The best place to start is with the broader overview and from there we can hone in on more granular detail. In other words, I’m going to give you the big picture, so that you know your objective and you know the overall strategy. We’ll then be able to deconstruct the end point we’re looking for to see how we get there.
Okay, so I mentioned earlier that this book would give you an ‘edge’ seeing as most people go about building their audience the wrong way. I absolutely meant that – it was not just marketing talk.
The point is that most new brands have a completely misguided approach to how they go about marketing and promoting themselves and this mistake absolutely cripples any chance of success. That’s what we’ll be addressing here though and in doing so, we’ll hopefully be able to ensure that you don’t take a similarly misguided approach.
So how do so many businesses get it wrong? What is so incorrect about their approach?
The problem comes down to care and attention. That is to say that to put it politely, a lot of businesses view their digital marketing efforts as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. Think of all the different marketers that you have encountered on your trips around the web. How many of them do you feel are trustworthy and offering a great product? How many do you feel are just trying to get you to spend cash on a sub-par product?
How many times have you had a web page pop up without your intention and tell you about this fantastic opportunity to earn millions while working from home.
“I couldn’t believe it!”
Announces some awkward, unpolished voice.
“And neither will you! Soon you’ll be earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a day working from the comfort of your home.”
Well guess what? Surprise, surprise you shouldn’t believe it. When you part with your hard earned cash, what you’re most likely to receive is a shoddy PDF and perhaps a couple of random videos.
I’ve helped companies to sell some pretty awful products in the past (I’m not proud of it!). One time I got to try out the product – which claimed to be the turning point in people’s lives – and it turned out to be a series of videos that were made purely from screen captures without so much as a some narration. It was literally a video of a guy clicking some things on a screen in order to log into a profile and sign up to an autoresponder.
Absolutely terrible value for money.
And it’s not just the marketers that take this approach. Many webmasters and bloggers are just as guilty and this is where you might start to put your hand up too.
Because as a writer, this is another type of business I’ve worked for:
Someone who chooses a niche because they think it offers a good opportunity (not because they have any passion or interest for the subject matter). Someone who then hires a bunch of writers (that’s where I get roped in) and gives them a bunch of generic titles.
Let’s say the subject is fitness, so the site owner will come up with some topics off the top of their head like:
“How to Get Great Abs” Or
“How to Lose Weight FAST!”
The articles couldn’t be more generic, less interesting or more out of touch with the interesting stuff that is actually going on in the industry right now. It’s a bad start…
Worse is that sometimes the site owner will do so little research into their niche that they’ll give me titles that are factually inaccurate. I had a health blog recently that asked me to write about ‘The 16 Symptoms of Prediabetes’. Well seeing as prediabetes is asymptomatic, that’s pretty difficult. Another recently asked me to write about how you could build great biceps with press ups. Well, seeing as press ups target the triceps and pecs and not the biceps… You get the idea!
So why do these companies pick those titles? Simple answer: they either saw them on another site, they did some keyword research and found that other people were searching for the topics, or they pulled them out of the air without giving it any thought.
Choosing a title based on a keyword is the most popular example and it seems like a good idea. After all, that means people will search for it and they’ll find it.
Small Businesses Are Not Exempt!
But perhaps you’re reading this as a small business owner and thinking it doesn’t apply to you! After all, if you don’t write content for a blog then you can’t be guilty of generic titles.
But the same cynical approach and lack of care and attention regularly goes into business efforts. In fact, may businesses are even more guilty of this. Take for example those businesses that want to promote themselves online through social media and do so by writing the most generic posts imaginable.
I worked in marketing for an EPOS provider (Electronic Point Of Sale), which essentially means that it built till systems for other companies. They insisted that every post I should make on their blog had to read like this:
“Our EPOS system is the best in the industry… bar none!” “Find out why companies LOVE our new EPOS system!”
Again, makes sense on paper. After all, it’s a business site, so of course it’s going to promote its products. When they eventually did get me to write on their blog, they had me writing posts on EPOS systems and EPOS systems alone. The site itself was bland, white and dark blue and with zero character or anything to set it apart.
Visitors visiting the site would have this single message communicated to them:
“This is a business site. A business site with a low budget.”
Not good.
Why This is So Wrong and What the Alternative Looks Like
I’m not saying that you’re guilty of this, I’m saying there’s a chance you might be somewhat guilty of this. You have approached your business like a business person: you’ve chosen a niche, looked into ‘what’s hot’ and you’ve paid the minimum to get something set up. Now you’re going to promote your ass off and make sure that people see what you’re selling.
So, what’s wrong with that?
Simple: it doesn’t build an audience.
Remember how I told you to look at the most popular brands in your niche? The most popular blogs and sellers? How are they different from the approach that we have just described?
Most likely you’ll find that they have beautifully designed websites. The sites will likely use crisp, HD graphics with vibrant colors and big images. They probably have large UI elements, a simple navigation and a strong logo and colorscheme that brings everything together. Your audience should land on your site and think that this is a site with a big budget, that really cares about its customers and that knows what it’s doing.
You need to land on a site and think that it is has some kind of passion for what it is doing. And you need to be able to see and feel the investment.
Think about the sites that you have subscribed to yourself. These are likely sites that somehow set themselves apart with an interesting message, unique content and a great look. They most likely are not sites that were set up with the sole intention of making a quick buck.
Would you really follow a social media channel that did nothing but write about how good its product was? What would be in it for you?
Would you really subscribe to the mailing list of a website that was already spamming you before you even got past the first page?
The answer is no. And this reveals the simple truth: if you want to build an audience, you can’t rush it. You can’t take short cuts. You can’t cheat.
The only method for building a massive audience that is worth pursuing is to create a channel or brand that is:
Unique
Interesting
High quality
High value
Professional
And if you’re going to do all that, then you need to have passion for the topic you’ve chosen. You need to understand the subject. And you need to love doing what you’re doing enough to actually put all that time and effort in.
Because you know what? Building an audience is not something you accomplish overnight. Again, ask any big name vlogger, blogger or business owner. They will all tell you that they started out writing blogs that no-one read, selling products that barely anyone bought or making videos that no one watched. The only thing that kept them going at this point was genuine passion for what they were doing.
Here's another thing to consider: if you create a fitness site and you have no interest in fitness, then the content that you create is not going to make any big impact. You’re not going to be able to impress the target audience that you’re trying to engage.
Think about it: if you have a fitness website then who is that going to be aimed at predominantly? Fitness enthusiasts. So, if you write a poorly researched blog post on press ups, what value do you think it’s possibly going to offer to someone who has been working out for years? Someone who perhaps trains daily?
Of course, there’s also a specific blueprint to follow which we’ll be looking at in this book. But it’s that passion that will help you to execute said plan and that will keep you working through it.
And it’s the passion that is going to help you do it well.