Yesterday we shared our thoughts on the Top 10 most common Internet Marketing Mistakes to avoid from number 10 down to number 6.  Today we complete the countdown:

5. Spamming

Never try to spam your website all over the internet. If your content is good, and you promote it properly, people will find it and visit it. Traffic will always find you – if you know what you’re doing. Spamming your site and adding your URL in link farms and other ‘black hat’ strategies is likely to cause your site to be reported to your ISP and blacklisted by all search engines!

If you think that popping onto high-ranking blogs and adding a vague or unrelated comment about nothing and including a backlink to your website is good marketing, think again.

The internet as previously mentioned is all about adding value and having great quality content. In order to have a successful online business you need to build trust and relationships.

4. Not building a list

Still harping on about value and content and building online relationships. We hope you have noticed!  Your list is your business. It’s as simple as that. Without customers you have no business, so you MUST collect email addresses and build a list! Having a list of customers is one of the keys to success on the internet!

Once you have built up your list you will be able to send out regular updates, newsletters, links to your blog posts, new videos you have made etc., etc.  Once your ‘list’ has begun to trust you and realise that your main intention is to provide value for them and let them know about things that can help them, you will be able to start to send promotional / sales emails about your own products and services or products and services you are happy to recommend.

Having a good list as a base there are many ways you can then go on to make money for your business. The key however is the quality of your relationships with your customer database, in other words your list.

3. Choosing the wrong products to promote

This is a very simple rule – NEVER TRY TO SELL OR PROMOTE RUBBISH PRODUCTS OR SERVICES! Just because your commission rates are high, or the product graphics are fancy, if you start farming out useless trash to your trusted list, you will very quickly lose all credibility and no-one on the list will ever buy from you again!.

Be very selective and build your reputation as a business that only ever recommends products or services that you have used and know to be of good quality / value.

2. Not targeting your ads to the right demographics

The title of this one could easily read, ‘not knowing anything about your customers’, because it’s not just about targeting your ads, it’s about targeting all of your marketing efforts, free or paid. Clearly not everybody is going to need the product or service that you are promoting at the time you are promoting it. So make sure you’ve drilled down to establish exactly who your customers are, sex, age, location, interests, desires, buying patterns, keywords etc.

Then you can focus on ensuring you get your message directly under the right noses.

1. Failing to interact and network with others

This is HUGE! Hence it is our Number 1! No man is an island, and no business should be either.  The power of collaboration is without doubt one of the most effective marketing strategies for any business. You must ACTIVELY promote your company wherever and whenever you can. You need to post on forums, join social media communities, comment on blogs, send out press releases, and so forth.  It is all about marketing your content.

Get to know consumers and other entrepreneurs. Treat consumers as individuals rather than another business or just a potential customer. Join in relevant conversations and share tips with others. Join hands and do some marketing projects with other entrepreneurs in the same niche – 2 heads are always better than 1!

Avoid making these ten mistakes and we are convinced you will ultimately succeed at creating a fantastic online business!

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