Web Marketing That Works
Confessions from the Marketing Trenches
[This post is an excerpt from the book Web Marketing That Works. The book is accompanied by 33 Free Web Marketing Templates (you can download them any time).]
January 7, 2005, was an auspicious day for us. We walked out of the business licensing office in Spring Hill, Brisbane, into a sweltering Australian summer day. We’d just registered our trading name, Bluewire Media. We were officially business owners. All that was missing was one small piece of the puzzle — clients.
And so began our marketing journey.
Getting started
Here we were, non-technical business owners who’d never written a line of code, selling websites. Rather than learning how to program, our passion was in learning how to market, run and grow a business. We knew marketing was a key ingredient and we needed to learn how to get leads for our burgeoning business.
Door knocking was our opening move. Armed with notepads, matching business shirts and a polished script, we started canvassing the local businesses.
‘Hi. My name is Adam and this is Toby. We’re from Bluewire Media, a web design company. We were wondering if you needed a website?’
‘No thanks, not at the moment.’
‘No problem. Thanks for your time.’ And so it went. We pounded the pavement for an entire two days, working our way through store after store, business after business, in the summer heat. The result? Nothing. Not a single solitary lead.
The breaking point came when it was Toby’s turn to lead. He accidentally followed the script verbatim: ‘Hi, I’m Adam …’! We realised our gaffe, left the store and burst into laughter. It was either that or cry. We needed to look for a better way.
Graduation?
We graduated from door knocking to cold-calling. At least now we were in the shade. We had a brainwave and started to qualify businesses that were advertising in the Brisbane News magazine but didn’t have a website. Clearly they had a marketing budget, so all we had to do was convince them to spend it with us.
There were three things hurting our credibility.
Firstly, we were selling websites while our own was still under construction. Secondly, we had no website portfolio, since we had no clients. And thirdly, when we were making the calls, the birds in the trees beside Adam’s parents’ deck were chirping loudly in the background.
To make up for these chinks in our armour, we stepped up our sophistication and trialled our first offer: we’d mock up a website design for the business if they would agree to a meeting. While this was labour intensive, it won us the attention we were after and we started to book some appointments.
Interestingly, though, our first sale came through word-of-mouth, from an old water polo coach. His mate at the pub said he needed a website. Our coach passed on his details and we landed the gig. Receiving our first ever cheque for a deposit of $247.10 is still one of our favourite business memories.
And we progressed. We learned two things from that first win: that our community was valuable and that we needed to deliver value. So we tapped into our existing networks, such as our university alumni and old boys’ networks, and drummed up any PR we could off the back of Toby’s recent performance at the Athens Olympics. All of our early press mentions featured water polo caps and laptops — anything to spread the Bluewire word! We signed up to a free listing in the Yellow Pages and were seen at every networking function possible.
We’d show up at the opening of an envelope if given half a chance. We came to realise that the old adage that word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing was absolutely true. Since all of our business was coming through our networks and relationships, we decided that would be where we invested our time, money and resources.
No money
As a start-up, we had no money to invest in paid advertising so we focused on growing and nurturing our network by being generous and offering advice, and this led to sales.
Marketing on the web was fantastic for this because it scaled. Anybody on the web could potentially find us through our website, and with the click of a button we could send an email to our entire network. This was the birth of our Bluewire News emails. With these breakthroughs, our business, Bluewire Media, was off and racing.
We soon learned that the best use for the Yellow Pages was as a step for Adam to stand on so he was a bit taller in photos next to Toby. We loved the web and were hooked on this new business so threw ourselves into reading books, listening to CDs (it was pre iTunes!), attending conferences and learning from marketers online to discover all we could about web marketing that works.
We furiously implemented what we learned, experimenting and testing as we went. As non-technical fi rst-time business owners, we were brimming with enthusiasm, and it’s been like that for nearly a decade now. This book is the product and culmination of our fi rsthand experiences as we’ve tried to find the most effective ways to market our business on the web.
