You’re sitting at your desk, coffee beside you, hand poised over the mouse – you are ready to click. Your pulse is racing just a little bit and you take the plunge. You click that mouse. You are on the verge of discovering the secret. With breath that is baited (yep, for those Sex and the City watchers, you caught me; I stole that line from a season 6 episode!)
The screen loads and it’s time to revel in the riches you’ve just discovered.
The secret is about to be revealed. You’ve finally broken the code and can rake in the cash. You hold your breath as you start to read every single word on the page – determined to absorb every last morsel.
About 2 paragraphs in, with a sinking feeling you recognize all too well, you let out a sigh expressing the familiar let down.
Oh. There is no magical secret. There is no ground-breaking new discovery that will sky rocket you to riches. This is just another article spouting more of the same advice.
Trust me, I know the feeling. I’ve been there myself.
That great article or Blog post with a compelling headline that sucked you in, it promised all the answers (Ex: “Learn How To Generate Thousands Of Visitors Overnight” or “Increase Facebook Fans Easily” or “Increase Your Revenue With Twitter” etc). You thought you had hit the jackpot and then just as quickly you are deflated and realize you’ve been suckered again.
You either move on, determined not to be defeated – you will find that pot of gold. Or maybe before you go you take a minute to make a comment to the author so they know you were disappointed in what they shared and that you were expecting more.
But were you suckered? Was it just the same old info regurgitated? Or was there actually a goldmine of information in there and you just didn’t recognize it because it wasn’t wearing its sparkling evening attire. It was dressed in boring old work clothes and that doesn’t often compel the eye.
Is the problem that you are searching for a magical, mythical solution that just doesn’t exist? Be honest. I’ll admit it, I’ve been there too. You want the unicorn when what you really need is the work horse.
Stay with me here, you’ve read this much – bear with me for another few minutes.
There are always new plugins, the latest software, the latest guru showing you check stubs and merchant account screenshots documenting the cash they raked in. You want it so badly you can taste it. But they part that they never share with you is that even they had to do a lot of hard work to get to that level.
There is no fairy dust and there is rarely something truly new. Yep, I said it. There are different angles and approaches, and things you should test and try and there is an abundance of marketing ideas and campaigns but there is rarely a ground-breaking strategy that has never been tried. It’s all about the fundamentals and consistent implementation.
You can’t avoid it – you either need to spend time or money. You need to build a solid foundation and from there you can play with creative campaigns that will “go viral”
It all starts with laying the right foundation.
- You have to have a professional, easy to navigate site.
- You need strong, well-written copy.
- You need to split test to improve results.
- You need to optimize your site and add content.
- You need to Blog.
- You need to get active and actually interact and engage on social media.
- You may want to do some PPC or other advertising.
- You need to market on the back-end (build a mailing list and send compelling information).
- You need a plan to make sure all the pieces work well together and ensure that you are building momentum.
We all want the quick fix, we all want the results with minimal effort and minimal cost.
But after reading and writing thousands of articles, I can tell you, there is no substitute for doing the right things consistently and repeatedly.
So this article is just another in a long line of articles that will let you down. UNLESS you take it to heart and realize that the best advice someone can give you is to take action today, now.
Every day implement new marketing strategies. Write content, write tweets, check out an SEO company, implement a PPC campaign. Do something that puts you a step closer to more exposure, more traffic and more sales. Spend less time searching for a magic solution and accept that building a business online requires commitment, effort, time and money spent . Don’t be afraid of hard work and don’t think you have to do it all yourself.