Marketing is a force of nature, evolving along the same principles as any living species. A good marketer today thinks like a gardener knowing it requires the same discipline to grow a successful marketing campaign as a healthy garden.

The other day when I was out for a run I had one of those déjàvu moments where I felt like I had heard something before, but I was not sure where. I was listening to the Marketing School Podcast with Neil Patel & Eric Slu, on the 4 Fundamental Things You Need to Master in Marketing. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that they were reading a chapter from a horticulture book on how to grow a good vegetable garden.

Think about growing your business like starting a garden. You want to create an environment for it to thrive. Proper strategy, placement and maintenance are key components that you need to control of if you are going to succeed.

1.) It All Starts With a Good Strategy

A good marketing strategy is your foundation, similar to the soil in your garden. It needs to have a good base first then comes design and other elements required to supply nutrients so that everything can grow. Whether you need a new design or already have something to work with is determined by your companies needs and areas for growth. Without a good foundation, all other inbound marketing or ongoing maintenance will be a waste of time because nothing will be able to grow.

by Kissmetrics blog in Kissmetrics

Starting a business is exhilarating. Unfortunately, the “build it and they will come” theory doesn’t hold much weight and those overnight success stories you hear about are often the result of behind the scenes years of hard work. Simply put, startup marketing is a unique challenge often times because of the limited resources, whether it’s time, money or talent.

You have to be sure every effort, no matter how small, is well-planned and flawlessly executed. And to make it even more difficult, the traditional marketing strategies don’t always work.

Startup marketing is a whole different science. How so? The secret is properly combining the right channels: Content Marketing and PR.

So, starting from the beginning, here’s the complete Startup Marketing Manual.
Foundation

The Startup Foundation

Before you start laying bricks, you need a solid foundation. A successful startup marketing strategy follows that same principle. Before you jump into marketing your startup, make sure you have the following bases covered.

We recently launched a new website and inbound marketing campaign for Surfing Costa Rica Pura Vida, a lifestyle camp and retreat for outdoor enthusiasts on the Southern Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

We reworked a pre-made template design by Organic Themes by customizing it to fit the SCRPV brand. We also developed the website so that it can be managed via WordPress Content Management System Dashboard. The interactive website have a portfolio section for activities plus a blog featuring updated news and information.

You may or may not be aware of the changes that Google made to their search engine last year introducing Panda and the many Penguin updates. Because of the way these changes are affecting search results, in 2013 SEO will shift from optimizing websites for search engines to optimizing content for users. Some of the traditional marketing tools are no longer of value for search engine optimization purposes and may even effect you site negatively.

Google is trying to improve their search results, and a way to do this is to get rid of the spam sites. Nobody wants to see sites for Viagra when they are looking at buying an airline tickets to Alaska. Google knows this so their way of improving their user experience is to find ways to outsmart the spammers. One way to do this is to change their algorithms, or how their search formula works.

In order to be responsive to Google’s many algorithm changes we recommend the following more ‘agile’ approach for your 2013 Inbound Marketing Plan.

The basic concept would be to create campaigns for the brand that will engage not only customers but others to +share the campaign with others.  You can do this by:

Today there is so much focus on social media websites like Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare, that is easy for companies to forget about the single most important social media tool available: their blog.  As a matter of fact, for companies who are looking to increase their search engine optimization efforts, a well-crafted blog can make a HUGE impact!

To validate this, HubSpot released a study last summer showing some dramatic search related differences for companies including blogs as part of their content strategy. Their data shows small business who blog have an average of 97% more inbound links, 434% more indexed pages and 55% more visitors.