Follow these Steps to Guaranteed Internet Marketing Failure

The original title for this blog was simply the five steps to internet marketing success.

It just didn’t seem right to write about that. After all, I am sure you can just type that in your Google searches and find some 1000 articles from 1000 bloggers who have in all sincerity never succeed in internet marketing. It’s a Sunday anyway so why not let go of the ego trip?

So I will dwell in what I know best. My success rate in internet marketing has been less than 30%. Yes, I said only 30% of my internet marketing projects have been successful.

I have to confess; though most of the failures were early on in my online business quest. At that time, the only thing I wanted to blog about was how to make money online. Yes, I was one of John Chow’s original lackeys and have two of my blogs listed in Courtney Tuttle’s D-List.

I am not saying that most internet marketing gurus are full of B.S…..they are. However, I have learned from all these make money online gurus how to guarantee internet marketing failure for your business and your personal blog.

Failure to Plan Leads to Internet Marketing Failure

Before you jump into starting a blog for your corporate just because you attended a seminar on the importance of social media in Kenya, THINK!

Think very hard about what you are doing.

I don’t want to go through the tale of how Safaricom failed miserably in social media. The latest news is that Zain has joined twitter and so too has Orange.  Someone needs to do something about Zain’s twitter page graphics. They are just annoying.

Does that mean that just because your company has a blog, a facebook page, a twitter profile and some 100 other internet marketing accounts you are going to be a success?

Hell No. In fact, going social on the internet should be the last thing you do if you have no idea what you are doing. Ask Safaricom twitter care reps.

You may need to answer the following questions:

• What are the goals of the internet marketing project?
• What are the parameters to measure the effectiveness of the internet marketing campaign?
• What is the cost?
• Is it profitable?

If you have decided to blog, are you blogging for fun or to make money? If you are blogging for money, why bother with a free blogspot or wordpress account? You might as well give your money to Charity. At least I will remember you did something for someone in the spirit of a new Kenya.

Before you start your next blog or internet marketing campaign, please have measurable goals and objectives.

Beautiful Websites Never Paid the Rent

I know that there are some web designers who will hate me for this. But, it has been my experience that I make less money with a beautiful website. Now when you add a 100% flash website, you really should be paying me for watching those damn “waiting to load” messages.

Making money online is a simple game of getting relevant traffic to your website and converting the traffic to sales. It is not a beauty contest.

So when you load a site with flash exactly who are you trying to impress? I learned this the hard way from Grizzly. Surely, such an ugly site cannot make money for you can it? Go read the blog then come back to this post.

Avoid any web design company that uses flash if your goal is to convert visitors to leads or buyers. Google has a funny way of stating that they don’t read flash but my experience is that I have never had a flash website rank higher than mine. Even Matt Cutts has stopped being wishy washy about the use of flash. Of course they will say they want fast loading sites…it’s just an acronym for Don’t use flash!

Social Media is for Friends, SEO Brings Home the Bacon

If you use a fork to eat rice, don’t expect to finish your plate quickly.

I like social media. However, I have deep misgivings as to it’s effectiveness in making sales online compared to SEO.

Last week I was unfortunate enough to have a friend inform me how he was selling property on Facebook.

I want to say that I am a member of facebook with one of my accounts ( sorry facebook), having been started when I was in college. However, it makes it a bit tough to sell a house to 30 year olds on facebook who only want to poke and make friends.

While making friends is a good thing, I think it is preferable to make money online instead. If your friends on facebook or myspace do not convert to a lead, a contact or a sale, you are eating rice with a fork.

To succeed in internet marketing, get the right traffic to your product page. If friends really cared, they would be in your shop not on facebook. Take a look at the research done by Think Metrics about this particular topic.

Search engine traffic on the other hand is the traffic that you need to avoid internet marketing failure. I know social media is slowly being incorporated in search engine optimization but I doubt if it will be as effective as a number one ranking for “buy a house”.

If you have a company website or a business blog that is not ranked in the front page of search engines, you will not succeed online.

Work Your Internet Marketing Plan

Internet marketing is not a game for the faint heart. You may have the most beautiful idea in the world. However, if you do not work, it will end up being useless.

An example is the current rush by Kenyan programmers to create a payment processor that can work for e-commerce in Kenya. Hush the White African has a great post about this. I was very excited about this developments since my preferred merchant processor PayPal wasn’t an option in Kenya.

That is until I got informed today by like chapaa that PayPal is accepting merchants in Kenya and may be working with a fully integrated solution with a Kenyan bank.

The moral here is, you do not have a monopoly of ideas on the internet. Act now and work that idea. Waiting for perfect conditions only leads to misery and heartache.

The Future of Internet Marketing

If I knew the future of internet marketing in Kenya, I would be a billionaire. However, I believe the same basic processes in any business marketing are at work here.

Create a good marketing plan, get the proper tools, avoid useless information and work with speed. Only then can you avoid the many routes to internet marketing failure.

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