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Marketing - Pay or do it yourself?
Hi,
I`m new to this forum. My website is RecipeMatcher (www.recipematcher.com). You can find great recipes based on what you already have at home. My question is related to marketing...should I pay or do it myself. I`ve been approached by companies that would do what I can do for myself (blogger outreach, etc.), but they can do it on a much larger scale and it frees up time for me to work on RecipeMatcher. What price should I be paying for this?
Thanks,
Mike
I`m new to this forum. My website is RecipeMatcher (www.recipematcher.com). You can find great recipes based on what you already have at home. My question is related to marketing...should I pay or do it myself. I`ve been approached by companies that would do what I can do for myself (blogger outreach, etc.), but they can do it on a much larger scale and it frees up time for me to work on RecipeMatcher. What price should I be paying for this?
Thanks,
Mike
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Comments
I`m new to this forum. My website is RecipeMatcher (www.recipematcher.com). You can find great recipes based on what you already have at home. My question is related to marketing...should I pay or do it myself. I`ve been approached by companies that would do what I can do for myself (blogger outreach, etc.), but they can do it on a much larger scale and it frees up time for me to work on RecipeMatcher. What price should I be paying for this?
Mike, whether or not you choose to hire someone is obviously a personal decision. I agree with you, however that much of what a marketing company can do, you can do yourself. It`s just a question of asking yourself how much time do you want to invest in marketing matters. Besides that, most of the so-called marketing companies are either scams or incompetent at best.
I`m not for hire myself, but if you need help finding a legitimate marketing company, I`ll be glad to help you out.
Dale King
DaleKing6/2/2008 7:03 PM
Hi,
I`m new to this forum. My website is RecipeMatcher (www.recipematcher.com). You can find great recipes based on what you already have at home. My question is related to marketing...should I pay or do it myself. I`ve been approached by companies that would do what I can do for myself (blogger outreach, etc.), but they can do it on a much larger scale and it frees up time for me to work on RecipeMatcher. What price should I be paying for this? Mike, whether or not you choose to hire someone is obviously a personal decision. I agree with you, however that much of what a marketing company can do, you can do yourself. It`s just a question of asking yourself how much time do you want to invest in marketing matters. Besides that, most of the so-called marketing companies are either scams or incompetent at best.
=============================
Due respect to ya but that`s a pretty cynical attitude Dale.
Anyways, Dale is correct in that you should hire a marketing company if you can`t spend the cycles to do it yourself.
To find a good marketing company some of the questions you should look out for or ask are:
1) Do they 100% guarantee results? If so stay away from them.
2) ALWAYS ask for references and contact numbers of current customers for said marketing companies. If they can`t provide a list of current customers, stay away from them.
3) Go a Google search on line about them or their reputation. Chances are you can find reviews about them good or bad.
4) How much are you willing to spend on Marketing?
5) Ask them how they plan to market your website. This question is asked to see not only how good they are but to see how interested they are in seeing your business become successful. If they answer with a `we plan on doing <fill in the blank> on <search engine>` types of answers, move on. However, if they spend the time to get to know your business and you, that`s the person you need to look at more closely. A good marketing person should be a key component in the execution of not only what your business vision is but of your goals are as well.
Make sure the person you hire is the person that is going to help you succeed not just make your site go up in the rankings.
::edit::
Zoinks! Major bug in the quote with replies functionality of the forum.sddreamweavers6/2/2008 7:32 PM
you have to be super careful with many of the "marketing" firms out there. there are a lot of hucksters.
overall, i think it depends on how large you are. if you`re still getting your feet wet, try marketing for yourself. it`s good experience - and if you do it right, you`ll gain a lot of valuable contacts.
if you`re a bit bigger, and already doing well, check your network. chances are you have contacts that have good experience with one firm or another. i`m sure they`ll be able to steer you in the right direction.
cheers-
kenneth
deersmith publishing
For us, that works for now, but not everybody is cut from the same mold. We do it because it keeps us busy, and currently we have the time to do it. May I also add that it is not always that much "fun" in a laughing, giggling, smiling sense.
