According to Ammon Johns' (Black_Knight) signature, "the most important discussion in the whole forum" is Marketing 101 - Introducing the Essentials of Marketing. He makes a good case:
So What Is Marketing?
In the broadest sense, marketing incorporates everything about understanding markets (both yours and the ones you have not yet made yours), bringing your product/service to a market, and even developing new markets.
To get to the real essence of marketing, as I've mentioned once or twice before, marketing is about producing what you can sell, rather than just selling what you can produce.
Marketing is basically the strategic part of business.
Marketing incorporates or impacts heavily upon all of the following activities:
- Business Development
- Product Development
- Market Development
- Market Research
- Competitor Analysis
- Pricing Strategy
- Public Relations
- Customer Service
- Promotions
- Brand Development
- Company/Corporate Identity
For those who may not know him, Ammon is not only one of Cre8asite's most valuable contributors, he's also one of the most historically respected and knowledgable SEOs in the business (much like his friend, Mike Grehan). Ammon's goal with the thread is to expand the knowledge base of many in the SEO field who focus solely on rankings, algorithms and "optimization" and ignore the fact that this is only a singular piece in the giant marketing puzzle.
There's a trend from a lot of experienced folks in SEO that has been taking this route of all-inclusive marketing or, at the least, online marketing, rather than just concerning themselves with the rankings in the search engines. This relates well to the debate on the definition of SEO, where I noted that:
Anything (and everything) that has to do with getting a website more popular and more linked to has a relationship with SEO. In my mind, this is exactly what separates higher price SEOs from the low and middle range (no offense intended - just an observation). Higher priced SEOs are often called in to projects to take an overarching look at everything that affects or can affect rankings...
Understanding Ammon's marketing basics can help achieve a remarkable amount, not only for an SEO's clients, but for their own business model. I asked Ammon to apply the principles to the SEO and webdev services industry in particular:
The first and most important thing with your new services business is to accept that the product life-cycle is short, and that competition will grow. So decide how you are going to deal with that. Your choices are to keep developing new products (new services) accepting that each will have the same short life-span, or to seek to develop something you can own (patents, technology, a product line).
Noticed how most of the bigger SEO companies soon develop specialist tools? Now you know why. But again, are those tools easy to develop? What is the barrier to competition? What stops a never ending supply of school-leavers with lower wage needs from copying and undercutting you?
A great thread to sit down and read like an article - I promise you'll walk away with a better understanding of what you need to do to market your own business (and those of your clients).
Great Stuff. Ammon has definitely has added a lot to our business. Its important to find clients that understand the idea of business marketing.
Its very often the case that medium sized companies approach us with a simple desire to rank on Google for some obscure term, but miss the larger picture of marketing the entire business.