Since we are all about proactive communication at the agency, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the “WHY” of our name.

The true nature of our name Web Marketing Therapy stems from our deeply rooted belief in the power of helping professionals and organizations help themselves.  Our name was a result of years of listening to client feedback.  We were told things like:
We feel like you just did therapy on our marketing! You just took all the overwhelm out of my marketing management.  I want to get on your marketing therapy couch.  You (Lorrie Thomas Ross, WMT’s founder) are like my marketing therapist!

So in 2009, we changed our name to Web Marketing Therapy to embrace our mission to be advisors, supportive marketing managers and help take the stress and overwhelm out of marketing!  The definition of therapy, as provided by dictionary.com is as follows:

For us, it’s all about providing a therapeutic approach to marketing for our clients. Let’s break it down:

1. The treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process: speech therapy.

We aren’t treating diseases of the body or mind, we are treating dis-ease of marketing. Dis, meaning apart or out and ease meaning a freedom from pain, discomfort, labor or difficulty. Our three pronged approach is based on the concepts of diagnosing the marketing problems, prescribing the appropriate cure or treatment and guiding our clients to a healthy marketing way of life.

2. A curative power or quality.

Web Marketing Therapy isn’t about duct taping your shoddy marketing plan to take you into next week. Real marketing breakthroughs happen when you start curing deep seeded marketing problems to establish a healthy marketing foundation. We wouldn’t go to a real therapist with the hopes of getting well in a day, and the same applies to our approach to web marketing. We think about marketing from a holistic perspective to provide an all-encompassing healing approach for our clients.

3. Psychotherapy; It’s about communicating issues and finding insight into problems with the goal of personal growth and behavior modification.

We want our clients to learn to assess marketing problems on their own and to understand why their old approach to marketing isn’t working for them. With training and advisory we want our clients to learn how to tackle the issues before they arise and learn to modify their marketing behavior!

4. Any act, hobby, task, program, etc., that relieves tension.

We know lots about this and encourage our clients to do what they do best, and what makes them happy, and letting us handle the parts that bog them down! If you thrive at writing blog posts, but want to cry when faced with a Tweet, don’t fret! We want to support you in the things that make you happy and relive tension, not create it!

The Wild Web Women also know that having a passion or hobby is so very important to a healthy marketing way of life. That is why we use our blog to encourage our team members and readers to take a break and have a great time. The About page on your website is the most looked at page there is and clients want to know the fun, exciting things that people in an organization do that make them unique. So take the time to go for a run, paint, play your guitar, dance your heart out… it’s good for your health, your marketing and your business!

So, as you can see, Web Marketing Therapy isn’t just for therapists. On the whole our approach can easily be applied to any type of business. To learn more about what we do and how we do it I encourage our readers to subscribe to our Healthy Marketing Advice blog and to check out our book by CEO Lorrie Thomas Ross (aka The Marketing Therapist); The 36-Hour Guide to Online Marketing and her course on lynda.com called Online Marketing Fundamentals!

Today we introduce Marketing Therapy’s Hierarchy of Marketing Needs! Marketing can be complex and intimidating in the beginning, but the key to great success is to complete each step in the Hierarchy of Marketing Needs. Satisfying each stage of marketing needs will lead your organization up the ladder to Marketing Actualization, the highest and most fulfilling level of marketing!

Web Marketing Therapy Hierarchy of Marketing Needs

Download the pdf here:  Web Marketing Therapy Hierarchy of Marketing Needs

The steps:

Basic Needs/Physical:  These are marketing needs your organization must acquire first to function at a foundational level. You need a solid foundation to launch your marketing.  These needs can include; business name, tools to create and maintain business, the ability to pay bills, business cards, logo, simple web presence (url, hosting.)  Simple things you need to survive.  In the marketing world, you must possess some sort of business presence in order to begin to market who you are, what you do and whom you serve.

Safety: Adding a layer of legitimacy to your business helps secure a safety net of continued business for your organization. Safety can be created with optimized messaging, a powerful value-oriented central marketing message, basic search optimization, and a consistent brand identity.  Sales-centric (not in a cheesy used-car-salesman way) = a scalable presence. All of these features help give your organization validity and dependability for customers to give continued business.

Love/Belonging: Now that your organization has met its basic/physical needs and a safety net of continued business is created, you can focus on connecting with others in a way that is relevant to what you offer. Love, belonging and a sense of community correspondence can be created by expanding to the social web. Online reviews and social media (such as Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter) help your organization connect with others and get your message noticed.

