you have the right knowledge. You may want to consider pursuing a degree in marketing. With a marketing MBA, you will have a broad knowledge and some basic skills in SEO, AdWords and social media promotion. All of these tactics can be used effectively to build up a business brand online. The best part about this is that many of these courses are available to study online, in your spare time, while you’re running the business.
The basics of marketing like SEO are easy to learn. For instance, you are probably already aware that adding links to content on your website will impact your search ranking. Though perhaps not as much as you would hope or expect. The problem is that marketing is constantly in flux and you must keep up with the changes.
Use Your Resources Effectively
Chances are if you are thinking about a DIY marketing campaign, you’re probably worried about money. You may not have a lot of capital to spend on your marketing so you will need to be careful how you spend your money. So, what are the most important parts of a marketing campaign? You should spend a large portion of your budget on web design. Research shows that the smallest details on a website can affect conversion rates.
Other areas of your marketing campaign are completely free like social media promotion. This is just a matter of updating your profile regularly and ensuring that you are delivering fresh, relevant content to your followers.
Take Your Time
It is often said that good things always come to those who wait and that’s a good lesson to keep in mind when marketing your company. You need to make sure that you are not rushing your way to success. If you explore marketing companies, you’ll see that there are many offering instant solutions, promising to get your website to the top of the SERPs in weeks. This shouldn’t be taken as evidence that marketing success can be instant. A great marketing campaign can take months to build up, and if you do see results immediately, there’s a good chance you’ve used tactics that will lead to a Google Penalty.
With the right marketing knowledge and effective use of your resources, you can certainly marketing your business without any outside help. Although, it might be beneficial to get a little help to ensure that the quality is there. For instance, you can use freelancers to write content for you. Services like this are often cheap enough that they are great value for money and guarantee you fresh content for your website.