This article by Melissa Fach is taken from http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/01/5-online-marketing-myths.html
It is a great article, well worth reading.
5 Online Marketing Myths Businesses Believe
By Melissa Fach
Below are 5 myths I hear on a regular basis from businesses. If you have some common myths to share, please do so in the comments.
1. All Websites are Created Equal
Not all websites are created equal and your goal should be to have good/safe hosting, good code, good optimization and a design that meets the needs of your target audiences.
It is never good to rush into having a website or hiring the company that can get it done the fastest. A good website design should be thought about and planned. Make sure the usability for your audience is good, the design is pleasing and you have everything you need to keep the website going.
The information that the reader needs to see for you to make a sale should be easy to find on your website, easy to read and easy to understand. Design and planning are critical.
2. Cheap Websites Will Get You Found
False. I see all the commercials from online businesses offering websites for really cheap and saying:
“Get found.”
You can’t get found unless your site is optimized. You can’t be optimized without good coding, SEO, a marketing strategy and content that supports the strategies put in place.
Cheap is never a good idea for a business. Don’t waste your time on cheap websites. Remember, time is money.
3. Social Is Easy
Social is not easy. Social takes a ton of researching, planning, daily time and monitoring. A successful social campaign is not sticking things on Facebook or randomly tweeting something and never looking for responses. It also isn’t having a lot of friends on Facebook.
Social media is all about strategy. These questions are just the start of social:
- Which social media platform will work best?
- Which audiences are you targeting?
- How will you reach your audiences?
- Who will interact with your social audience daily?
- How will you measure the effectiveness of a social campaign?
- What is the ROI?
- What are competitors’ doing? What is working or not working for them?
4. If We Get More Website Traffic We Will Make More Money
This is false. Traffic is just traffic. What you want is to reach the audience(s) that needs your products and/or services. Random traffic makes you no money, so it is essentially useless. I will give you an example. When I first started blogging for business, I had a picture of Yoda on my contact page. I named the picture “Yoda” and Google Images picked it up and it was the 3rd image out of all of them for “Yoda.”
I was getting tens of thousands of visits each month to the contact page and not one of those visits made me any money. In analytics, I could see they were searching for Yoda. So traffic was great, but it made me no money.
The goal of website traffic is to make money. Focus on ROI with Web traffic and if what you are doing is not giving you a return – you need to try a different strategy.
5. If Our Website, Online Marketing and Content are Perfect, We Will Make Money
This is false. Everything online can be perfect, but if the service people receive when they call and/or email your company is not good you will not make money.
We had a client with a perfectly coded website that was optimized and ranking well. They were getting great traffic and had many new contacts in their contact form daily. But they complained business wasn’t getting better. We couldn’t figure it out.
Then both myself and a colleague, without knowing it, referred friends to the business. They both came back saying the same thing:
“They won’t answer the phone and it just rang and rang.”
They also said they called after 5PM and left messages and no one returned their call. Both people claimed they called the business multiple times and never got a response. About 9 months later, I referred someone else to them and they said the people were so rude they refused to use the business.
You have to make sure that your staff is as perfect as you try to make your website and online marketing if you are hoping to make money. Both online and offline you have to give your very best.