Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Seth Godin’s post, The Secret of The Web really hit home with me for two reasons:

1. Being a stereotypical Aries, I don’t normally consider patience a virtue (and patience is the secret)…yet…it’s critical to Web success.

2. I seem to repeat many of Seth’s points when talking to clients about Web marketing. (This is also why I’ll never be a gazillionaire, since I tend to tell people boring things like, “It takes time” “It won’t produce results overnight.” “No, I can’t instantly increase your site traffic”…and the really popular one: “Your beautiful, expensive web site is broken.” Ah well.)

The really boring part of all this patience stuff - you need both a strategy and tactics. Then, you’ve got to actually implement..then you’ve got to give things a chance to work (or not.) Here’s the money bit from Seth’s post:

It still takes ten years to become a success, web or no web. The frustrating part is that you see your tactics fail right away. The good news is that over time, you get the satisfaction of watching those tactics succeed right away.

The trap: Show up at a new social network, invest two hours, be really aggressive with people, make some noise and then leave in disgust.

The trap: Use all your money to build a fancy website and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you’ll need to do.

Well, maybe not a whole ten years, but it certainly takes more than ten days…or even ten months in many cases.

P.S. That trap re social networks also applies to real-world networking. Simply showing up a few times and blitzing people with biz cards doesn’t build relationships. (Read more: One-page PDF download, Networking As A Marketing Strategy)

Related Posts:
Are You Selling to Search Engines Or People?
(More & More) Social Media Snake Oil
Calling The Web Doctor!
Web Sites: The Dark Screen of Death

Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, web development, emarketing, web marketing