Website Marketing: Put Your Big Rocks in First

Like all goals we aspire to achieve, to be effective in your website marketing or inbound marketing efforts, you should begin with the end in mind. This means you’ve identified what your goals are, have ranked them by level of priority and, at each juncture, identified the supporting activities that will help you achieve the bigger picture. But what do you do if you’re “supporting activities” are undermining the foundation?

I love YouTube. I was recently watching some videos with Dr. Stephen Covey, who I’ve admired immensely, and came across what is surely a classic analogy of how many of us tend to prioritize our lives. In the video, Put Your Big Rocks in First, he has a woman put rocks of varying sizes in a bucket. Large rocks, smaller rocks and a large amount of much smaller, pebble sized rocks. Dumping in the pebbles first, we find, is definitely NOT the way to go; you can’t fit the larger, more important rocks in if you go that route. In the end, the demonstration conveys when you FIRST lay the foundation with that which is most important (the big rocks), the smaller and then, even smaller pebbles will fill in the gaps and nothing (important) is lost. Moreover, the smaller pebbles provide an even deeper level of support to the bigger when the foundation is laid in this manner.

Your Priorities Are The Substance of Your Foundation

Inbound marketing can be likened to this analogy when you consider the many tasks at hand. SEO and website optimization, blogging,  CTAs (calls-to-action), landing pages, lead nurturing, email campaigns, guest  blogging, adwords, mobile web, social media and the list goes on and on. Not to mention, staying on top of the latest inbound and website marketing tips, tricks and trends. It can all seem a bit daunting at times, however, when you consider Steven Covey’s analogy, you can conclude that if you put first things first, that is, your biggest priorities, the smaller tasks in varying degrees, will find their place and support the foundation.

First Things First

More than anything else, creating and offering remarkable content is priority one. Your website is the hub from which all activities proceed and lead back to, so your content (static pages and blog posts) needs to be all that your readers expect. That being said, if you’re not blogging on a regular basis, START NOW! Of course, adjoining this always is identifying your keywords and long-tail keywords for which you wish to rank for and creating *remarkable content that supports this end. Your pages and every blog post you create should have 1 or 2 (at the most), pre-determined keywords or keyword phrases from which your content will flow. From this, your SEO efforts (such as page titles, meta tags and descriptions, etc. that include your keywords) should flow naturally as a result. When you have these activities as your foundation, the rest of your rocks (priorities) have a solid base from which to build upon.

*(Remarkable content also means downloadable offers you’ll provide to your readers in the form of eBooks and whitepapers, therefore, putting considerable thought into how and what you will offer in this capacity will be worthwhile time spent.)

First Things First (continued)…

Spawning from your web pages and blog posts, is your CTAs and landing pages. This should be an essential facet of your strategy because this is where you reader’s are enticed to click through to a downloadable offer, subscription or consultation, etc., and where you capture your readers contact information.

Lead nurturing campaigns then, is the next order of business that should follow when your reader has downloaded an offer. After your reader has downloaded an offer or opted to subscribe to, let’s say, your blog, following up via automated email campaigns is an easy way to stay in touch. Without this, it’s highly likely your reader will forget about you with so many others vying for their attention.

Supporting Activities

Supporting activities, certainly are not LESS important, per se, because these activities can be the glue that holds everything else together, however, if you’ve neglected the former, these activities can be for naught. Keep in mind too, when done properly, ALL of the supporting activities listed here are ultimately link building opportunities as well, and this provides a huge boost to your website’s credibility factor, i.e., off-page SEO, and SERP.

Social media ranks high at this level because you can put your message out to the masses and this is where real-time engagement can occur.

Guest blogging on industry partner websites is a great link building activity, and can put you in front of readers that might not otherwise meet you.

Press releases and email blasts announcing events, timely news, special offers and such, is a great way to draw new visitors to your site as well as keeping your existing readers in the loop.

Local Search can be an often overlooked activity, yet can yield impressive results. Because “local” SEO is what ties you geographically to your audience, and especially if you’re serving a local audience, you’ll want to incorporate local SEO strategies into your website.

Reviews and Testimonials can be a great supporting activity because they provide the reader with unadulterated content that conveys a customer’s experience. When you provide outstanding services, reviews can be provide that final piece to the decision making proccess for a new customer’s buying strategy.
By focusing first on the foundational activities and then the supporting activities, not only will you achieve your goals, you’ll feel good about not neglecting the fundemental activities that is the basis of your website marketing strategy. When you tackle each of these marketing tactics in this order, you begin to understand how and why it works together so beautifully and gets the measurable results that it does.

If you’re new to internet marketing and would like to understand these concepts further,  get “The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”. It’s a must read for the novice or newbie and offers an easy-to-read, step-by-step guide for implementing the strategies presented here.  And, it’s yours FREE below!