{"id":1502,"date":"2009-04-16T22:19:19","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T02:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.local\/?p=1502"},"modified":"2009-04-16T22:19:19","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T02:19:19","slug":"early-stage-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.local\/early-stage-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Stage Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some guidelines for internet entrepreneurs developing their early stage marketing strategy:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SEO is about branding, it takes time, it does pay off, but don&#8217;t expect overnight success. \u00a0Expect months of hard work to recreate the apparent look of overnight success.<\/li>\n<li>PPC is great if you can sustain it. \u00a0Often you are developing or creating a segment of which it is hard to get a return on this initially. \u00a0If you are in the rare stance of breaking even or making a profit (whilst in startup mode) go horizontal, invest in MSN, in Yahoo. \u00a0Get their lower competition marketplaces to help you drive profit.<\/li>\n<li>Viral tactics are just as the term describes, tactics. \u00a0They help provide a short term boost, or add the icing to the cake. \u00a0Realise this and use it to your advantage. \u00a0Solid business growth still comes from delivering insane value to your customers and looking after them.<\/li>\n<li>Marketing results always take double the amount of time that you predicted, it takes time to refine your strategy, make the technological changes, talk to all developed parties. \u00a0However picking up the phone and calling your existing clients can be done today.<\/li>\n<li>Focus on building brand name searches, measure the numbers of visit by your brand, focus on pushing that. \u00a0No one can compete when people are motivated to look for you.<\/li>\n<li>Do not skimp on metrics, use Google Analytics, capture all that you can (helps for future analysis) but focus on the key metrics that drive your business today. \u00a0Match them to business objectives and real dollars in the hand.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Blogging will be your #1 Marketing Tool if you use it wisely, so only blog if you&#8217;re going to do a good job of it.<\/li>\n<li>Communities are fantastic but like blogging require a lot of work, if you are time poor this may not be your best approach. \u00a0It is better to not do it at all than do it miserably.<\/li>\n<li>The best people you can hire (if you need hire at all) come from referrals, they don&#8217;t need splashy websites to sell themselves, their clients sell them.<\/li>\n<li>Free is good, creating a product that people marvel you charge so low for it is better. \u00a0Case in point Basecamp.<\/li>\n<li>Stick to your strategy, it will naturally evolve over time but if you quit because you don&#8217;t get instant results you are following the path to mediocrity.<\/li>\n<li>ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) question those that provide marketing advice, it helps you understand their thinking and helps them learn about you.<\/li>\n<li>Once you have your strategy get onto it, there are a thousand ways to skin a cat, focus on yours. \u00a0Marketing fads come and go.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And finally&#8230;.Stop procrastinating and start now! \u00a0Many entrepreneurs know what they need to do, they just don&#8217;t do it, like this blog I just do it, not spend all my time talking &#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some guidelines for internet entrepreneurs developing their early stage marketing strategy: SEO is about branding, it takes time, it does pay off, but don&#8217;t expect overnight success. \u00a0Expect months of hard work to recreate the apparent look of overnight success. PPC is great if you can sustain it. \u00a0Often you are developing or creating a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[57,145,149,169,241,414,499,783,966,1122,1188,1209,1342],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}