To grow your marketing it can take lots of hard work. It can get very discouraging when you’re not seeing the results you think you should.
That’s why some people get tempted to buy their marketing love. You can buy a surprising amount of marketing online. SEO and keywords, social media followers and likes, email lists, and even guest blog posts. The thought process goes something like this: “If I buy some email lists I can reach more people with my company. If I reach more people, they will buy from me.”
Or, “If I buy a thousand likes on my post, people will think it’s more valuable and popular. That will lead them to think I am cool and they’ll start following me.”
While it does seem like buying some marketing followers and lists is an easy option, it doesn’t work like most people assume it will. Here are the five kinds of marketing you shouldn’t buy and why it doesn’t work.
1. Bad SEO and Shady Backlinks
I think we’ve all got these spam emails. Claims to get you on the front page of Google are rampant. Unfortunately, they don’t work. Most of these offers are preying on you to get money with little to no work.
Real SEO takes dedication and effort. Google has gotten pretty wise to old-school methods of SEO manipulation and doesn’t look too kindly on those still trying. Not only will it not work, it could even damage your online reputation.
That’s why you need to focus on proper keyword research with informational content to back it up. Have you core sitemap and pages surrounding your business and its services, then use a blog to target specific keywords you want to rank for. This is why you should never buy bad SEO and know what to look for in bad SEO companies.
Also, here are a few things that could be hurting your SEO.
2. Social Likes
It might be tempting to get a boost on those likes, but we assure you, it won’t do what you anticipate. People notice when numbers look off, and instead of being more trustworthy, you’ll lose the confidence of your followers. It can definitely hurt you long term.
It’s tempting. Lots of people do it… but don’t fall for the hype. Buying social media LIKES isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There are slimy companies selling "Real Likes" that are just empty bots that will never engage or even purchase your services..so why even purchase a "Like" or "Follow" for someone that will not be building a relationship with you.
3. Social Media Followers
Same thing with any kind of followers. If you only have 1,500 followers, you would assume that buying 10,000 more followers may look good. However, an overnight explosion like this is extremely shady looking. Plus, what’s the point of these followers? They’re just bloating the numbers and don’t represent real customers or clients. Therefore, they have no real value to your company. What a waste of money when you could be spending it on trying to grow real, organic engagement.
4. Email Lists
Ugh, the worst. What do you do with any email you don’t recognize? That’s right, mark it as spam or immediately delete. People HATE mailbox clutter. But what’s more, is how do you know if these email lists even match your customer base? You have no way of knowing whose email you’re buying, so there’s no real value in sending mass produced emails. Opt-in email communication is the only way to go about it.
Mail is often the primary means of communication for a lot of businesses. If you are sending mass emails, sometimes that unintentionally places you on a “blacklist.” Emails are either funneled successfully into an inbox, flagged and filtered into a junk or spam folder or completely blocked by an email provider and not even forwarded to the contact’s address. If you are sending a bunch of multiple address emails, that can affect those one-on-one emails you are also sending. A client might miss an invoice, meeting reminder or product or service launch… all because you are now spam. Unspamming your reputation isn’t easy, so make sure you are using mass email marketing sparingly and again, to those who have opted into receiving your messages. The more you bounce the higher your spam rate goes! The more tailored and personalized your email lists are, the less you bounce!
5. Guest Blog Posts
All of the above counts for guest blog posts. Paying for a spot on a blog your audience might not even check is just a huge waste of time and money.
Organic traffic is what you should be aiming to grow
“Okay,” you’re probably saying. “But it’s really hard to grow organic marketing traffic. How do I do it?”
We’re glad you asked! The number one tip we can give you is to start creating and sharing only quality content. For our clients, we build a valuable blog center focused on questions and topics relevant to the client. Each blog has a specific keyword it targets that patrons of that industry search on Google.
Using that blog center for dual purpose, we also share out the blogs on social media channels. Some are evergreen, meaning we can use them over and over. Others are more timely and may only be used once or twice.
Once we’ve begun building the page with the client’s content, we start interacting and sharing related content from trusted brands and research.
This is all easier if you can create it ahead of time and schedule posts out. Here are some tools we use to do that.
As we work through this process on our client’s pages, people start liking the page and interacting with us. Now, we want to convert them. Blogs lead them to the client's website, but the goal is to capture their email for ongoing communications. NOW Marketing Group uses lead capturing software alongside an inbound approach to do this. We create and provide free downloadable resources – longer and more valuable than a blog post – and make it available for those who trade their name and email.
Through this process, not only have we increased on social media presence, we’ve also organically grown our email list. Blogs with dedicated keywords have helped our SEO and ranking in Google, and once there is a full resource center of valuable research and information, clients are seen an expert in their field. This can (and has) lead to clients getting featured in magazines, online, and in videos, furthering their reach.
While this does take some work, it is hands down the best way to grow your audience. Through this method, you actually earn your followers, who truly like your company and make the sales you need. On the contrary, when you buy followers, likes, and guest posts, your numbers may appear great, however, the actual conversion level you see will remain stagnant. So what real benefit is there?
That’s why we will always promote hard-earned and honest organic growth, which in the long term is much more valuable and always better for conversion.
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