Paid ads totally suck. That’s a strange thing for a digital marketer to say, yeah?
I guess I should clarify before our clients question my sanity. Paid advertising absolutely generates leads and sales and should probably be part of your digital strategy.
So what’s the problem?
This might be obvious, but when you pay for a month of ads, that money is spent. It’s gone for good. And to get further benefit from your ads, you’ll have to pay to run them for another month.
That’s the part that sucks.
Got it, paid ads suck, but what’s the alternative?
Start building long-term digital marketing assets alongside your paid ads. Here’s how it works…
Let’s look at a simple example of putting ongoing effort into posting to your blog. But FYI, this could just as easily be posting YouTube videos, social media, or anything else published online that you control…
Say you post a single blog to your website and it generates fifteen new visitors per month from Google search (I’m making up conservative numbers for this example).
Fifteen new visitors… Not too exciting, yeah? I agree, probably nothing is going to happen from a few extra monthly visitors.
But instead of getting discouraged, let’s push on and publish one blog a week for the next year…
Much Like the Power of Compounding Interest…
Math time! If all things remained equal and you get 15 monthly visits per blog post, you’d see an extra 780 monthly users on your site (52 weekly blogs * 15 monthly users = 780).
That’s 780 new users each and every month for no added work on your part. You could stop posting and enjoy the new monthly traffic well into the future.
But it’s actually better than that. You see, as you consistently and properly add quality content to your website, you’re raising the SEO value of all the content on your site.
Remember those old posts from 12 months ago? They’re no longer generating fifteen hits a month. Thanks to Google loving the fact that you post great content on a regular basis, all your posts are ranking higher in search and Google’s now sending you twenty-five monthly users!
So you’re actually getting 1,300 new users every month.
Now keep up that weekly blog publishing for two years… Now you have 104 total blog posts.
All that content has convinced Google that you’re a serious authority on your topic and those posts are now generating an average of thirty users per month each.
Your website is getting an extra 3,120 pair of potential customer eyeballs per month — just from your blogging efforts!
Time for a little honesty break.
What’s more likely going to happen is some posts will generate very little traffic. But others will send you hundreds or even thousands of visitors per month.
But I’d be willing to bet that if you follow this, my numbers will prove to be conservative.
The long-lasting benefits of controlling your content
Unlike any ad platform, you own and control all the content you’ve created. You could stop publishing to your blog this week and still receive the benefit of the traffic your old posts provide.
You’ve created a marketing asset that will continue to pay off into the foreseeable future.
Not to mention, all this content can be repurposed. You can turn the best content into white-papers or checklists and use them as lead magnets (give them away in exchange for contact information).
Not only that, but once you have a content library to pull from, posting to social media becomes easier and more effective. Post to all your social channels every time you publish a post and not only will you generate more traffic, but you’ll build your brand while helping your potential customers, too!
And remember, this example could have just as easily been YouTube videos, online directories, guest posting, and to a lesser extent, social media. If you don’t like writing, don’t blog! Find something that works for you and stick with it.
Now you know the “secret” to dominate your market online — the secret no one wants to hear. Because putting in consistent work over a long time isn’t the sexy solution people are looking for…
But strangely, that’s what makes the “secret” even more powerful! Let them dump their entire marketing budget into ads. In two years, when ad costs have continued to rise and they struggle to run profitable campaigns, you’ll be two full years of content creation ahead of them.
Who’s sexy now?
If you’d like to see how we can help you develop your content strategy, create an effective brand, and build a website that makes people want to work with you, learn more about S’more Brands here.