Why Internet Marketing doesn’t work for most businesses is a great question to ask. As an Internet marketer who has at least a bridge of understanding how marketing works and a small understanding of the vast information about the psychology of marketing, I can confidently guess, it doesn’t work because you don’t know what the analytics mean or what the buzz terms actually mean.
Many business owners get fed up with Internet Marketing and want to know why internet marketing doesn’t work for them while it works great for a handful of others.
Unless you have an MBA, have taken some sort of marketing class somewhere, or have done lots of DIY learning how to effectively use the internet to market your business, you are likely to get duped by telemarketers who throw a bunch of buzzwords at you.
These telemarketers are depending on your ignorance to get you to buy their sales pitch. In the end, after a few months you may find that your website is getting thousands of views from new visitors every month but for some reason you have not made one sale that came from your website. Why does this happen?
Here are a few buzz words you may hear from almost every telemarketer selling Internet marketing/social media marketing.
- SEO – We can get you SEO, We do SEO, You need SEO.
- Clicks – We noticed your site does not get very much traffic, we can increase your clicks.
- Website – There is a lot wrong with your website, You need a website.
- Social Media – Get more leads, get more sales, add Social Media, We are experts
- Engagement – You need to get engaged with your customers, you need “likes”, “followers” and we can do it all better.
- ROI – Let me show you your ROI for internet marketing that you can have if you hire us.Although these buzz words are all very real components of Internet Marketing, if you do not fully understand what these words mean, and what they are supposed to do for you, then your Internet Marketing is not likely to work for you.
What these Buzz Words really mean:
- SEO – Search engine optimization- Your business website and social media sites are optimized for your target consumers to find you on the internet through the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Pay-per-click is not SEO.
- Clicks – How many people have clicked on, visited or viewed your site. Question is, are they prospects of your business, interested and looking to purchase your products? or are they there because they were misguided and don’t care what you are selling? Are they targeted clicks that are likely to buy from you?
- Website – Is your site appealing? Does it create credibility? Is it relevant to your business? Does it give all the right information that a prospect is looking for to encourage them to take the next step?
- Social Media – Are your posts relevant to your target prospects and interesting to prospects that are interested in what you sell?
- Engagement – Getting engaged with your clients, mean that you are making contact with people who are interested in your business, your industry, your product, or you. People are not likely to comment even if the content is amazing, relevant and useful. You want your content to be shared with other prospects who are interested in your business, your industry, your product or your service.
- ROI – Return on Investment. The Best ROI a telemarketer can give you on the phone is a figure based on any random number you give them. Even if it is your best guess, ROI is all based on IFs. If one of your average sales is $400, and if you get 600 visitors, you might get 350 sales and that gives you an ROI of $140,000. ROI can be done, but not using guesswork or figures pulled from others in your industry, this is still just guessing.
As an Internet Marketer, I understand that internet marketing is all about getting you seen and found on the internet. (Online Presence is how easily you are found by your prospects on the internet). It is all about building credibility and trust with your target prospects. It is all about driving the right traffic to your website and this website should make your prospects trust you and want to do business with you. A bunch of clicks, Social Media, etc. does not matter if it is not your target prospects. If you sell swimming pools and you get 10,000 new visitors every day who are not the least bit interested in purchasing a swimming pool, you are not likely to sell a swimming pool.
If you get 100 clicks and 75 of these new visitors are interested in purchasing a swimming pool, it is obvious that you are more likely to be contacted by these few (a hot lead) and you will then have the opportunity to make sales. the difference is 10,000 clicks = 0 sales and 0 opportunities compared to, 100 clicks = 75 opportunities that can be turned into sales which means you have the opportunity to make at least 75 sales from less although more targeted clicks than you do from the broad range and uninterested large amount of clicks.
There is one type of seller who benefits from a large amount of non-targeted clicks, that one type of seller is affiliate marketers. If you are not creating a website to sell a bunch of miscellaneous, impulse buyer goodies, the amount of non-targeted clicks are not likely to do you much good.
If you are engaged with a bunch of people who are not your specific targeted consumer than your internet marketing is not likely to actually produce sales. If you do not have a well rounded strategy using every part of Internet Marketing that is specifically targeted toward optimizing your business to be found by the right consumers than your Internet Marketing is not likely to bring you sales.
Now, the bottom line question is this, What is the purpose of Internet Marketing? The whole reason for Internet Marketing is so that your target prospect will find you easily on the internet so they can contact you, hear about you on the internet, or to be sure you are a business your targeted consumer can trust. If your strategy is to vague, too broad, not targeted toward the right prospects, this is likely why Internet Marketing doesn’t work for you. Stop worrying about the numbers, be more concerned with who the numbers are instead of how many there are.
Concentrate more on keeping your marketing targeting toward your optimal prospect by knowing who you are selling to and who is looking for you, and where they are looking for you. the answer is not in the numbers, it is in the results.