Figure out your 10 best strategies now: www.boostyourbottomline.comBusinessGrowthExpert6/13/2008 10:24 AM
As mentioned above, a good part of the answer depends on your interest and energy for self marketing. There are a ton of tools and ways to market your business on your own. My business partner, Yasmine Mustafa, loves to collect ideas and tidbits on do-it-youself marketing and public relations. Check out her post on 25 Free Ways to Market Yourself.
A professional marketing firm should start with a good strategic conversation and then prescribe ideas for various channels. As the authors of Groundswell (a great book on using Social Technologies in your business) say, use P.O.S.T.
P - People - who is your audience and where do you find them online
O - Objectives - what are the objectives of your initiative?
S - Strategy - after you`ve nailed P and O, now you can set the Strategy
T - Technology - do I use a blog? should I use YouTube? These questions about which technologies to use should come last - not first.
Good luck!
If you can afford the time to do you own marketing and are willing to invest the time not only to do the actual promotion, but also constantly keep up on what is going on out in the marketplace, then it might be a good decision to do it yourself.
A lot of my clients come to me because they just don`t have the time to do everything.
I`ll give you a leg up by sending you to two of my sites where you can find some pretty good information: www.donmckay-marco.com and www.donmac-ideas.com. Download the `Dynamic Marketing white paper` and have a good read. There are also good marketing books (used always) from amazon.com. A good and current college textbook can be invaluable to people starting out. There`s also the Dan Kennedy series of writings which are also quite helpful.
I am confident you can find more relevant, and economical, marketing sources right here at startupnation.com, and at www.guru.com. Unless you are a natural-born marketing entrepreneur and salesman, I recommend you don`t go through the time-consuming and expensive process of making mistakes while reinventing the marketing wheel.
Best,
Don McKay
Craig, what`s your site? Profiles won`t give me a link (I`m posting so I am logged in). I get wiki, .orgs and .govs when I search under "signal flags", "naval signal flags", "marine signal flags" etc. Nothing with "craig landes" signal flags pops up -except for what`s here.
Re: recipes, this is my favorite site. It`s called What`s for Dinner?
http://www.sewingmuse.org/whatsfordinner.php
It`s bare bones but it works great. Check off up to ten ingredients you have and it spits out recipes. All vegetarian ones . kathleenfasanella6/10/2008 2:44 PM
Kathleen, how did you find that site?bert2008-6-10 16:21:12
I tell you, niches are everything these days. We started as sewing friends. I have an apparel industry website that enthusiasts also read. She told me about her site after I`d posted about the problems of eating out as a vegetarian. Now she`s one of my even smaller niche groups, vegetarians who sew. There aren`t many of us but it`s funny that among those of us who are, we tend to be influential in our spheres disproportionate to our numbers.
Especially for a new business you will be the one having to define and decide what the message is. However, you can find a lot of professional experienced help you guide you through the process. And it is up to you if you want to immerse yourself into the details of market research, competition analysis, positioning, advertising, pay per click, SEO, etc.
As a rule of thumb I`d suggest stay away from any solicited offer. Find peers, businesses that are comparable and ask their owners, who they are using and why.
Another tidbit, Marketing is about measured experiments. Anybody telling you he knows how to write the best copy and how to reach the top of everything (by sheer doing w/o feedback loops), is at best fooling themselves. You need to define the goal of Marketing first (lead generation, conversion, brand awareness, etc.) and then implement measurements (visitors, conversion rate, revenue per [new] customer, ...) to quantify success and then failure. And it never stops. It is like a competitive race. You always try to change/improve and measure the results.
Good luck
K<o>
What we are learning is how to get that niche that really buys and we are finally seeing some results.
What we have found is that we do best with very personal local internet chat sites set up for business only. It`s nice to see the response we are getting as we have been working hard to get in front of our target market. Through that I have been meeting with networking groups in person and that has helped us tremendously.
But I will say, next time besides my great website and all that we have personally done to market, I would probably hire a pro to do it and spring for the bucks to save us time and dollars in what we have been doing on our own.
Also, I joined the Barter Company and that has really given me exposure on the tags. We had a jewelry store email us on our site to ask if they could carry our line in their store.
So I guess that was a good move. It`s still you nickel to barter but you rack up points to use somewhere . . . like for advertising! www.glamourtags.com