On the shoulders of giants
From the outset, our love of business, marketing and the web inevitably put us on a happy collision course with the work of David Meerman Scott, Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.
Back in the mid to late 2000s these were the people who shaped our thinking about marketing a business in today’s connected web world.
Destiny for us was the ground-breaking ideas in their blogs and books about permission marketing, inbound marketing, the ‘new rules’ and building trust. The timing was perfect. These people validated what we had been experiencing and, better yet, they provided a framework and language that went with it. The world was on the cusp of a genuine revolution. And as entrepreneurs in a web business, we were free to implement the ideas unhindered.
We had an ‘aha!’ moment seeing David Meerman Scott’s keynote presentation called ‘The New Rules of Marketing & PR’ via satellite in Sydney. Wow! It stopped us in our tracks. You cannot beg, bug or buy attention, David argued. You must earn it by publishing great content on the web. He was speaking our language, even though he’d just opened our eyes and ears to it. What perfect timing to cross paths with David’s ideas and have theluxury of being able to start implementing them straight away.
The old rules of marketing from the pre-web days dictated that you must beg (press releases), bug (salespeople) or buy (ads) people’s attention. Today these approaches don’t work as well as they used to. Now you must earn attention by publishing content on the web that solves your buyers’ problems. In David Meerman Scott’s words, ‘on the web you are what you publish!’
Around the same time, we read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. His message — that you can’t interrupt people with advertising messages and expect them to listen — also rang true. You can’t beat people over the head, online or offline. You need their permission, and remarkable content is the ticket. Seth had even called out the offending style of marketing and given it a name — interruption marketing. This idea resonated with us,clearly delineating fundamentally different marketing styles. We knew interruption marketing wasn’t for us.
Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s book Trust Agents and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! provided a blueprint for taking action, based on the idea that being human, earning trust and developing relationships one at a time were the keys to success on the web. Very powerful and so simple.
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah’s book Inbound Marketing provided the final piece of the puzzle, a marketing philosophy to live by and a name for it too — inbound marketing. Attract visitors with great information, continue to nurture these people by helping and teaching them, and eventually they will become paying customers and delighted referrers.
Advertising no longer reigned supreme
In our early days, advertising agencies reigned supreme in the marketing world. As a small web firm, we partnered with many of them and worked with their clients, although we found from the very start that advertising principles simply didn’t seem to perform the same when applied to the web. Banner ads, splash pages and fl ash intros were not things that we enjoyed personally, and it never seemed right to subject other people to them.
The stop-start campaign mentality didn’t sit well with us either. Three to six months of frenzied activity followed by a complete halt seemed an unlikely formula for lasting success. Surely we were in this for the long run? Still, it was work, it paid the bills for our start-up, and it allowed us to cut our teeth in business and marketing.
A universe of connected humans
It turned out we weren’t the only ones who didn’t really like advertising and its unwelcome interruptions. The marketing world had changed to a place where we could all block out ads through do-not-call lists; TiVo; pop-up blockers; unsubscribe, un-follow and un-like buttons; and simply clicking out of a website. You could no longer effectively interrupt your way into people’s lives. And if you did manage to intrude, you’d be more likely to annoy them than encourage them.
Instead you need to draw people in with inbound marketing. Use blogs, social media and content to be discovered, attract leads and win customers.
Also, the stop-start campaign mentality doesn’t apply — inbound marketing is an ongoing program. We need to stop creating interruptions to insert into other people’s content, and start creating the content ourselves.
There is a supreme irony in the fact that the most modern technology is a vehicle for the development of a universe of real, connected human beings. The key to success now, more than ever, is to be human — to earn trust and develop relationships with other human beings.
The future is now
The permission-based world that Seth Godin describes in Permission Marketing has already arrived. What happens next is up to us. We’re living in an age when we can be connected to anyone on Earth with WiFi and a smartphone — a supercomputer in our pocket with more capability than was thought possible even 10 years ago.
