There’s a lot to love about digital marketing. Then there are a lot of things that are not so loveable.
Here’s one of them. There are a number of companies that have begun creating content that features the names of small businesses. Say, for example, someone does a search for your business. These companies do their best to get their content to display alongside actual information about your business. They will contact you and show you how many people are seeing this content they created and try to get you to buy into their program.
If you want to see an example, take a look at this on Youtube. This company targets searches for law firms. You can see that all the ads fit a format. I’m not sure where they get these testimonials – maybe from the law firms’ websites. Clearly, the ads were not authorized by the law firms they mention.
Maybe this works for some businesses. I can tell you this, though. A complete digital marketing plan first of all needs these six components:
- Smartphone ready website
- Website that is search engine friendly
- Pay per click advertising
- Social marketing
- Email marketing
- Video marketing
Make sure that you have these in place first before you add other elements.