A common Internet marketing horror story: companies that lose ground — major chunks of territory — to competitors by trying to squeeze something out of nothing.
Years often go by before they realize they’re getting wiped off the board by the competition, and then they are forced into one of the worst situations possible: having to play PPC or SEO catch-up against competitors that have been systematically refining and expanding their campaigns throughout all of those many years.
It’s a horrific situation … but one that is salvageable. Here are telltale signs an organization has fallen victim to the “Something-For-Nothing Virus.”
- The PPC budget is $100 a month.
- The PPC strategy is to run a handful of ads and “see what happens.”
- No testing of PPC ads.
- No customized PPC landing pages.
- No evaluation of PPC data.
- The SEO budget is $500 a month.
- The total concentration of SEO is link building.
- The total concentration of SEO is on-site tweaking.
- The total concentration of SEO is “content marketing.”
- There is no area of concentration in the SEO effort.
- SEO keywords are selected “by feel.”
- No monitoring of company website for SEO deficiencies.
- No analysis of SEO data.
- The email “campaign” consists of haphazard spurts of 2-3 emails.
- No testing of email subject lines.
- No analysis of email data.
- No phone lead tracking.
- No lead validation.
- Engaged in social media activity “because everyone else is doing it.”
- No systematic analysis of competitor marketing campaigns.
- No formal objectives for marketing activities.
- No quarterly reviews of marketing results.
This list is by no means complete — but if any of these sounds faintly familiar, you may have a bad case of the Something-For-Nothing Virus, so please seek emergency marketing assistance immediately.
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