10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Do you know that as an entrepreneur, if you are not doing internet marketing, you are missing out on a potentially huge opportunity to drive your brand image, increase customers and your business revenue.

If fact, the big players in your industry keep a secret close to their chest, Internet marketing isn’t really hard or expensive, a little creativity and consistency will get you noticed on the internet and eventually bring your business more customers and revenue.

However, Internet marketing can be overwhelming; especially for Businesses in emerging economies like Nigeria where business owners are used to traditional advertising mediums.

In delving into internet marketing, business owners make some mistakes that lead to failure in attaining the expectant result of a successful internet marketing campaign.

Internet marketing in its self is quite broad, you have content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing and Email marketing. Knowing what to avoid will certainly make it easier for businesses who are trying Internet marketing for the first time.

To make this transition easier, I have drafted Ten (10) mistakes that you can avoid to make your internet marketing experience a success.

#1) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Thinking you don’t need an Online Presence

A lot of businesses in emerging economies say for example Nigeria limit their marketing operations to traditional marketing vehicles i.e. newspaper, radio, TV e.t.c, their natural thinking is that this traditional vehicles got them thus far and they are better of sticking with what they know rather than delve into the internet.

Some business owners ignorantly hold the belief that the internet is for children and playing.

We once had a customer at Nativedge that had this mind set; the customer bluntly said he didn’t believe internet marketing was a viable idea for his business. I changed his mind with the following simple test case.

I asked him how much he spends on his handbills (flyers) and he said averagely he spends NGN 70,000 for 10,000 flyers. This means he was spending NGN70, 000 to reach 10,000 people.

The good thing about Internet marketing is that you don’t have to spend so much to reach 10,000 people. With creativity you can tactically combine content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and email marketing and you will organically reach 10,000 people without having to spend a dime.

#2) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Expecting overnight results

One of the things that I had to accept and adapt to in internet marketing is patience.

Realistically I learnt to work hard on my online marketing approach especially with search engine optimization (SEO) and wait out for the results to materialize.

Guess what! Most often I only start seeing the fruit of my labour between 60-90 days of constant application of my internet marketing strategies.

So with some creativity you will begin to see results of your internet marketing strategy with 60-90 days for free if you keep at it.

However there is another way to go if you are looking at spending some money through Google Adwords or Pay-Per-Click (PPC). With the paid option you will start to see results from 14-21 days.

But if the search engines rates your campaign as a campaign with a high Click-Through-Rate then you should start seeing results of your paid Pay-Per-Click campaign from 3 days.

In all patience is the key. Internet marketing just doesn’t happen overnight. Especially if you want organic traffic (web visitors directed to your website from search engines for free).

#3) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Not having a blog

Blogging is one of the most underrated or ignored aspect of Internet marketing yet it is said to be the post powerful strategy.

Because content is king on the internet. If you get blogging right it can generate up to 70% of the traffic that will come your way from your whole mix of Internet Marketing strategy.

What to do

Host a blog on your business website

Write useful articles that is useful to your readers

Post a two (2) articles a week consistently

Respond to each blog comment to build trust with your readers.

#4) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Ignoring Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is probably the best aspect of internet marketing that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can leverage on to achieve web presence and drive traffic to their website.

But unfortunately very few businesses are aware of its potentials.

A lot of business owners don’t know that they visit websites through results of search engine optimization. When you search for something in Google, yahoo or Bing you most likely click and visit one of the top search results that is display by the search engine.

The thing is the websites that are displayed on top of search results are ranked by the search engines through their search engine optimization. Therefore, if your website ranks on top of search by Google, yahoo or Bing, you are most likely to get visitors from search engine.

It is important to effective use keywords on title, title tags, description and content. This will put you on top of search rankings. To achieve search optimization you may need to have some coding knowledge but if you don’t get a web developer and work it out with him.

#5) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Snubbing social networks

A student from Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Nigeria recently resumed at Nativedge for his industrial attachment (internship) and was rather taken aback when the first task I handed him was to analyse what our fans on Facebook were liking and commenting on with regards to tailoring our subsequent post to what is of interest to them.

Our new intern was surprised to come to an office and be asked to do Facebook as a job. His thinking was Facebook is simply a play thing for young people. A lot of business owners also share this opinion of our new intern.

This is really an ignorant way to think because having a profile for your business on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ can be a good source of traffic to your website.

So go ahead build up profiles on social media platforms, it may take up to a year for your profiles to become popular if you consistently post good content that is interesting to your fans. So be patient and remember what I said initially, Internet marketing is all about patience. So do just that and wait out for results.

#6)?10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Relying ONLY on having a website and social media

An increasing misconception that I have noticed as the thinking that having profile on social media platforms is enough to achieve web presence.

It’s very unfortunate that some so called IT consultants in Nigeria lead business owners to believe that a website and social media profiles are what web presence is all about.

Permit me to quickly refute this sinister claim. Having a website and social media profiles are part the necessities of effective internet marketing plan. But your website itself has to be built to standard for search engine optimizations.

You can get a free review of your website from Nativedge to see if it meets international standard for Search Engine optimization at http://nativedge.com/get-website-analysis.html.

To make your internet marketing plan worth your while, avoid so called IT consultants who tell you that web presence or online presence is having a website and social media profiles.

As I have mentioned before an effective internet marketing or web presence or online marketing plan is a creative combination of search engine optimization, content marketing (blogging), and email marketing and social media marketing.

#7)10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Avoiding guest author opportunities

Yes there is no short cut to getting organic traffic to your website but there are less hectic ways to get the job done. Guest posting is one of the ways which you can make life easier for yourself on your internet marketing journey.

Guest posting is an easier way to get exposure and traffic, especially if you find opportunities with authority blog (blogs with a large community of readers).

If you guest post on authority blogs, you will naturally have your post read by the existing community of readers that the blog has. Eventually some of the readers will visits your website through links which you must have placed in your guest post.

So don’t miss out on any opportunity to guest post.

#8) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Not commenting on Blogs

Commenting on other blogs isn’t a waste of time like some people presume it to be. When you comment on other blogs you promote yourself and build loyalty within that blogs community of readers.

Take out time to comment on other blogs especially the authority blogs.

#9) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Missing out on message boards

When people have problems they either go to Google or message boards like nairaland and post their problems to get answers to their problems.

A good way to use message boards to get customers and traffic to your website is to spend some time every day on them and answer questions that people post.

#10) 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Forgetting about YouTube

With a properly optimized video, you can actually generate top ranking for your website.

Also for businesses that sell products that need have user manuals, video is a good medium to demonstrate how the product can be used.

This is where YouTube comes in handy, when videos are uploaded to YouTube there are a good source of traffic as both the number of viewers and the video optimization can lead to traffic to you website.

Conclusion

With the right approach, your internet marketing journey will be worth your while.

A point to remember is that results won’t come over night and it doesn??t have to be expensive.

I do hope you find this post useful if you are new to internet marketing. I would like to know if you know of any other internet marketing mistake that I have not listed in this post..

About
Latest Posts

Follow me

Daniel Obaike

Founder/CEO at Nativedge

Daniel Obaike is an Entrepreneur who likes to help organizations 'WIN'. He is very passionate about assisting Organizations in Africa and other emerging economies boost revenue, achieve sustainable growth and enhance competition by utilizing Online Marketing.