Some websites make money by selling products.

Some websites make money by selling advertising.

Some websites make money by referring customers to other websites.

Some websites make money by collecting customer data which is sold on.

Ask an SEO for help and they’ll promise higher search engine rankings will help you sell more products, sell more advertising, refer more customers and collect more data.

Ask an email marketer for help and they’ll promise email promotions will help you sell more products, sell more advertising, refer more customers and collect more data.

Ask an online media buyer for help and they’ll promise banners, buttons and MPUs will help you sell more products, sell more advertising, refer more customers and collect more data.

And so on.

The dilemma for most websites is that they’re all right. Everything helps. For instance, it helps your click through rate in Search if people recognise your brand from a banner advert.

Helping is good, but limited budgets and high expectations can often lead to a desire for marketing that does more than help.

Stripping away every type of marketing that fails to directly impact the end need - selling, referring or collecting – is a short term measure to hitting those high expectations with limited budgets.

After all you’re not interested in investing marketing budget which “helps”, you want it to “do”.

Great. For a bit. Until your competitors do the same as you PLUS the stuff that helps.

That’s when the thing that “does” it for you, “does” it for them instead, and consequently it stops “doing” it as well for you. All because they saw the value in “helping” the thing that “does it”. Get it?