Web Marketing That Works

First and foremost: our story and why you need this book

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao-tzu

January 7, 2005, was an auspicious day for us. We walked out of the business licensing office in Spring Hill, Brisbane, into a sweltering Australian summer day. We'd just registered our trading name, Bluewire Media. We were officially business owners. All that was missing was one small piece of the puzzle - clients.

And so began our marketing journey.

Here we were, non-technical business owners who'd never written a line of code, selling websites. Rather than learning how to program, our passion was in learning how to market, run and grow a business. We knew marketing was a key ingredient and we needed to learn how to get leads for our burgeoning business.

Door knocking was our opening move. Armed with notepads, matching business shirts and a polished script, we started canvassing the local businesses.

'Hi. My name is Adam and this is Toby. We're from Bluewire Media, a web design company. We were wondering if you needed a website?'

'No thanks, not at the moment.'

'No problem. Thanks for your time.'

And so it went. We pounded the pavement for an entire two days, working our way through store after store, business after business, in the summer heat. The result? Nothing. Not a single solitary lead.

The breaking point came when it was Toby's turn to lead. He accidentally followed the script verbatim: 'Hi, I'm Adam .'! We realised our gaffe, left the store and burst into laughter. It was either that or cry. We needed to look for a better way.

We graduated from door knocking to cold-calling. At least now we were in the shade. We had a brainwave and started to qualify businesses that were advertising in the Brisbane News magazine but didn't have a website. Clearly they had a marketing budget, so all we had to do was convince them to spend it with us.

There were three things hurting our credibility. Firstly, we were selling websites while our own was still under construction. Secondly, we had no website portfolio, since we had no clients. And thirdly, when we were making the calls, the birds in the trees beside Adam's parents' deck were chirping loudly in the background.

To make up for these chinks in our armour, we stepped up our sophistication and trialled our first offer: we'd mock up a website design for the business if they would agree to a meeting. While this was labour intensive, it won us the attention we were after and we started to book some appointments.

Interestingly, though, our first sale came through word-of-mouth, from an old water polo coach. His mate at the pub said he needed a website. Our coach passed on his details and we landed the gig. Receiving our first-ever cheque for a deposit of $247.10 is still one of our favourite business memories.

And we progressed. We learned two things from that first win: that our community was valuable and that we needed to deliver value. So we tapped into our existing networks, such as our university alumni and old boys' networks, and drummed up any PR we could off the back of Toby's recent performance at the Athens Olympics. All of our early press mentions featured water polo caps and laptops - anything to spread the Bluewire word!

We signed up to a free listing in the Yellow Pages and were seen at every networking function possible. We'd show up at the opening of an envelope if given half a chance.

We came to realise that the old adage that word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing was absolutely true. Since all of our business was coming through our networks and relationships, we decided that would be where we invested our time, money and resources. As a start-up, we had no money to invest in paid advertising so we focused on growing and nurturing our network by being generous and offering advice, and this led to sales.

Marketing on the web was fantastic for this because it scaled. Anybody on the web could potentially find us through our website, and with the click of a button we could send an email to our entire network. This was the birth of our Bluewire News emails. With these breakthroughs, our business, Bluewire Media, was off and racing.

We soon learned that the best use for the Yellow Pages was as a step for Adam to stand on so he was a bit taller in photos next to Toby. We loved the web and were hooked on this new business so threw ourselves into reading books, listening to CDs (it was pre iTunes!), attending conferences and learning from marketers online to discover all we could about web marketing that works.

We furiously implemented what we learned, experimenting and testing as we went. As non-technical first-time business owners, we were brimming with enthusiasm, and it's been like that for nearly a decade now. This book is the product and culmination of our firsthand experiences as we've tried to find the most effective ways to market our business on the web.

On the shoulders of giants

From the outset, our love of business, marketing and the web inevitably put us on a happy collision course with the work of David Meerman Scott, Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.

Back in the mid to late 2000s these were the people who shaped our thinking about marketing a business in today's connected web world. Destiny for us was the ground-breaking ideas in their blogs and books about permission marketing, inbound marketing, the 'new rules' and building trust.

Everything totally resonated and the timing was perfect. These people validated what we had been experiencing and, better yet, they provided a framework and language that went with it. The world was on the cusp of a genuine revolution. And as entrepreneurs in a web business, we were free to implement the ideas unhindered.

We had an 'aha!' moment seeing David Meerman Scott's keynote presentation called 'The New Rules of Marketing & PR' via satellite in Sydney. Wow! It stopped us in our tracks. You cannot beg, bug or buy attention, David argued. You must earn it by publishing great content on the web. He was speaking our language, even though he'd just opened our eyes and ears to it. What perfect timing to cross paths with David's ideas and have the luxury of being able to start implementing them straight away.

The old rules of marketing from the pre-web days dictated that you must beg (press releases), bug (salespeople) or buy (ads) people's attention. Today these approaches don't work as well as they used to. Now you must earn attention by publishing content on the web that solves your buyers' problems. In David Meerman Scott's words, 'on the web you are what you publish!'

Around the same time, we read Seth Godin's Permission Marketing. His message - that you can't interrupt people with advertising messages and expect them to listen - also rang true. You can't beat people over the head, online or offline. You need their permission, and remarkable content is the ticket. Seth had even called out the offending style of marketing and given it a name - interruption marketing. This idea resonated with us, clearly delineating fundamentally different marketing styles. We knew interruption marketing wasn't for us.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's book Trust Agents and Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It! provided a blueprint for taking action, based on the idea that being human, earning trust and developing relationships one at a time were the keys to success on the web. Very powerful and so simple.

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah's book Inbound Marketing provided the final piece of the puzzle, a marketing philosophy to live by and a name for it too - inbound marketing. Attract visitors with great information, continue to nurture these people by helping and teaching them, and eventually they will become paying customers and delighted referrers.

Advertising no longer reigned supreme

In our early days, advertising agencies reigned supreme in the marketing world. As a small web firm, we partnered with many of them and worked with their clients, although we found from the very start that advertising principles simply didn't seem to perform the same when applied to the web. Banner ads, splash pages and flash intros were not things that we enjoyed personally, and it never seemed right to subject other people to them.

The stop-start campaign mentality didn't sit well with us either. Three to six months of frenzied activity followed by a complete halt seemed an unlikely formula for lasting success. Surely we were in this for the long run? Still, it was work, it paid the bills for our start-up, and it allowed us to cut our teeth in business and marketing.

A universe of connected humans

It turned out we weren't the only ones who didn't really like advertising and its unwelcome interruptions. The marketing world had changed to a place where we could all block out ads through do-not-call lists; TiVo; pop-up blockers; unsubscribe, un-follow and un-like buttons; and simply clicking out of a website. You could no longer effectively interrupt your way into people's lives. And if you did manage to intrude, you'd be more likely to annoy them than encourage them.

Instead you need to draw people in with...