It struck me recently how similar Internet Marketing is to the Weight Loss industry when I tried to explain to a customer why they need to fork out their hard earned cash so that we can promote his website.
In fact, trying to make a living as an Internet Marketer is even worse than trying to break into the Weight Loss industry, but let's look at the similarities first:
1. Short term pain, long term gain
The biggest problem with both Internet Marketing and Weight Loss is that you need to put in consistent, constant effort in order to see long term results. What is even worse is that you definitely do not see any difference in the short term. It is therefore very difficult to stay motivated. Am I doing the right things? Why am I expending all this effort (read 'cost', in the case of a client) and am not even seeing results? WHY am I not seeing any results? It is difficult to stay motivated (keep the client paying) in this scenario.
2. Lots of unscrupulous players promising quick results for little effort
We are talking here of the quick-fix, the snake-oil, the miracle product - all of these abound both in the Internet Marketing and Weight Loss industries. And in both of these industries there is no substitute for constant, concerted and focused effort. This is the only thing that gets results. Not fat-loss pills or get-traffic-quick potions!
3. You have to execute the right actions to maximize the return for effort expended. And only concentrating on one type of activity is also not enough
If you only eat less you might not actually lose weight. Exercising at the same time (and doing the right type of exercises) will certainly have a better effect.
A balance of exercises toning the whole body is necessary to become fit and healthy and lose weight. Likewise, if you only concentrate on doing one type of activity to promote your site and generate traffic you might not succeed. Optimizing your site for the search engines alone is not enough - you need to execute other types of internet marketing strategies as well in order to have long term, sustainable results.
4. They are both highly competitive industries
In fact, if I have to give any advice to anyone aspiring to succeed in the Internet Marketing field I would rather tell him to go and sell Weight Loss products. If you compare the number of competing results in Google for Internet Marketing with Weight Loss, there are over 300 000 000 results for Internet Marketing, and 'only' 23 Million for Weight Loss. But then, I don't really know much about weight loss, except that if you spend too much time on the Internet doing Internet Marketing you are certainly going to have learn about it fast!
But the biggest problem is that everyone knows when they have a weight problem and they know more or less what to do to fix it. They also KNOW that losing weight is not easy.
To persuade a client that they need to expend effort and cost on marketing their site on the Internet is often still very foreign territory. A client recently asked me why I am charging extra for Internet Marketing activities, when all the other website design proposals she received offered to insert her keywords in her website pages at no additional cost.
All in all, the biggest problem for anyone trying to promote client websites is that the client does not know he has a problem and that there is effort involved in trying to fix this problem. Bring on the Weight Loss pills and the Get-Traffic-Fast potions....
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