How Web Marketing Saved my Christian Business
Almost 10 years ago, when my partners and I started our pool company, we had zero marketing training or experience. We knew we needed to sell pools to stay in business, so we did what other “successful” companies were doing and spent money like crazy on radio, yellow pages, print, direct mail, and even some television advertising. We found that this “shotgun” approach to marketing worked fairly well at first, but we began to see a major shift in the way people shopped for pools.
Consumers began to ignore these “interruptive” methods of advertising and began to look for goods and services on their own “terms”….through the internet. We recognized that our website needed to be the focus of our marketing effort, but none of us were “techies” to say the least, so we hired a web designer to build the site.
It was a good website, and before long it was producing more leads than all of the other venues combined! This led to radical decision (at the time) to eliminate all other forms of advertising and fully embrace our web marketing effort….and this was a huge success. We were spending less marketing dollars and getting even more leads…..but there was a problem.
We Created a Monster!
We now lived and died by our website. In fact, our website had become the single most important component of our business…..and we had absolutely no control over it! We couldn’t add content, build a page, upload a photo, or even fix a typo! Our web designer was an awesome guy, but we were dependant on him for everything. We realized that we didn’t hold the keys to our own business!
Something had to change for us…..that was undeniable. It was imperative that we manage our own site, but how could a bunch of “non-techies” take on such a task? We began to look for an alternative, and to our great delight, we found it existed. We embraced it, and it literally changed our business and our lives.
Sharing the Blessings
Because what we discovered has helped us so much, I want other small business owners to have the opportunity to experience the same blessings. To the best of my knowledge, we currently have the most popular swimming pool website in the world. I can honestly say that if it were not for our web success, we’d have met the same fate as 2/3 of the companies in the swimming pool industry, and would no longer be in business.
Below are the web marketing principles and tools that we have learned and applied; that have been placed in our path, and now are placed in yours. If you stand in need of more traffic, leads, and sales, I pray that they will help you and all of the individuals and families associated with your small business.
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing
What is Inbound and Outbound Marketing?
Outbound, or interruptive, marketing is the shotgun approach that I described earlier. It’s a method of broadcasting your message out to the world in hopes that those that are interested will:
1. Hear the message
2. Remember the message, and
3. Respond to the message
Again, some of these outbound marketing methods are TV, radio, print, mailers, etc.
If outbound marketing is like a shotgun that broadcasts your message out to the world, inbound marketing is more like a magnet that draws those who are actively seeking you to your website. This paradigm taps into the consumer that’s already actively engaged in learning about a product or service they want to purchase. Instead of randomly casting a net into the ocean in hopes of catching fish that are trying to escape, the hungry fish now seeks you, because you offer their food of choice.
Look, folks are busy….we all are; and we find ways to avoid interruptive marketing. Why watch a commercial when you have TiVo? Why listen to a radio ad when you can listen to your iPod or satellite radio? Why buy a newspaper when the internet can give you exactly the info you want in less time for free? Why open the yellow pages when you can Google what you’re looking for and be on and off a company’s website before your could have found it in the book?
The success of inbound marketing is a natural consequence of our information age, and as outbound marketing methods continue to go the way of the dinosaur, those businesses who embrace this shift earliest will reap the biggest rewards. But how does Inbound marketing work? How can people on the internet find me? The answer: content marketing.
Content Marketing: A True Win/Win
When you use Google to search for information, you become their customer. Google wants you, their customer, to be happy….and when it comes to web searches, happiness = receiving desired information. Therefore, Google places the web pages that best answer the consumer’s questions highest in their SERPs or Search Engine Result Page. So, for your company to be recognized by Google (and other Search Engines), you need to produce content on your site that answers the questions of the consumer. This content can come in many forms: website pages, blog articles, videos, ebooks, reports, etc. (We produce most of our content through writing blog articles and videos.)
How do I know what content to produce?
Simple!....what questions do your customers ask about your product or service on a regualar basis? These are the same questions people ask Google. Content marketing is about looking at the world from the perspective of the consumer, and producing content that speaks directly to them and addresses their concerns….and the one who best addresses their concerns also wins their trust!
Content Marketing vs Adwords/Pay-Per-Click Advertising
On Google’s results page there are two columns. Many folks don’t know that the one to the right, the “sponsored links”, are actually advertisements. When they are clicked, the company pays a specified amount based on a predetermined bid for the keyword that was typed in. This is called Pay-Per-Click advertising, and is how we received the bulk of our traffic initially….which was great, but expensive. The other problem with PPC advertising is that 80% of all internet users don’t even look to the right side of the page, so we were missing gobs of potential traffic.
The results on the left side of the page are called “organic” because they are based solely on a web pages ability to answer the question of the user (based on Google’s analysis). These are FREE, and are based on your content marketing efforts around that specific keyword. The key to successful content marketing is to produce content based on as many specific keywords as possible….this is where an understanding of SEO comes into play.
Over the past 3 years we have cut our Pay-Per-Click marketing budget by 2/3rds and increased the traffic to our site 5 fold….all because of our content marketing efforts.
The Modern David and Goliath
The beauty of content marketing is that it levels the playing field. He who produces the best content wins…..every time, because you can’t buy your way into organic search results.
This principle is what allows a small, Christian owned pool company to get more traffic than the huge multi-million dollar giants in our industry.
A Content Management System: The Key to Empowerment
As I alluded to earlier, the key to allowing all of this to happen rested in our ability to manage our own website. What we found was an awesome CMS, or Content Management System, that allowed us “non-techies” to have complete control. This was a quantum leap to empowerment for us. No more calls to the webmaster to add photos, fix a typo, or add content…..it was awesome, and it was as easy to use as a word processor. It’s literally websites for dummies. Finally, complete and total control of our own web destiny! It wasn’t until we began using our own CMS that we realized how utterly handcuffed we previously were. Finally, we could fully embrace our inbound/content marketing strategy, and once we did, it took off like a rocket.
These web marketing principles changed everything for us. Sure, the direct impact on marketing and sales was astounding. But more than anything, it helped us embrace an educational paradigm. We became content creators. We saw the world from a different perspective. We had to stretch ourselves at times, but with any challenge comes growth. Words can't express what this has done for us, and I hope can do the same for you.
I appreciate you being here, and sticking with this rather long article. If you have questions regarding your web marketing, and need somewhere to turn, please feel free to contact me directly via email at riverpoolsjason@gmail.com.....I'm happy to try and help. For a more in depth look at our experience with inbound marketing, feel free to visit my partner's sales and marketing blog www.TheSalesLion.com. It's a huge, free, resource and the perfect place to start this journey for yourself.
Please also feel free to question or comment below. Thanks, God Bless, and Good Luck!
