If you're new to internet marketing, it's hard to know where to begin. And it's easy to make the common marketing mistakes we'll cover in this article.
There is so much information available and lots of hype about tools, techniques and thoughts on how to do most anything that will be the "thing" that will lead to your overnight or immediate success.
Every online marketer tries to avoid mistakes in marketing. If you've been online for any length of time you know that every tool, technique and thought offered online won't provide the results you're looking for.
That fact alone will save you a lot of time and money... Once you reach the level of success you're looking for, you will look back and realize that there was no magic button that you'll push to magically open the flood gates to instant success!
The thing that makes us so uniquely different is the same thing that confuses many people when they get started online.
[ReviewDisclaimer]
There is no one size fits all solution for new online marketers. Every business and different so any solution should be evaluated to determine whether it's the best fit for YOUR business.
When you're just starting out, there are so many opportunities to succeed as well as opportunities to make mistakes in marketing.
Avoiding Common Marketing Mistakes
If you talk to most successful online marketers, they will give you a set of basic steps and practices that you should take when starting out that will help you get results quickly.
I will share a few of the common marketing mistakes made by new online marketers make (some that I have made and learned from) that you can avoid to reach the finish line (results) a lot faster.
5 Common Mistakes Made by New Online Marketers
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When you look at entrepreneurs who have launched successful online enterprises, you'll find that there are no rules that are set in stone except the rules of good business practice and common sense.
When starting out that's about all you can rely on unless you have a friend or relative who has a successful online business.
If there is someone you can talk to, that seems to know what they are doing and hope they can give you guidance that makes sense.
That's the goal of this post, to give you guidance on what has worked for us and the people we have talked to.
If you have a friend or relative and that person is willing to show you the ropes, you are truly fortunate.
For all the rest of us who don't have a relative or friend who can mentor us, all is not lost. There is an affordable insider membership provided by a company called Elite Marketing Pro that you can access that provides everything you need to be successful online.
It's the closest thing we've found to having that relative or friend who is willing to mentor you.
Have You Made These Mistakes?
Here are a few missteps that new internet marketers make when starting out.
While it won't be the end of the world if you do these things, it will make your life a lot easier if you can avoid these common marketing mistakes altogether.
Review this information and save yourself some time and headaches by choosing and implementing a better solution.
Think about how these items may work (or not) for you.
1. No Daily Mode of Operation or Planning- What this means is that there is no plan, standard operating procedure or schedule, no daily routine or income generating activities that happen on a regular basis. Because of this, the business has no direction, it sails along drifting from one place to another, making no progress.
When you're new to internet marketing and you start working on your own business, whether it's full or part time, there's no boss standing over you to say, I need "this" by "this time" and I need "that" by "that time". You're pretty much on your own to motivate yourself to get things done. So one of the first things to do as a newbie is to make a to-do list that includes at a minimum, the things that need to happen in order for you to earn from your business.
Does this sound like you? If so read, Income Generating Activities You Should Do Each Day for ideas you can use to boost your bottom line.
2. No Strategy for Capturing Leads - Capturing leads is the same as building an email list. Lead generation, capturing leads, etc., just means that you give your audience a chance to learn more about you.
They sign up by providing their email address, usually in exchange for a thing of value, giving you the ability to send them more information.
I see website after website with a little box on the top right side of sidebars that say "Sign up for My Newsletter" with a field to enter an email address and possibly a name.
There's no capture page, no offer (lead magnet), or information on the benefits of joining your business in whatever... just a little box that doesn't tell the reader anything.
In the beginning, it's easy to understand why a new online marketer wouldn't place much value in capturing leads. Most new entrepreneurs don't understand how important building an email list can be to their business.
If you've ever heard the term "The fortune is in the follow up" I'm here to tell you that this phrase has never been more true.
If you don't have a list, that means unless your reader comes back to your site out of the goodness of their hearts, you will probably never see them again.
There are so many distractions these days that keeps readers on the move. They forget about your great content in seconds after leaving your page. Readers have to be able to bookmark, subscribe or join an email list to begin an ongoing relationship with your business.
When you capture their email, you give yourself the opportunity to follow up, build a relationship with the potential customer, generate sales and repeat business.
Most people don't buy the first time they land on your page, so unless you are able to build a relationship that shows them you are a legitimate business that does what they say they will do and they can trust you with their credit card.
There are many locations that are optimal for placing lead capture boxes on your site. I would try all of them because different people have different preferences.
At a minimum, I would say the best places that have worked well for us have been at the middle or end of a post, on the top right side of the page, on the top of the main page and in the footer. Experiment to see which locations work best for you.
This is one of the mistakes we made in the beginning. We didn't realize the importance of generating leads and constantly following up. In addition, most business owners we talk to say that if they had it to do over again, they would start collecting leads from day one. We would wholeheartedly agree.
If you're looking for ways to generate leads and this sounds like you, consider building a blog with lead generation capabilities. Thrive Architect is a visual editing plugin designed for WordPress.
