3 Fundamental Principles for Online Growth
If you're looking to grow online, here are 3 fundamental principles for online growth. I use these marketing principles throughout all my work, whether it's more active stuff or more passive stuff, SEO vs. ads, and stuff like that.
#1: Context Over Content
A lot of us get stuck in the trap thinking that in order to grow our online presence, we need the most perfect, perfect educational pieces that need to be lined up in a specific way.
That's not necessarily the case. As humans, we develop context over multiple instances and multiple iterations. So, if you're learning more about me as a person and the work that I do through Team Empathy, you might build that context over 7 days to 30 days a month. It may take even longer by seeing different content from me, by reading different things, by watching different things. You pick up those bits and pieces and you build an image of who I am and how I can help you.
You don't necessarily see “This is who I am. This is what I do. This is the process of how, come on board, get in touch.”
That's not really how it works, right? You don't follow that exact process. You figure things out over time and it's not necessarily just one ideal piece of educational content - it's a mix of things.
You might learn more about my personal stories and beliefs. Then you might learn more about my process and my method. Later you might learn more about the value that I can offer. Then you might see some results in training over time.
You build that context. So when thinking about online growth, also think about your audience: how are you helping them build context and how do you help them solve a problem that they've got? Don’t just force it down their throats.
#2: Decision-making is Non-linear
Back in the day, when I used to do a lot of inbound marketing work, we had this thing called “an inbound funnel”:
The top of the funnel - TOFU
The middle of the funnel - MOFU
The bottom of the funnel - BOFU.
So back in the day, we used to think decision-making was linear. Someone sees your blog or watches your video. Then we get them to go to your website. We get them to download an e-book, to watch the free training video, or to engage with us in some other way. Then we invite them to the sales page or the get-in-touch page and see if we can create a prospect out of that and have a sales conversation with them. That used to be the general way how decision-making was made and online growth was perceived.
In reality, very similar to the context of the content, decision-making is non-linear. What does that mean? Over time, people are booming context through the different marketing experiences they're having. They might see an ad from you and then disappear for a while. Then they might see another ad and come back. Eventually, they might go to your website and read a blog and then disappear again. Later, they might come back and read an email that you've sent them because they signed up for something, and then they disappear. They might come back again and engage in different things.
What happens is, over time and through seeing different content from you, consumed on different platforms, they eventually come into the space where they go “okay, now I'm ready to engage with it because I've created context with you over time and a nonlinear fashion. I wasn't stressed to follow a certain path…”
Trying to grow online, we should think more expansively about how you might use different marketing methods as opposed to one specific thing.
#3: Empathy is Everything!
Online growth is all about building relevancy and intimacy with your audience.
This comes from a methodology called the ROI method by Scott Alford: relevancy, omnipresence, intimacy. Specifically, in relation to empathy, we want to make sure we're actually building a genuine connection with people. We want to make sure that we're reaching out to them, whether it says “Hey, I understand that pain or problem that you have, I understand where you'd like to be, and I can help you get there. Here's a whole bunch of ways we can do this together.”
You take them on this journey, you're actually considering them, and using empathy as part of your growth strategy because you feel that pain, you've been there before, you understand it, you know what they're going through, and you genuinely want to help them.
Knowing this, we can build a great marketing strategy to help us grow online:
We can do this through SEO because people are proactively searching for a pain point they've got. We can help them by providing the right content to start taking them on this journey.
We might proactively reach out with an advertising campaign to say: “Hey, I understand you're having this problem. Don't worry. We can help you get there.”
You help them build the context. Empathy is everything.
Conclusion
These are three fundamental principles of online growth. If you stick to these, you're going to start reaching people more. You're going to start building way strong connections, your sales will be much more effortless, and your online growth will be much more expensive as well.
Ready to take these learnings and put them into action with your website?
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