If you're currently looking for a full Internet marketing service provider to give your SEO and online sales a boost, it can be tricky finding the right one for your business. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of firms, and they all promise the moon. But can they deliver?
There's one key element we believe separates the true Internet marketeers from the dilettantes and amateurs: an understanding that the customer has to be the focus of your online marketing efforts and that, above all, you simply cannot be all things to all people.
Yet, this “be everything to everyone” attitude tends to crop up over and over among upstart full Internet marketing service companies.
Here's why it simply doesn't work.
Why Your Full Internet Marketing Service Has To Be Focused
Even in the “golden age” of offline marketing, ad men knew that a product cannot appeal to everyone all at once. No matter how universal the product, be it Ivory Soap or Heinz Beans, a marketing campaign still has to be focused on specific groups to talk to them, in their own terms, about the benefits of the product.
This has only increased in the age of the Internet. Marketing demographics have only become more segmented as time has gone on, and with a huge generation gap existing between those who grew up with the Internet and those who didn't.
For example, a Millennial is going to react to a piece of content in entirely different ways than a Boomer. Appeals to emotion and nostalgia work well on Boomers, but will immediately cause cynical distrust in the younger generation. Likewise, the matter-of-fact, data-based arguments that Millennials tend to favor leave their parents or grandparents cold and uninvolved.
In short, it is simply impossible to speak to all demographic groups on their own terms, at the same time. And any full Internet marketing service who claims otherwise is, fundamentally, forgetting the need to focus on the customer. In marketing, this is deadly.
The Questions Behind Good Online Marketing
Effective online marketing must be focused. The best online marketeers know this, and work with it. It just involves being able to answer some basic questions about who you want to market to:
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Who is your product, or at least this marketing campaign, going to be aimed at? Pick a specific group.
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Why would this particular group want to buy it?
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What forms of rhetoric appeal to this group's sensibilities?
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Where will they be purchasing the product? (In stores? Online, shipped physically? Downloaded?)
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When are the best opportunities to communicate with these customers?
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How will you be reaching out to this group, specifically?
Yes, it's just the classic list of questions, but it's absolutely applicable here. Simply being able to give precise answers to these questions gives your marketing campaign definition, and tells you exactly who you're marketing to and how you're going to go about doing it.
This is the difference between a full Internet marketing service that doesn't work, and one that does. The ones that work understand how vital it is to focus your message on specific groups and know how to tailor it to fit their mentality.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Keep this in mind, as you shop around for a full Internet marketing service. Ask potential firms you approach how they target their marketing. Find out how, exactly, they would change the pitch for your product depending on which demographic groups you want to target. Get them to show you examples of different work they've done, targeting different market segments.
If they don't have enough good answers, or continue to insist that they can appeal to all groups at once, you should probably keep looking.
Have you ever tried to be all things to all people at once? How'd that work out for you?
