Assassin Marketing asked:


Internet marketing is considered to be the most effective and vastly-exposed way to promote your business to the biggest majority of potential customers. The problem is that one small mistake in the way you advertise your venture online can jeopardize the whole process in a way that will make it difficult to gain creditability and exposure among customers again. Thanks to online marketing gurus and specialized marketing companies, you won’t have to experience severe mistakes; as most of the common mistakes are known and can be easily avoided by the help of those experts.

In the past decade, online marketing has been a field of testing by many marketing and advertising professionals. Due to the rapid changes in the conditions of the world, online marketing is changing faster. Everyday, new methods, techniques, and programs are made to enable business owners to make the most use of the online marketing phenomenon. But with each new thing comes new mistakes. Online marketing experts show the marketing mistakes that they have been victims to, so that we would be safe and know how to avoid them. There are hundreds of those mistakes, and we are going to list the ten most devastating mistakes which have been done in the past and caused a lot of losses and damages.

1. NOT LISTING YOUR BUSINESS WITH THE MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES

It is known among all the online marketing experts that more than 80% of traffic comes to a website from the search results of the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Not taking advantage of these search engines will make you lose a lot of potential customers. There are dozens of ways to make the search engines recognize your business like Pay-Per-Click advertising and Search Engine Optimization, but the easiest way is just to submit your website address (URL) to them.

2. NOT USING VIRAL MARKETING

Viral marketing or word of mouth is the most cost-effective method to marketing your business online. It involves you giving away an e-book, newsletter or similar items to your visitors as a gift which will contain your website address and other ways to reach your business. This give-away can travel to unlimited number of people. This way you will make your customers advertise for you. Not fully utilizing this method in the right way will not spread the word about your business fast enough.

3. NOT COLLECTING EMAIL ADDRESS

Another great way for advertising is email marketing. You get the email address of who ever visits your website, and then email them a series of emails about you and/or your business on a timely basis. This way you will ensure that this visitor will respond to your offer one day if they don’t respond to it the first time.

4. BEING A SPAMMER OR A SCAMMER

The most hated people online are spammers. You can be one unintentionally. This happens when you chose to advertise through unauthorized ways and without permission. This occurs mostly in email marketing. Scammers are people who don’t deliver what they promised to.

5. USING THE WRONG CONTENT

Content is the most important factor determining the quality of your website. Using third grade content will damage the chances of your customers having interactions with what you are selling or offering them. High quality content with a little ”persuasion” through words inside your website will do the trick.

6. NOT RIDING THE WAVE

Online marketing approaches change almost daily. And not accepting the changes and not trying to develop your business strategy accordingly will make your business old fashioned and you will attract fewer customers.

7. TARGETING THE WRONG CUSTOMERS

You have to take into consideration the value of your business and what type of customers and which segment of the market you wish to reach. Doing this process in the wrong way online will leave you broke and crying.

8. USING THE WRONG ADVERTISING METHODS

Some people try to buy traffic, others use free advertising like classified ads to cut down advertising costs, many others uses Pay-Per-Click to achieve the highest exposure. Whatever method you choose, consider your advertising budget and the quality of the visitors the different types of advertising methods will produce. Using the wrong advertising methods will not help you achieve your required return on investment and eventually your business will be scoring losses instead of profits.

9. NOT TESTING AND TRACKING THE RESULTS OF YOUR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

You have to be aware of how good or bad your marketing and advertising promotions are performing. You have to test the efficiency and the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. Tracking the results is essential to make the required modifications to your marketing campaigns.

10. TECHNICAL DEFECTS

Online users have to be aware of how the internet works. Using the wrong website templates, slow servers, slowly-uploading graphics, highly-advanced software and web applications, the wrong domain name, and non-secured web zones will cause you to lose most of your potential customers.

Well, there you have it, the top ten online marketing mistakes that could doom your business. Avoid these mistakes and watch your revenues soar.



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The Maverick Marketeer asked:

To really learn about direct marketing and how you can use it to better your business you should first understand what direct marketing is.

According to Wikipedia, direct marketing is defined as “a sub discipline of marketing focused to driving purchases that can be attributed to a specific call to action”. This marketing discipline can include and medium that allows you to communicate directly with customers. Some examples of direct marketing include, direct mail, email, newspaper, radio, television, and of course the internet.

The main focus of any direct marketing strategy is to increase the number of customers that respond to your marketing campaign or “response rate” while also trying to decrease the cost of advertising. Increasing customer response to your advertising will accomplish two very important things. One, increase the number of sales leads generated by advertising, and two, further establish business name recognition.

The ability to properly communicate with your business’s target audience is an extremely important factor in your overall business success. As you learn about direct marketing; keep in mind that persistence really does pay.

One of the most important aspects of designing a successful direct marketing campaign is in targeting your audience. Developing a marketing campaign that speaks directly to your potential customer’s wants and needs will mean the difference between creating quality sales leads for your business and utter frustration at a lack of customer responsiveness.

Several important questions to answer when developing any direct marketing campaign are:

* Who..? Who are you targeting with your particular business message? Who are the people who would be most interested in hearing what you have to say?

* Why..? Do you just want people to review a few helpful products..or do you want them to retain your services?

* What…? What specific benefits are you offering through your message?

* When…? Are you looking for a more immediate response from your reader…or are you providing food for thought and building your relationship?

* Last but not least…How? How do you intend to present and distribute your message to your potential customers?

Your study of direct marketing will be an on going process. It’s important to understand what works for you and your business, what doesn’t, and why that is. The key to success will be in continuing to try different strategies and techniques in order to perfect a particular combination of things that work well for you.

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