It's the plugin we use on this site to create landing, sales and lead capture pages with ease. To learn more about Thrive Architect read Profitable Email List Building Just Got a Lot Easier!
Be sure to watch the video in the article for an in depth look at the plugin. They have templates, video training and support to help bloggers and web designers to build a fully functional website or blog without writing code.
3. No Online Platform - This is also common, especially with new online marketers who join an organization that gives them a "free" website to sell products. These free websites should never take the place of building your own branded blog or website that promotes you and the items you choose to promote.
Other common platforms can include a YouTube channel, podcast or Facebook group. When you use anything other than a self hosted blog or website as your online platform, you run the risk of losing it all. This is because you don't own any of these platforms. If YouTube or Facebook don't like what you're doing, they can shut you down.
When you drive traffic to your company supplied website and not your own, you're making the company wealthy and you're working to promote their interests and not your own. What happens if the company goes out of business? All that hard work and all the leads you generated for that company would be gone with it.
Make sure to have your own branded blog that captures leads and showcases you and everything you and your company can bring to the table. You can drive traffic to your company supplied website from your branded website and make just as much income. This also helps to distinguish your business from all the other reps who are selling the same thing.
Stumped on what to post? If you're in need of things to post about, think about the number of new things you learn in a week's time. If you need to keep track, get a jotter and write down all the things you've learned. You can also keep track by putting the information in your cell phone.
Once you learn new skills, you should implement what you've learned in your own business, and share the content (knowledge) on a consistent basis. Which leads to the next subject... consistency.
When blogging and when building your business, consistency builds trust, And trust is what you need to be successful online.
If you're working a full time job, and building a business on the side, being consistent can be a challenge. However, if you say that you'll post every day, you should post every day. If you have committed to posting once a week, you should post once a week.
The great thing about having an online business is that there is no hard and fast rule about how much you should blog or share content. The goal is to make sure you share on a regular basis, but you can set the interval. There's no boss telling you that things have to be done by a certain time.
Your readers will get used to whatever you do. But if you commit to something do your best to keep your word. Your business will thank you for it.
Does this sound like your story? If so you can build a blog using our free blogging course that walks you through building your site from start to finish.
If you aren't into building your blog yourself, you can hire us to build it. All you need to do is sign up for your hosting and we'll install WordPress for you and get your site set up for free.
Business Building Courses and Guides
4. No Investment in Training - This is a big one because many people start an online business by joining an opportunity or signing up to promote products on social media, in that order.
They leave out training altogether for a number of reasons. They may rely on their team to train them, or they adopt the false assumption that it's easier than it seems to build a successful online business.
There is no plan, so they imitate people they follow or they just flail around aimlessly like a fish out of water.
They may also assume that the skills and knowledge that make business owners successful in the offline world will make you successful in the online world.
This is a very common assumption that people make, and then they realize quickly that those assumptions can be wrong. There are specific skills are needed to be successful online.
If you're not sure how to reach the people you'll depend on to make a living, you probably won't sell very much. If you don't have the skills needed to reach them, your chances for failure increase.
Plastering pictures on your social media posts, walls and pages without learning as much as possible about your prospects and customers, or thinking of how the items will help them is a total waste of time. If you create ads that don't make a connection with your ideal audience, you won't sell very much. Without a plan, there is no marketing strategy, no financial goals or results tracking. Everyone just kinda does their own thing.
Without a plan and the proper tools to get the job done, you end up wasting time, resources and energy. It takes you twice as long to do a simple task or you end up missing the boat altogether because you weren't sure what to focus on. There's another adage that says when you fail to plan, plan to fail.
Take a few moments to create goals and plan for the following: supplies/tools, back ups/emergencies/website crashes, marketing, social media, training and professional development, blogging (editorial calendar) and finances (budget) before you move forward too far.
5. Last but certainly not least... Not Knowing Their Customers - Most people start out with absolutely no knowledge of who they are selling to. They don't know what their customers like, where they hang out, whether they are single or married, what hobbies the tend to like, none of it.
They have done no market research and so they have no idea whether the products and services they are offering would even be of interest to their customers. If they have slow (or no) sales, I would say that prospects and existing customer are not interested or the messaging is off in some way.
There again, most new internet marketers just blast their messages out to the masses and hope they will land on someone who likes what they are saying. When starting out most people think their product or service can be sold to most anyone.
That is one of the biggest marketing mistakes a new owner can make. Take time to learn as much as possible about your customers and potential customers. In the long run it will help you with product selection, marketing and sales, the heart of your business.
So if you have fallen into any of those traps, it's not too late to dig your way out. The links provided in each section will give you some information on how to shift things in a different direction.
If you have no idea who you are promoting products and services to, now is the time to learn more about your market. Click the button below to get started.
Who Is Your Ideal Customer?
The answer is an important part of your marketing strategy. Download these workbooks to have a clear understanding of this critical question.
Here are a few common missteps that new internet marketers make when starting out. While it won’t be the end of the world if you do these things, it will make your life a lot easier if you can avoid them altogether.