Stop Buying And Start Earning Your Traffic Or Social Media Fan Base

Customer: How will you achieve this?

Marketing Agency 1: We’ll develop an engagement gradually by actively participating in social media conversation, publishing content, sharing and developing an all round presence to drive inbound traffic.

Marketing Agency 2: Don’t worry about it, we’re experts in SEO techniques, we’ll deliver 1000′s of links, guaranteed traffic and you will have quick results.

Customer: When can I see results? How much traffic can you generate at the end of the first month?

Marketing Agency 1: We may be able to generate a moderate few hundred to 1000 visitors through referral traffic in the first month but consistently build and later start seeing more traction from search traffic coming in from content that’s made an impact with users.

Marketing Agency 2: We can get thousands of visitors in the first month, thousands of Twitter followers and thousands of Facebook fans…it all depends on your budget.

Customer: Obvious choice! Marketing Agency 2 knows what I want…you’re hired!

Money can buy you traffic for your website, it can buy you quick marketing results and even the impression that you’re online marketing efforts are a success.What it can not by you is true online engagement.

When it comes to demand generation and online marketing instant results, quick traffic, rapid growth, small campaign cycles are words businesses and marketers like to hear. It’s all possible online just as it is offline, if you have advertising dollars to spend, attention can be bought. However, to keep that attention, you need to keep spending those ad dollars and when using these routes, one needs to remember:

Easy come….easy go.

Not that there is anything wrong with online advertising, banner exchanges, buying leads, traffic or fans but should that be the only strategy as part of the overall online marketing mix? The reality is, these quick result mediums are effective in getting attention but they work exactly as traditional push based advertising or marketing does.

There are no short cuts to the pull based or inbound marketing. It needs to be earned by offering something of value constantly but the results can be lasting. It doesn’t cost as much but it needs long term vision and commitment to grow an online marketing effort that draws traffic and customers towards you and getting people to talk about your business. It is the road less traveled, longer, more demanding but in the end….it leads to a better place.

Attention can be bought, trust needs to be earned and when you’re building a long term online presence that people can connect to, it’s working hard at building engagement and trust that will make all the difference.