What are some common mistakes when it comes to marketing your website?

With all the theories and opinions that are out there, it may seem like marketing your website depends a lot on trial and error. And to some extent that is true – it took business awhile to figure out the whole social media thing and how they could use it to their advantage. And you can bet that there were some gaffes along the way.

But just like traditional marketing, marketing your website has some fundamental principles as well as a few common mistakes and errors and many businesses make. But to make sure that your business is not one of those that fall into these common pitfalls, here are three common mistakes when it comes to websitemarketing.

Not Understanding the Online Marketing Tool

There are a lot of great online tools available for internet marketing. But unlike traditional marketing tools such print or billboards, they are generally not as simple as pushing out a one-way message.

Facebook is a case in point. At the beginning of its use for business purposes, many business pages would delete of the posts of people who complained on their site – they may have even banned the user from posting. Unfortunately, there are still some businesses that practice this.

But businesses who understand that Facebook and other forms of social media were made for a two way dialogue respond to the unhappy customer and try to correct the problem. Not only may this make things better with the unhappy customer, but it is an opportunity for the business to show all of its Facebook fans that it is willing to do what it takes to resolve issues.

Resorting to Cheap Tricks

Everyone – businesses included – want to “go viral” and it seems like they will do just about anything to accomplish that. But when a business resorts to cheap tricks – even if they are successful in going viral – if it does not help them gain more customers, make more sales, or boost their reputation then what is the point?

Buying Facebook fans or Twitter followers is an example of a cheap trick. Some businesses who are new to social media may want to make it appear that they are more established than they really are – so they actually pay for fans. These fans may even interact with the page, like and share posts etc. but they will not bring the company one dollar of revenue. Why? For one of two reasons – they are either not all “real” people, or they are real people but are all accounts based somewhere like India or the Philippines.

That is not to say that you can’t try to go viral. You just need to do it in a way that will truly benefit your company. The West Jet Christmas surprise is a great example. West Jet surprised some of its customers with special gifts, videoed their customers’ reactions and posted on YouTube. Within hours people were posting and tweeting about what a wonderful company West Jet was.

Not Tracking Your Success

If you hire an employee and pay them a salary, you would want to know that they are actually doing something for your business right? The same should apply if you are investing time or money in any tool or strategy to market your website.

Google Analytics and other tools are readily available and can offer you a whole range of metrics. This is useful information in determining how well your current strategies are working and what needs to be changed.

Sometimes knowing how to best market your website can be a series of educated guesses but knowing and avoiding common mistakes will put your ahead of the game.

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