The Difference Between Marketing & SEO

The basic difference is SEO focuses on rankings and marketing focuses on sales.  Honestly, I have always been a hands-on kind of guy and want to learn and do everything myself before I hire or allow someone else to do the work for me.  I view it as a gift and a curse, it has helped me weed out many scammers and prevented many bad hires over the years.

Let's Jump In The Time Machine To 2013

 Now that we flew back in time it's 2013, Barack Obama is president, Myspace was laying off 5% of their employees and was switching focus to more music under the direction of Justin Timberlake.  Google My Business wasn't born yet as in 2012 it changed names from Google Places to Google + Local it wouldn't be until 2014 that it integrated Google + with Google My Business.  The SEO game was fairly popular, especially maps. I was naturally drawn to maps SEO as I started working in-house for a large plumbing company that had 1 location and had plans to expand to several by the end of the year.  That's when I started to get my feet wet, I interviewed probably 100+ SEO agencies as instructed by the owner and finally found a company that seemed legit.  While they were producing results, I felt it was mediocre results, so I commented that I could do better!  I am a very vocal person and will speak my mind and while some people will get frustrated and angry at someone who calls them out, these guys were different and said really?  Then they said to my boss why don't you give Nate a chance and let him work on one new location and us one location.  A few months passed and sure enough, I took my location to the #1 position for the top keywords while they hovered around 3-4 for most keywords.  They hired me to White Label my services to them, at the time I didn't even know what that meant!  The plumbing company I worked for expanded into 6 locations and all top rankings, but that was about to end as I had worked on clients outside of work for some time.  

I Started Taking All My Clients To The Top

I quickly started taking all my clients to the top for major keywords and it wasn't until I had a few cancel my services that I realized the difference between marketing & SEO.  Everyone was ranking and I felt like a kid that had found gold for the first time and I won't lie after those few cancellations I felt like a kid again that had learned it was fools gold.  I spent a good month evaluating analytics, reporting, and just everything I could to figure out why they weren't getting enough business, I mean come on we are ranking #1 all over for major keywords.  The other part that really confused me was some of my clients were overjoyed with more business than they could handle.  I was questioning if some of these businesses were simply too cheap to continue to pay me, but my gut said it was more than that.  After what seemed like a decade of evaluating (it really was just a couple of months) I discovered that the businesses that were doing well had companies that focused on conversion, content, and other factors that I didn't even worry about, because I thought #1 means people are going to choose to work with you.  When I worked for the big plumbing company corporate took care of the marketing end and that's when the difference between marketing & SEO dawned on me.  

I Finally Had Discovered The Difference Between Marketing & SEO

 But now I had to learn how to become a marketer.  SEO almost came naturally to me but marketing was a whole other ball game.  So I did what I felt would be the most beneficial and I read articles, magazines, watched commercials, and started noticing marketing everywhere I went.  I wish I could say that I learned as quickly as I had SEO but that would be a lie.  It took me about 6 months to come up with basic strategies and understand call to action, catchy phrases, and different colors to create different results.  While the process seemed like forever my client satisfaction was going up!  But this was just the basics as I found more obstacles along the way.  I wasn't a writer, made many mistakes marketing to the wrong audience, using the wrong words, and didn't understand psychology even though I should have since my mom is a psychology major.  Regardless, my clients were happy but I wanted to learn more and more!  I was like a 6-year-old kid who had just had cotton candy for the first time and I wanted more!  Several years had passed and I tackled each of these obstacles and soon I was being hired for marketing jobs not just SEO gigs.

My Basic Methodology Behind Marketing

 I remember somehow thinking of my younger years when my father took me to get my first pet (besides just lizards).  My dad lived in a very rural area and one day he said we are going to go get you a pet!  I was not from a rural area and was excited out of my mind, I grabbed my shoes and ran to the truck, my dad gave me a funny look as I sat in the passenger seat of his truck.  He explained we had to do some preparation before I could actually have a pet.  So I am thinking okay, okay, we need a cage or something, keep in mind I had no idea what type of pet I would be getting.  He gathered up some metal in the garage and pulled out his welder and had welder a large box and then put a piece of wood on the bottom and top and covered the sides with a metal screen.  He then put a loop on the front and drilled a hole in the middle of the top piece of wood.  Then he cut a smaller piece of wood about 2" x 3" and put a metal loop on that piece and stapled some leather on the end of it and set it inside the box and stapled the other side of the leather to the bottom piece of wood.  He then tied some fishing string to the loop inside the metal box and fed it through the top piece of wood and back around to a small pin that set on the loop on the top piece of wood.  Then proceeded to cut another piece of wood about 3" x 6" that set inside a guide that had been welded on the front and put a loop on the top of what appeared to be a door.  He then opened the door placed the pin in the loop and the platform in the middle was at a slant which the leather allowed it to be at an angle.  Almost done he said, then he raced in the house and came back with some oatmeal, we went several miles on a dirt road and the truck came to a stop.  I remember looking around like where is the pet store?  We grabbed what I now knew was a trap and set it under some acorn trees and he put the oatmeal on the platform and set the pin in the door.  We came back the next day, I still had no idea what type of pet we were catching but to my surprise, it was a chipmunk!  This is when I connected the dots and came up with my basic methodology of marketing!

It was a chipmunk trap and I needed to catch chipmunks!  So I needed to know everything about chipmunks in order to catch them, which they like to eat on top of things (hence the platform), In order to build a great chipmunk trap I needed Oatmeal and when one came and nibbled on the oatmeal I needed to act fast and come in swiftly.  It was the difference between SEO & Marketing, from that day on my thinking had changed.  At the time Dr Oz was really big and I thought what makes this guy so popular?  He doesn't discuss anything really new and mostly recommends natural cures which any nutritionist would know.  He was likable and friendly, always smiling he made it seem like you were chatting with your best friend, not a doctor.  The likability factor, all superstars are likable!  I promise you if you start thinking like your customer and are happy, likable, and come up with solutions you either will catch a chipmunk or a customer for life!

That concludes this post about the difference between marketing & SEO, I hope you enjoyed it as it's not very often I share stories from my life as I grew up with social anxiety and work on overcoming it every day of my life.  By forcing myself to do something uncomfortable socially every day it gets better and better!