SEO is marketing, right?

Guys, an interesting dilemma that I had.

And I didn't realize this year, but I thought that marketing meant search engine optimization, marketing meant getting organic traffic to a website.

And that's literally where I saw marketing, like marketing to me was the comparison to advertising, which was paid ads.

So paid ads were advertising and marketing was organic, traffic, so organic, SEO, whatever, whatever form of organic traffic to your website.

Now, this actually led to some seriously impressive problems, because what marketing actually is was never actually addressed by me, or at least not addressed by me in any consistent way.

And it wasn't until that I got the idea that production in a business covers four main areas, marketing, sales, advertising, and fulfillment, that I started to get a framework to go, Okay, hang on.

So what is marketing?

And after a while, I realized that marketing is not searching engine optimization, marketing is not organic traffic.

And that actually falls under a form of advertising.

Like, in 2021, when I'm recording this, your chances of getting serious organic traffic without paying money for that to be done is relatively small.

Either, you're going to have to put a lot of time and effort into it in order to create the rankings yourselves.

Or you got to pay someone to get that work done.

So even though it's organic, you're paying.

Does that sound familiar? Like anything else? Oh, yeah, great.

It sounds like that other form of advertising, which is far more obvious, which is pay per click or retargeting, or any of the other forms of advertising that are much more typically thought of.

So when I moved organic traffic out of marketing and into advertising, that's like, well, oh, hang on what goes in marketing? And that's when this idea of messaging, what is the message that is coming through from a business.

And when I got that idea that marketing was actually the message that's being conveyed? Then it flows through to influence sales? Like what goes in a sales funnel, a message, and an offer? And even a logo? Yes, but all of those things, see in marketing, customer journeys, customers paying customers problems, customers pleasurable experience after they've bought the product.

All of this is actually in marketing.

And then if that's done, well, then the structure for sales funnels can actually be done.

Like what kind of experience they're going to have to come through a funnel? What's the opt-in look like? What's that content page, where they're looking at the challenges in their life to get insight into Okay, yeah, actually, this is a significant problem in my life right now.

And I can see that there's a far better outcome than I could have.

And then once that gap is open, how do I cross it? And then how does the product that you're selling fit into that gap? That's the sales funnel? Like, yes, there might be many different ways of doing that.

Webinars or product launch formulas, or live one-to-one phone calls.

But whatever that structure is, that's during the sales mechanism.

Underneath that is the marketing.

What's even more interesting is that marketing then also affects that advertising.

Like what are the ads, whether they're paid, or whether it's organic SEO work? What's the content for those? Oh, well, it's the messaging that's found in the marketing section.

So when that marketing is done, well, it flows down to sales, but it also flows down into advertising.

And suddenly, the creation of ads becomes easier.

The creation of blog posts that are designed for organic SEO becomes easier.

And in fact, it's a consistent experience for that prospect to go through and go yep, I've got this problem.

Oh, wow, I can see a solution.

And then they purchase the product.

And then guess what the actual fulfillments going to have as well.

And He guesses Yes, once again, He is going to be that marketing experience as the business fulfills on the transition for that customer to now go from their problem through to their pleasurable possibility.

It's like, oh, wow, okay.

So getting this marketing thing right.

is actually extremely important to have business success.

And when I had organic SEO sitting in marketing, then nothing much else could take that it was like, that was what marketing was.

It's about organic SEO.

And so that's what sat in a folder in my business where it's like, yes, organic SEO, if it's in marketing, and that meant that none of this actual marketing, like in terms of customer journeys, in terms of the painful problems that they've got in terms of the frameworks that make that transition across, none of that was done.

And so the consequence was that my sales processes were okay, they're good, but they weren't consistently awesome.

Because marketing wasn't on point.

My advertising was always a struggle because marketing wasn't done properly.

Fulfillment.

Yeah, it was great to a degree, but people were like, hang on, I thought I spawn something else, because marketing wasn't on point.

And so the actual learning, for me that organic SEO is not marketing was a critical step in going hang on.

There's a whole chunk of business here, that underpins as a foundational experience of what goes on in sales and in advertising.

That is marketing.

So hopefully, that is a piece that either resonates with you and you're like, dude, of course, I know that.

I've done that.

I have marketed all of those things that you've described already.

But just in case you were not clear on what marketing is, then that's what it is.

It's about your message.

It's about your offer.

It's about your customer journeys.

It's about the pain that they are in, and it's the problem that you are solving to take them to a pleasurable possibility in the future.

That's all I got for you, Jay.

I hope you're having an awesome Easter Sunday.

We had a little bit too many chocolate bunnies today, but it's been a lot of fun with my kids, and I hope you're having an awesome day.

Talk to you again soon as we continue this journey into process and systems but a bigger perspective today about getting business fundamentals in place.

Alright, look forward to catching you again soon.