Solutions 8 Founder Kasim Aslam has some tough love marketing advice: you’re probably doing it wrong. Solutions 8 does pay-per-click marketing for customers all over the world. Find out how to set yourself up for success and how to spend time on the efforts that matter. Below are some strategies for effective marketing that we talked about on the podcast:

Kasim works with clients to come up with an organization’s mission, vision, values, and voice.

• Mission is what the organization does. Ask yourself: what do you want the world to look like when your organization is successful. Begin with the end in mind.
• Vision is the strategy to meet your goals and stay on mission. Without a compelling vision, it’ll be difficult to find employees that are as passionate about your organization as you are.
• Values can be the principles your organization demonstrates daily. Typically they have something to do with having insanely happy customers or caring about employees’ well being. 
• Voice is the style or personality your organization communicates to the world. Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra and bright color scheme expresses youthfulness and enthusiasm.

Create an avatar for your perfect customer. Who is your ideal customer or client? Know them well enough that you could play them in a movie.

Kasim also talks about making sure your marketing efforts are going towards something that will affect your bottom line. You may have many likes, comments, and shares on Facebook, but is that engagement translating to leads? Do those leads convert to paying customers? What are you getting for your money?

Kasim also shares that he needs to know the goals of the organization to see if he can help them. The easiest clients to work with have products with a short sales cycle and good margins.

He also talked about sales funnels. Kasim says you should begin at the bottom of the sales funnel, not the top. Find out what your customer needs now. For a plumber that would be, “my house is flooding,” not, “I’m thinking about upgrading my bath next year.” It’s better to spend time finding out that your product or service isn’t a good fit for the market early. Look for the ascension model after you have the customer. What other products and services do you offer that might make your customer’s life easier?

Kasim also had some tips for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Technical SEO is a one-time thing. Don’t pay companies monthly to do this for you. If your website is set up correctly, you should only ever need minor changes.
• Your content needs to be ten times better than your competition. Google’s mission is to give their customers the best results for their search. If your content isn’t as good as your competition, you won’t get seen.
• Long-form content outranks short-form content. Aim for 2000+ words minimum. 
• Earn or buy high-value links. Earning a link involves reaching out to popular blogs or sites and asking to guest post or list your link on their website. Buying a link can mean getting a spot in a reputable publication like Entrepreneur, etc.
• Be the best result to someone’s search if you want to rank on Google.
• Well-written engaging content is worth its weight in gold. 
• You need to understand the nuance in the different social channels to use them effectively. Don’t just post the same thing on all of them. 
• Written content is the best way to reach your audience and also rank on Google, followed by podcasting and video. Video is hard to rank for because you need to constantly create content to stay relative. 
• Think about what else your avatar buys. See if there’s an overlap that you can use to your advantage. 

Find out more at sol8.com. Kasim and Solutions 8 are also Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.