Defining Marketing

[Banned: blindchild]

Defining Marketing
by John Scott of Internet Marketing Research

Marketing is Sales
Selling A Tool
One client approached us to optimize a site for a new tool he had invented. He wanted to sell his invention for $3 a piece via the Internet. This seemed a tad on the impractical side to us.

We put in few phone calls to Lowe's and Home Depot. A couple weeks later, Lowe's made a generous offer, and our job was done. That's marketing.

Marketing Creates Sales
Marketing is selling. Not advertising; not "hits"; not creativity awards; not search engine ranking; marketing is simply selling the product.

Brand is Often the Only Difference.
Most consumers don't need what you have to offer. Even if they do need it, they can get it elsewhere. More often than not, they can get it elsewhere at a better price, from some merchant with a better marketing strategy, more credibility and better looking sales people.

The majority of effective marketing revolves around building the brand name. Brand is trust, and trust is the only thing differentiating you from thousands of your competitors who offer the same damn thing you offer.

Let's say you offer hosting, for example. Why would somebody choose you instead of one of your competitors? If you're thinking price, think again. Price does not drive sales. Value drives sales. Price can be the same across the Internet, so in order to increase perceived value, add brand (credibility).

The Bottom Line
Marketing is not SEO; SEO is not marketing. SEO is not a marketing strategy. High search engine rankings do not create credibility.

Consider the fact that search engine traffic is low quality traffic to begin with, then add in the fact that search engine traffic often accounts for less than 20% of all traffic to a website. How much is SEO worth now?

But wait! We're not done quite yet. SEO is proving to be fairly worthless even when it's good SEO. But how many "professional SEO's" practice truly effective SEO?

One high profile SEO recently stated: I freely admit that I don't optimize for highly competitive keywords. And, I don't optimize for one-word keywords, and many two-word phrases that might be extremely competitive.

And she isn't alone. In one SEO forum, a so-called professional boasted of his inability to achieve ranking for competitive keywords:

If you want bragging rights, chase the big ticket terms like "Search Engine Optimization". The other 3000 related terms are still up for grabs.

Was he ridiculed? No; he was applauded! It seems to be a disturbing trend spreading rapidly through amateur SEO circles. Before long, we might expect to have a professional organization dedicated to these SEO amateurs: Ineffective SEO's Professional Organization?

I find this trend of SEO incompetence revolting beyond description. Suddenly it's okay to take a client's money and not deliver the goods? In the real world, we call that fraud and get the district attorney involved; yet on the Internet these people brag about it and give seminars?

Summary
If your primary objective on the Internet is to be profitable, the choice of whether to pay for search engine optimization or not should be carefully considered.

The majority of the highly successful sites do not practice search engine optimization. Highly profitable websites are profitable because of solid marketing strategies, not search engine traffic.

The most profitable websites, in my experience, achieve less than 5% of sales from search referrals.

When all is said and done, it's a rare occasion that search engine optimization can justify a $4,000 price tag. Search engine optimization should only be used in conjunction with the implementation of a solid marketing strategy.