Gregory Elfrink is Director or Marketing at Empire Flippers, a curated marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. Such businesses include ecommerce, SaaS, content sites, FBA, and more. Gregory has a wealth of knowledge about what makes these online businesses tick, what makes them succeed, and causes them to fail, and so I was very glad to catch up with for an extended conversation for the eMarketing Association.
We cover a lot of topics in this conversation that should be of value to anyone involved in online business today, including:
- The degree to which SEO can cause an online business to succeed or fail.
- The negative impact of Google’s recent “Helpful Content” update on many content-focused online businesses.
- The rise of “zero-click” searches.
- The resurgence of direct mail as a marketing channel.
- The importance of diversifying revenue streams in business, particularly for content affiliate sites, to reduce concentration risk and increase valuation.
- The pros and cons of in-house marketing teams versus agencies.
- How proprietors of online businesses should prepare their properties for sale.
- M&A marketing trends.
- The importance of content creation in terms of building trust and engagement with potential customers.
- Best practices for ideating content, including looking for inspiration from other people and feeding curiosity through great content.
- The importance of understanding the emotional needs of customers when selling products.
- The importance of transparency and honesty in marketing.
I learned a lot in this interview and hope you do too.