Going It Alone

Written by: Gary Horsman

Online Marketing

You Can’t Do It All by Yourself

I spend a great deal of time in the online marketing space and it can be a bit overwhelming as more and more ways to market online are developed and some become more powerful while other wan in value.

Also, I want to make it clear that online marketing is not just about SEO. Knowing search is imperative to online marketing but it not as big a driver as it was 5 to 7 years ago. Now social media plays a significant role and also simply to have the traffic is not worth as much if the user experience is poor and your conversion rate is low.

In fact I may be so bold as to point out that if you do not have a good conversion rate online then you do not have a business online.

I decided to make a list of key online marketing skills. I initially made this list just to see how big I could make it and it was once a bit bigger but in the end I decided that these 12 skills are all very important to be able to maximize online business development.

Also, I did some research to see what companies — that are successful at online marketing — desire in an employee who is in charge of online marketing. Here is PDF for the Position of Director of Online Marketing at 1800flowers.com in New York City. It was posted on indeed.com. Take a couple of minutes to look though the skill set that they desire. It my opinion they desire quite a bit and you can rest assured that the skill set will need to evolve quickly as things we have not even thought up yet become mainstream.

The bottom line message is that in today’s online marketing environment there is a great deal to know to perform well. One cannot know it all and it is vital to create a team of resources (whether in-house or external) that will enable you to get the job done, done well and done efficiently.

I recommend making incisive decisions on where and how you will market your business online and then to put in place the resources needed to do a job that will out-perform your competition.

Content Marketing is an important aspect of online marketing and if you can define the key content to create and then where to create exposure for your content then you will have made significant progress.

Download our simple and straight-forward content marketing planning checklist.