Esteem: The need for esteem is your organizations chance to gain the respect of clients and other experts in the community or field.  Greater respect = more business.  Superior online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) help to get your presence more pronounced on the web and blogging and newsletters help to solidify your organization’s expertise in the field.  In order to boost your esteem, you need to be a AUTHORity.  Establishing that you are an expert in the field by authoring content for online PR, blog, article marketing, tweets and guest posts on other sites will garner respect by others and potential clients.

Self Actualization: This level of need pertains to what an organization’s full potential is and realizing that potential. All other needs are satisfied so one can now focus on maintaining all aspects of the organization and building more business. Multi-tasking marketing, consistent web presence, continually optimizing websites, boosting search visibility, exploring online ads, measuring ALL web marketing with web analytics, building social media strategy, gaining PR power and more helps you be the best your organization can be.

So remember,  Healthy  Marketing = Wealthy Organizations ®. Treat your organization to a dose of Marketing Therapy and follow the steps to Marketing Actualization today!

Marketing Therapy Savior Phrase #1 – “That does not work for me.”
I use this phrase a lot as it leverages the power of choice.  We CAN choose who we work with and how we do business.  I can’t tell you how many times I have to coach clients out of unhealthy relationships (with lousy vendors or web services).  As The Marketing Therapist, I evangelize that breaking up is NOT hard to do when things don’t work!  If  you want success, you have to own it and that starts with cutting the crap!  In the web marketing world, there are a million ways to approach things – choose value (and cheap isn’t always value, it’s service, advisory and scalable investments).  There is so much noise out there with emails, tweets, Facebook updates, text messages and more.  With the many options of who we work with, what we pay and how to run our marketing, stop and ask – does this work for me/my client/my company? If the answer has any version of “no” in the equation, then stop, drop and roll out a better way.  Fix things that are not working – you cannot have marketing change unless you are willing to change!  Own that “this does not work for me” then communicate what you want and need with partners, colleagues and team members.  Marketing work requires management -choose to manage things that add value to the bottom line (education, services, products, analytics, creativity, work executed, etc).

…and I dare you to start using “This does not work for me” or “that does not work for me” in live language.  It stops people dead in their tracks.  It is a phrase that evokes power and really puts you in the drivers seat.  When I say this personally or professionally, it goes undisputed (and I feel like I go from my not-so-tall height of 5′3 to 6′3!).  Who can argue when you say something doesn’t work for you…it’s your perception, that is not very arguable!
Marketing Therapy Savior Phrase #2 – “Help me understand ______.”
This phrase is the biggest helper when you are trying to converse with another party (in business and in life) when you don’t agree, are upset, frazzled or trying to get to a resolution.  This web marketing savior phrase helps keep marketing management focused by omitting any defensiveness by the party you are trying to work with.

“Help me understand” use example:  Let’s say someone is doing something for you that makes you frustrated, upset or overwhelmed as it relates to your marketing.  We tend to judge and fear what we don’t understand.  Instead of saying something that is finger-pointing like “you are always late in getting me these reports” try “help me understand why these reports always come late?”.  It is human nature for people to get defensive – statements that are accusatory often turn into defensiveness, not constructive problem-solving talk …so don’t go down that road!

After you ask “help me understand____” say nothing else and let them reply (either verbally or via email).  The responsibility is on them to educate you —you never know, the “why?” may be something that is really understandable OR can be solvable…they key in marketing management is understanding, “help me understand ____” will get you there.

Marketing Therapy Savior Phrase #3 – “I need help”
Admitting you need help is the first step to marketing recovery.  When it comes to marketing, accepting that we need help can help us do what we do better and also educate us for future work.  This phrase is often the most difficult to put on paper or speak, but I tell you, when this phrase is used, it breaks down barriers (mentally and emotionally) that move you towards more meaningful marketing.

“I need help” use example: Let’s say you are hearing all about social media – you “should do this and you should do that” kind of stuff.  Asking an expert to help you with with an area that is not your unique ability shows the expert that you are ready for help AND makes you open to receive the help.  Do what you do best and pay others to do the rest.

Do you cut your own hair?  Do your own surgeries?  Practice your own law?  …I doubt it.  Ask marketing experts for help (many of us offer free consults) and get ready to get supported.

These phrases become useful only with practice.  Put them on a sticky note and tape them to your computer – practice makes marketing more perfect!

Bookmark these glossaries or print them out to help you navigate the wild web.

When introducing new topics to clients or students in my web marketing classes, I like to point them in the direction of resources that can help them decode the Wild Wild Web.  What are 301 redirects? Do I need a sitemap? What’s a weblebrity? What is my KPI?

Whether you’re updating your web site, re-vamping your SEO strategy, or just reading an internet marketing blog or making conversation at a cocktail party, it helps to be able to geek out on commonly used web lingo – not to mention it can be really fun!

