Usually when my neighbour  sees me dashing off in the car on a Saturday night it’s because I’m taxiing one of my teen age daughters around.  But this time I was heading off to meet with my business partner to discuss our new online video advertising site. My neighbour asked me what kind of business I’m in.

“I’m in online marketing”, I replied.

“Oh?” he asked. “Like those pop up get rich schemes?”

“No”,  I told him, “I’m in online marketing … the good kind. Where we help small and medium sized businesses gain a foothold in the online marketplace.  What we do is more than SEO, we also manage pay per click and social media marketing campaigns like blogging, Facebook and Twitter.  We also produce videos for small businesses.”

My 10 second pitch convinced my neighbour that my line of work was not at all sleazy and I headed off to meet my partner. But it got me thinking.  This was the third or fourth time I had used the catch phrase “I’m in online marketing … the good kind” in the last few weeks.  There is a growing interest in online marketing obviously but it seems that some of the public are still leery about what online marketing is really all about.

Now I hope I don’t offend anyone but some forms of online marketing are very sleazy. I’m sorry, but some affiliate marketing schemes and some of the charlatans marketing their online marketing books and courses are scams. These seem to be the ones that garner peoples attention. Just like there are spammers and legitimate email marketers. I have to distance myself from them because what I do is completely different.

I spend a great deal of my time with my clients educating them.  Online marketing is a very esoteric and complicated subject. It is literally a game where they move the goal posts constantly. To be a truly effective online marketer you need to be on top of changing trends if not daily then pretty darn close to it. I stay on top of the trends so my clients can stay on top.

I thoroughly enjoy being able to distill the etherealness of online marketing to something semi tangible so my clients can understand what all of this is about. It also makes my job easier when they realize that they won’t be able to rank number one for that completely generic keyword phrase with over a million competitors, but they can rank in the top 10 for a localized version. I also let them know that just ranking well for a search term does not always translate into sales.

I have written many times about the fact that I got into SEO because I was able to keep my home based VHS to DVD Transfer business in the top 5 for the search term “VHS to DVD Transfers in Toronto” since 2005. I also mention with increasing frequency that the last time I transferred a VHS to DVD was in 2008! But I was still in the Top 10. If no one is searching for a term then it doesn’t do you any good.

All of this made me realize I need to get back to blogging about my passion and that is online marketing. I can combine my passion for online marketing and educating clients and potential clients to help spread the word about online marketing … the good kind.