Have You Heard of the Website Marketing Pyramid?

There is such a thing as the website marketing pyramid. But it’s not a scheme. It’s a strategy. It has to do with your online marketing budget – if you’re savvy enough to have one that is – and when, where & how much you spend.

Are you a “traditional marketing” junkie?

When typical “traditional marketing junkie” New Zealand businesses remember that they have a website that they should market, they generally think:

‘People see our TV commercials and then they look us up online – right?’
‘Why isn’t our website there when I Google our services? What’s our web designer doing?!’
We’re New Zealand’s leading such-and-such. Why is little Jo Bloggs from Whangarei’s website showing up ahead of ours?
‘Do people really buy things online?’
‘Really? We should spend marketing budget online?’
‘NZHerald, Stuff and TradeMe then, is it? Yes, let’s get some banners on there.’

Assigning a marketing budget

When businesses think about how to assign marketing budgets to online, they often jump to what they know best:

Google display advertising (banners). And generally, they limit that ad spend to the biggest 2 or 3 sites in New Zealand. Their media agencies love it, as often their commission models are best suited to this kind of media buying, and it takes little to no sweat to implement.

When words like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and ‘website optimisation’ are brought up by a brave intern, they’re quickly dismissed as being too techie: ‘SEO sounds like a pyramid scheme if you ask me’, says the head of marketing, stroking the television lovingly in the corner …

But it’s website marketing as a whole that’s a pyramid

When it comes to marketing spend in New Zealand, the pyramid looks something like this:

This is a rough indication of how website marketing spend is typically split in NZ, and reflects the priority given to each form of online media. This weighting can be heavily influenced by the parent media agency or, if it is managed in-house, by someone trained in traditional marketing who sees digital/online as still a “bit too scary” and unknown.

The pyramid should really be reversed.

If you think about the true opportunity and source of website sales, leads, online presence! / exposure, and meeting consumer demand, it’s clear that the pyramid is the wrong way around and should be flipped. If you execute your SEO programme right, with a long term view, based around a sound content marketing strategy along with social media for amplification, outreach and PR , then you are certainly on your way to generate a far higher ROI than you will with just display advertising alone.

So if you’re serious about helping your company move onwards and upwards in changing times, take a moment to draw your own website marketing pyramid – and be sure to let us know how you stack up!!