To get us started, here’s a great post from fellow she geek Lorrie Thomas on Web Marketing Terminology .

Some other great web marking glossaries include:

Social Media Marketing Dictionary - Hubspot’s ultimate glossary includes 101 terms relating to the social web!

Web Analytics Glossary – Webtrends’ handy guide includes commonly used web marketing terms.

Search Engine Marketing Terms – SEOmoz’s Complete Glossary will help you decode essential SEO jargon.

And while we’re on the topic of words, since I’m a content junkie I thought I’d throw in CopyBlogger’s Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words.

Bookmark these glossaries as handy tools when navigating the wild web or print them out your reference. Also feel free to pass this along to anyone who may need help decoding web geek speak!

For more web marketing tools and tips, follow me on Twitter @my_dog_ate_it.

No related posts.

Let’s start first by defining the true definition of marketing.  Marketing is correctly defined as “maximizing exchanges”.  Exchanges can be various things like: leads, calls, online inquiry form completions, email newsletter signups, downloads, inquiries, networking, sales, and repeat sales.  Marketing is not about tools (like websites, email technology, blogs, social media, TV, magazine ads, Public Relations, etc) is is about HOW the breadth and depth of marketing tools are used to build relationships. 

Remember that marketing means making relationships, keeping relationships, cultivating relationships and re-kindling relationships. 

Web tools and technologies are simply support mechanisms to help support organizations build relationships. 

If I had a penny for every time I was asked for the Top Ten Ways To Make Money by Using Web Marketing online, I would be rich.  Instead, I find myself re-training brains to understand the real meaning of marketing first (to educate from the right foundation) and then teaching the way the web can work to support the five ways marketing works for organizations.

The Five Ways Marketing Must Work for Your Organization and What it Can Do:
1. Marketing can build awareness.  You can have the best products or services in the world, but if nobody knows, what’s the point?  Awareness can come from many ways including: advertising, search optimization, referrals, online marketing, traditional marketing (TV, radio), social media, word of mouth marketing (and in these online days “word of mouse” marketing).

2, Marketing communicates.  Getting our message in front of current and prospective customers is key to success.  Communication can serve as information distribution (pricing, value, competitive value, distinction, product/service information, etc.)  Communication can also serve as a way to help educate a current or prospective customer so they understand what your product/service provides and why it is something they want or need.  Communication is critical with marketing.

3. Marketing connects.  Meaningful marketing makes relationships.  Successful marketing helps build the “know, like and trust” factors (so people know you/your organization, like you/your organization, and trust you/your organization.”  We connect through our stories, expertise, passion, content, video and much more.

4. Marketing serves.  Marketing is about serving before selling.  Remember:

“Good leaders must first become good servants”  
- Robert Greenleaf

Customer Service is part of marketing.  We can drive all the customers in the world to our businesses or organizations, but if we can’t or don’t serve them well (and repeatedly serve them well) then there is a serious flaw in the marketing puzzle.  Marketing needs to be a customer service tool, whether you are selling product or providing a service (for or non-profit).

5. Marketing sells.  Yes, marketing does need to support sales and drive sales.  To achieve this, all the points above must also be a part of the marketing puzzle.

Defining web marketing:
Web Marketing (also defined as online marketing internet Marketing and eMarketing) is simply defined (thank you Wikipedia) as “using the web to market products or services”.  Web marketing can include a number of options, including:

- New Website/Web Redesign/Website Optimization
- Search Engine Marketing (Natural Search, Paid Search, Local Search)
- E-mail
- Online Advertising
- Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Wikipedia, Podcasting)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Website Analytics to Measure Performance
- Viral Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Video
- Gaming
- Article Marketing to eZines, etc
 
It is not online tools (see above) that make web marketing matter, it is how we use the tools that make marketing matter.

The old rules of marketing was about a ”one to many” approach, where now, new rules technologies allow organizations (large and small) to have “one to one” direct relationships all through a simple internet connection!

To make marketing matter, a clear business model needs to be defined and strategy needs to be set.  Web marketing, like any other marketing, needs to have a clear strategy and purpose.

Web Marketing is a Revolution and an Evolution.
The classics that make marketing matter (see steps 1-5 above) will always apply, however, the revolution of web marketing and it’s continual evolution make it critical to never stop learning about the options that we have at our fingertips.  We create new ideas by learning, we execute them when the idea seems like a good one, then we monitor our results…then create, execute and monitor all over again.

Web marketing can brand, build and boost business in ways we never imagined (and for a fraction of the cost, on flexible terms and in a fun way!) 

If you want to learn how to use the web to brand, build and boost business (for profit and non-profit) then you are at the right blog!