10 Costly Internet Marketing Mistakes Small Business Owners Must Avoid

Here is a pretty decent list of Internet Marketing mistakes small business owners must avoid in order to thrive in the digital era. They leave out one important mistake to avoid, and that is not building a customer email list. Your customer list is your #1 asset because it allows you to market to your existing customer base in order to maximize your ROI. It is a well known fact among experienced marketers that it costs a business roughly 7 times more money to acquire a new customer than it does to get a past customer back in your.

Vertical Measures writes:

“1. Not having a self-hosted blog. No one is going to take you seriously if your blog is on a Blogger or WordPress.com domain. That’s like creating a Geocities website for your business back in the 90s. It’s just unprofessional, and it limits your opportunity for growth. Get your own domain (e.g. www.yourcompanyname.com), and host your blog on that domain.

2. Not having a professionally designed website. Website visitors start judging you the moment they land on your website. And while it’s nice to think that we don’t “judge a book by its cover”, that’s just not true. First impressions are everything, and if your website has a bad design and poor usability, it reflects badly on your brand. So, don’t let your nephew who “knows a little web design” build your website. Leave it to the pros.

3. After getting a website up, doing nothing else. The Field of Dreams approach of “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work for websites. The internet has billions of websites, so the chances of yours receiving traffic just because it’s there are slim to none. You have to promote your website properly through SEO and other internet marketing techniques. That’s how you’ll start to attract traffic…and not just any traffic, targeted traffic consisting of interested customers.

4. Attempting to save money by going with the cheapest vendor. Look, small businesses don’t have a lot of money to spend. I get it. Your budget is tight, but trying to save money by going cheap almost never works out. Whether you’re hiring an SEO provider or a copywriter, you have to be willing to spend some money if you want quality service that gets results. Remember, there’s always some truth to the statement ‘You get what you pay for.’

5. Not having a clear call to action placed above the fold. This is a two-part tip. First, whenever someone visits your website, you need to have an action that you want them to take. Whether that action is to place an order now or to call you for a free consultation, there needs to be something that takes the visitor to the next step toward becoming a customer. And you need to clearly define that action on your website. Also, you should place your call to action above the fold so visitors instantly recognize what they should do.

6. Not seeking professional help. There are some tasks you may be able to do on your own, but more than likely, you’re not an expert in every facet of internet marketing. So, rather than trying to learn as you go, hire a professional to do the job right for you. You’ll have a stronger online presence, and you’ll be able to use that extra time for other important business tasks.