Consider how we’ve changed over the past decade, since we started our business. We now carry mobile devices, and neither of our homes has a landline. We are fully mobile with our laptops, and our desktop computers have been recycled. We use email but never send faxes. We Google for information and never open the Yellow Pages. Our prized CD collections have become relics made obsolete first by iTunes and again by Spotify. Toby has bought the lion’s share of his books on Kindle rather than in paperback.
We keep our photos on Facebook, not in hard-copy photo albums. We buy online using PayPal or credit card and have never used a chequebook. We get our news online, rather than buying newspapers. Adam doesn’t own a TV, nor do we watch commercial TV, but we have paid to download shows like Homeland.
Marketing has changed just as much.
Why you need this book
If you own, run or market a business, if you are a corporate marketing exec or work in a marketing fi rm, if you are looking to start a company or start your career, or even if you are still a student with these aspirations, then these are the skills you need to acquire. You’ll be able to deliver results and leapfrog over your peers who aren’t willing to make the shift to the web. If you’ve got enough skin in the game, and want it badly enough, this book will work for you.
The good news is it’s quite simple, although certainly not easy. You need to love what you do and you need to care. You need to love the people you touch with your marketing and care about solving their problems. If you don’t truly care, then inbound marketing won’t be your thing.
But you do care, or you wouldn’t be reading this post.
Remember, each part of your web marketing plan is a building block that contributes to the whole. You’ll understand how each of the parts fits together, whether it be social media, search, email marketing, website or blogging. You have the luxury of focusing on one area, shipping it and then focusing on a new one. It’s like going to the gym: you work on a new muscle, let it recover and then make it stronger next week. Once you’ve gradually worked your way around all your muscles you’ll be in great shape!
Everything in this book is implementable. The templates and tools we offer, all of which can be downloaded free from our website, are exactly those we use ourselves and with our own clients.
Why listen to us?
Since starting Bluewire Media in January 2005, we’ve been in the trenches implementing strategies, learning and improving web marketing for our clients and ourselves.
For the best part of a decade our business has been on the frontline of web marketing. We’ve digested hundreds of books, thousands of blog articles and countless presentations on marketing, the web and business, and we’ve been putting it all into practice. All up we have invested over 10 000 hours and we’ve put the best parts of this experience into this book and into the library of free tools and templates you can download and use for yourself.
We’ve built a marketing pipeline and inbound flow of leads — 5617 last year, a total unmatched by any international Hubspot partner. We advise listed companies, speak around the world, run workshops, deliver online courses, partner with businesses and communicate with more than 10,000 subscribers every week through our Bluewire News emails.
Now you can learn from us and fast-track your own marketing journey.
Everything we share with you is from our firsthand experience. Whether it’s about blogging, social networks, landing pages, email marketing, search optimisation or web design, we’ve been adapting as the technology changes, keeping up in the rapidly changing world of marketing.
Are you still with us?
We hope so. If you’re ready to grow your community and build a web platform, but you’re not sure exactly what you need to do, that’s great — because we’re about to take the first steps with you.
When reading this book you can follow the old-school path of cover to cover, but that isn’t necessary. We suggest you check the contents page and dive into any specific area you want, then download the associated templates and start implementing. Then move ahead to your next area of focus. Seasoned web marketing professionals might choose to scan through the book for the Pro Tips. Skip straight to these for instant hits of value.
As you work your way through the different sections, your web universe will take shape and you’ll be building a web marketing asset that will pay dividends for years to come.
We are confident that if you implement even half of what you read in this book you will be setting your business and your career up for a great future. Use the book as a guide for your own actions, come back to it and tweak the ideas to suit your own taste and circumstances. Let us know how it goes. We would love your feedback and look forward to hearing about your own experiences.
You can reach us at:
adam.franklin [at] bluewiremedia.com.au or @Franklin_Adam
toby.jenkins [at] bluewiremedia.com.au or @Toby_Jenkins
Let’s begin.
[This post is an excerpt from the book Web Marketing That Works. The book is accompanied by 33 Free Web Marketing Templates (you can download them any time).]
