Marketing Complexities: Getting Your Idea Out

I’m currently reading through The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell, a best selling book about marketing and trends, and I’m admittedly fascinated by the topic. One of the toughest issues to tackle as a new business is the marketing side of things. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is, how flawless your service performs, or how much money you can save a potential customer if they have no idea who you are or where to find you. My recent delving into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for my portfolio of niche sites puts this idea into clear terms.

One such site, dedicated to disseminating information on a popular hybrid car, was doing so-so in terms of traffic. I had attempted to build up links through various means like Wikipedia and other sites that shared a similar interest to the topic at hand. I was successful in getting the word of the site out, and I had built up a good amount of links, but the traffic wasn’t stellar. Finally, a few months after creation, we landed a top 5 spot for our particular keyword in Google. Traffic and revenue since then has been much better since then, and we’re happy to have a high-performing site (relative to our previous earnings power).

One of the most interesting things about marketing is that you have so many options available to you. You can focus your online efforts in a wide variety of ways such as purchasing ad space through Google’s Adwords program, or picking out popular sites that target your demographic. It’s all a matter of the costs you incur versus the sales/revenue you get out of it. Free marketing is always ideal, but not always feasible or effective. Offline options are aplenty as well, where you can try and dig up customers through your local newspaper or direct marketing through a business list broker.

Regardless of what methodology you use, marketing often takes a lot of trial and error before you hit the sweet spot. This is frustratingly true in the SEO arena, where a lot of people make educated guesses as to how Google ranks and sorts sites, but no one knows with absolute certainty what the formula is. If anyone does find out of course, Google would be quick to alter it to avoid exploitation.

I’ll be posting a full review of the book once I finish it.