The Ruby Marketing Agency

We help B2B, Luxury & Professional Services brands get more clients and more referrals.

How to Eat the Marketing Elephant:
Part 2 – The First Juicy Bite

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Read Part 1 here.

Our first bite out of that Marketing Elephant is going to be the big juicy center, also known as  . . .

Your Website !  Yum!

Your website acts as the hub to all your online marketing and quite a bit of your offline marketing as well. Always use it as the centralized location for your products, services, blog posts, items for sale, press releases, a repository for audios, videos, etc.

Recently, some of my clients have asked whether they should even have a website when they can use a Facebook fan page for most of their needs. And I say NO NO NO!

Do NOT give up control of your information to a third party. If you have been considering using Facebook to replace your website, be sure to read my previous blog post about the danger of ditching your web site in favor of a Facebook Fan Page.


WHY Should Your Website Be Your Centralized hub?

Because with a website where you own the domain name, the hosting account and all the content YOU are in control.* You have control over:

  • The way it looks – colors, images, layout and design.
  • The content on the site – what is said, HOW it is said, and whether or not it contains any advertisements.
  • The keywords you use – for meta tags and within your content.
  • The links your allow on your site.
  • The advertisements you allow or disallow on your site.
  • The intellectual property that resides there (video, audio, podcasts, blog posts, etc.)
  • The ability to approve any and all comments.

* On a side note, make sure that you in fact do own your domain name and your hosting account. Never ever allow a web developer, a virtual assistant, a marketing consultant or anyone else to purchase a domain name or hosting account on your behalf. If they purchase it, they own it, which means they control it. Make sure YOU always maintain this control.



Your First Website: Simple and Imperfect

As you build your business, your website will also grow. In the beginning, don’t worry about making it perfect or making it a large and complicated site. Get it up there with your basic information, share your story, and provide a way for you to be contacted.

As you start to build new products and/or services, and hold special promotions, you can create additional content pages and additional promotional pages. At some point, you will be able to direct interested parties to specific pages on your site which address their particular interests. But for now, just get it up there!

If you incorporate your blog into your website (which I highly recommend and which I also have done) your website becomes even more powerful. Why? Because, as you add blog posts and share your knowledge, your website becomes a dynamic hub for new information and insight. This increases visitors to your site, generates good SEO practices (assuming you are using your keywords appropriately) and gives you much greater visibility as you share your posts via social media sites.

And for more information on what to do and what NOT to do when launching your first website, get yourself a copy of my Free Special Report: “18 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid with Your First Website” available on the top right hand side of this page.



So, How Was Your First Juicy Bite?

Not bad huh? Next, we will move on to some delicious side dishes. And as these side dishes each start to tie back in to our centralized core, you’ll begin to see how your website is the central and juicy part of all your marketing efforts.

Read on to Part 3 . . .

How to Eat the Marketing Elephant: Part 1

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Have you sat down to plan your businesses’ goals and strategies for the New Year yet? Are you excited by the thought of what you want to create, how much fun it will be and how much profit you’ll make?

Great! And once you switch out of being in your head with grand visions, and focus on the exact tactics, activities and tasks that are necessary to bring your vision to light, you may find yourself becoming a bit overwhelmed.

Okay – a LOT overwhelmed!

When thinking about how you’re going to market your business in the New Year, it can be exciting and relatively easy to form a big picture. You can envision the money, the success, the clients, the overall busyness you plan to experience and the profit that will result from that.

Yet when you think of the activities that are needed to make this vision a reality, and the multitude of details that go into making your vision a reality, a big whopping dose of overwhelm and reality can set in.

Here’s a short list of strategies and tactics you may be considering to market your business:

  • Public relations
  • Web site – new or upgraded
  • Mobile web site
  • Social media
  • Copywriting
  • Networking
  • Blogging
  • e-mail marketing
  • Trade shows
  • Videos
  • Writing and publishing articles
  • Building your database / list
  • Search engine optimization
  • Direct mailers / letters / postcards
  • Sales strategies
  • Teleseminars / Webinars / Podcasts / Training
  • Freebies / Giveaways
  • Electronic Products and Programs
  • Branding
  • Public Speaking

You might be asking yourself these questions:

Which of these marketing tactics should I implement this year? Which can wait until next year or beyond? How will they work together to leverage one other? Do I need them all? Which ones are most important? Which ones can I do on my own and which should I outsource? I have no idea how some of these items work, so how can I possibly know whether or not I should use them?

As you can see, overwhelm’s close cousins – confusion and paralysis – can easily move right in as permanent house guests once you start considering HOW you’ll create your big vision.

You do know the only way to eat an elephant don’t you? It’s one bite at a time of course. That’s what I’m going to help you do in the next few blog posts. We‘re going to take each of these marketing topics “one bite at a time” and:

1 – Examine the strategy behind it
2 – Discuss what it CAN do for your business and what it CANNOT do for your business
3 – Explain how it fits in with and leverages all your other marketing efforts
4 – Advise you on the pros and cons of outsourcing each particular tactic
5 – Provide you with the first few steps to implementing this tactic if you decide it fits in with your vision.

Remember, no marketing tactic is an island. They all must leverage one another AND all work together to achieve your overall vision and business strategy.

So, first we will start with the hub of it all – your website.

Read on to Part 2 . . .