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Ten Marketing Pitfalls

By Stuart Reid

If you want to make it BIG in Internet Marketing you need avoid some common mistakes. Here's a list of top ten Pitfalls that catch out beginner Marketers (and many established ones too!).

The problem is you don't realise you have fallen into one of these holes until someone points it out. Marketers tend to be stubborn and suffer from tunnel vision - hopefully these may help you kick a few bad habits...

1. Procrastination

Putting things off is a killer where this career this is concerned. You NEED a plan and some kind of time management system in place. Prioritize your tasks and keep lists of everything that needs doing. And no matter how much you don't feel like doing something just get it out of way and NEVER leave it untill next day!

TIP: Use post-it notes. They are low-tech but work great :-)

2. Striving for Perfection

You'll likely never have a "perfect" website or product but you know what? It doesn't matter! It's important you get started as soon as you can and make your site "live". You can tweak things as you go along and improvements WILL come later - but if you try to get everything "right" before you start then you'll never start.

TIP: Update your site daily in little ways, it saves doing everything at once and search-engines it too.

3. Wasting Money

This one is important. Especially if you don't have money to burn! Don't get caught up jumping from opportunity to opportunity or buying everything that lands in your inbox. You'll be surprised how much you can get for free. Trust me - you don't need half stuff you see online. Try to control your emotions and think before you buy. Write a list of pros and cons, and make sure that product or service is essential to YOU.

TIP: Look for reviews by people without a vested interest in product and ask questions in forums.

4. Not Spending Enough

Unfortunately you have to spend a little. It won't be much starting out, but you will need more as you grow. For a start you'll need a domain, a host, an autoresponder - but these are pretty affordable these days. The bulk of your expenses will be on promotion, usually ezine ads or pay-per-click. If you're paying someone to create your product or you're buying resell rights then this is another expense (but you can start with free affiliate programs).

TIP: Keep your "Internet Income" separate and re-invest. You'll be glad you did later.

5. Wrong Markets

6 Ways to More Sales During A Slow Season

Unbeknownst to me, it’s a slow summer for business this year. Here I’ve been panicking when I see a sales dip over 48 hours, and some folks are complaining of not seeing Any sales for a whole week!

So, upon feeding myself a healthy slice of “I need to stop whining - there are people with real problems”, I’m departing from my regular Yahoo and Google love affair to share what I’ve been doing that has me earning a steady income.

(If you miss my Google chatter, come by on Google Tuesdays to read my blog - see link at end of article.)

Please keep in mind, I’m no millionaire, so don’t expect some miraculous windfall of cash. Many of these tips steadied my income, as I now work completely from home and make about same as I used to make before taxes back when I worked as a IT Consultant.

Space permits only my top six, but you can stop by site on Fridays for more.

#1 - Take advantage of super-cheap ezine advertising.

The prices in summer are just incredible, if you know where to look. I have a list you can check out.

#2- Submit a press release. I haven’t done this yet this year, because I have a special date that I stick to, but you should take advantage as soon as you can. Why is this time of year different?

Except for election updates, this time of year is among slowest for fresh news. If you’ve got a quirky story about your site, your business, services or products, make it into a press release.

But not just any press release. Research what journalists in your market want to write about, and do most of work for them. Have a press kit on your site where they can get pictures, and updates. It shouldn’t read like a sales letter, it should read more like a slightly longer news story that you’d see in paper, very just-the-facts-ma’am.

A severely overlooked market for these are local journalists and smaller news papers. You might assume that because they are smaller, they don’t get read, but that’s not necessarily true. I used to save my Prince George’s County Journal when I lived in Maryland.