Reason #1: The lack of effort and time needed to learn new information about online marketing.

To reach the success you are aspiring to obtain, you must spend adequate efforts and time learning what can lead you to it. Get as much as new online marketing information you can and take time to study them before you use of them for your company’s growth. The more knowledge and experience you can possess, the quicker you will reach your goals. Often the best online marketing techniques will come to you suddenly, but evolves out of all the information you might know. Do not let your business be deserted by others, make it stand out by utilizing new online marketing strategies. Wide varieties of new information are available throughout the web; just encode an online marketing in Google and you will find what you are looking for. Never stop craving for more and new information, techniques, or techniques about online marketing for you will never grow personally or financially if you are not learning something new.

Reason #2: Similarity with other online business websites.

To increase customer’s interest, your website must be different from other online business web pages. Visitors get easily bored if they browse and always see the same products, content, and pictures. In order for your online marketing to be successful, you should make your website distinguished from your other competitors. Always make use of unique online marketing ideas when creating your web pages, for it will matter a tremendous amount when trying to attract more potential customers.

Reason #3: Your website is confusing and inconvenient for visitors.

One of the reasons for using online marketing is to promote your products or services to your target audience on the internet. Having too many products, pictures, links, etc. in your web pages can cause confusion and a confused mind will take no action; thereby leaving you without the number of customers that you could and should attract with your online marketing efforts. Try to be simple and focus on a particular product or service with your website. Making sure your other products are in the background of the main product or service you would like to promote. A long navigation system will make people get tired of finding what they want and can cause them to prefer other convenient sites.

Reason #4: Your website is just a sales presentation.

Increasing your sales may result from online marketing, but you must not totally focus on sales alone. Online marketing will benefit you if you provide useful information about your business within your website and attract more potential and actual customers to purchase your products.or services. Most of the time sales do not arise from the first visit, so make use of your online marketing techniques such as providing free information, tips or newsletters to give visitors a reason to come back to visit your website.

Reason #5: Failure to set specific demographic targets.

With online marketing, setting a specific demographic target is very important because you will be more focused on what type of customers you want and what you must do to attract them. Failure to settle the target will increase the risk of failure when promoting your products, services or business; moreover you will not gain the full benefits of online marketing when it comes to increasing your sales and growing your business.

Reason #6: Unsecured ordering pages.

Security for any type of investment matters for almost everybody. Unsecured ordering pages will greatly cause your business to lose sales which contradicts the goals of effective online marketing. Numerous free secure ordering forms are made available on the internet, so this should never be an issue.

Reason #7: A lack of back links to your website as a useful strategy in effective online marketing.

Providing links leading back to your website from a high ranking web page will also give your site a high rank. Linking is the key to success in having your website found on the major search engines and will bring traffic to your website; therefore, increasing you number of potential and actual customers.

Reason #8: Lack of perseverance.

Most businesses fail online due to lack of persistence and giving up too soon. Online marketing will take a lot of time to fully succeed. It could even entail years to become a major player and to develop strong customer relationships, build partnerships and see financial rewards.

Reason #9: Insufficient follow-up.

Within any business following up with a prospect or customer is very important because it will provide you with more of the same types of results that your business desperately needs to grow. Online marketing often fails because many companies fall short in following up with its online visitors; thereby, stunting the growth of brand awareness.

Reason #10: No promoting your website.

Increasing the consumer awareness of your online business can leverage your success. Several online marketing elements and strategies can be used to promote your website, increase traffic and attract more customers. If you lack the funds to pay for promotions, you can use many free ways of advertising your business awareness online such as participating in forums, chats and submitting free links to search engines.

You will need all the help you can to survive in this competitive marketplace, so make use of the online resources you have to gain greater success with online marketing and learn from these failures. Prepare yourself properly and get ready to do what you must due because the success of your business online is in direct proportion to your knowledge gained from other’s mistakes.

By: Assassin Marketing

About the Author:

Marketing Warriors

Article Marketing

By: jamiehanson

Photo by Chris Greene

About the Author:

The idea behind creating a buyer persona is to understand the wants and needs of a common group of people. Once you understand what’s important to any particular customer group, you stand a much better chance of getting them to act on a marketing communication.

Defining the most prominent buyer personas for your target market is essential to understanding their specific needs and wants. Your marketing communications can be better targeted if they speak to the problems and issues experienced by your various personas.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you own a roofing company that targets commercial roofing jobs. By looking at your various customers, you realize you can group them into the following personas.

•    Real Estate Property Managers

•    Commercial Building Supervisors

•    Office Building Managers

•    Institutional Building Managers (schools, hospitals, etc.)

Each of these customer groups may have specific needs as it relates to roofing maintenance, replacement and repair. By learning as much as you can about these customer groups, you can better focus your core marketing message and promotional offers for building trust, credibility and profits. 

You may find your business only has a couple of buyer personas or you may find you have a dozen or so. The quantity is not important. What is important is your ability to define them clearly.

Defining Your Buyer Personas

The key to defining your buyer personas is to look at your customer data and find ways to group common characteristics. Pull up your favorite word processing program and start writing short biographies on your customer personas. Break your customers down into well defined buying categories as best you can. You don’t have to be perfect here, just do the best job with the current data you have. Buyer persona profiles can contain age, gender, income level, occupation, education level, hobbies, and anything else you can think of.

If you’re a B-to-B company, then it may make better sense for you to create corporate personas instead of buyer personas. A corporate persona can segment based on industry, number of employees, revenue levels, and any other characteristic that applies to your business.

Once you have defined your buyer persona categories, the next step is to actually write a short biography on each one. You are not describing any one particular customer, but a composite of all customers that make up that persona.

My website is designed for home-based and small business owners that want to increase their profits using strategic marketing techniques. Here’s an example of one of my buyer personas. Note that I have given the persona a title and have written a short composite biography.

The Local Brick-and-Mortar Business Owner

The Local Business Owner has a small business storefront in their community that does well. They are relatively happy with their earnings but have this nagging feeling that business could be double what it is now. They feel that they could market their business more but are reluctant to spend lots of money on direct mail. While they currently have a website, it is more of a static entity rather than a proactive tool in growing their business. They would love to start a comprehensive marketing program but need to be assured that their investment would produce the required results.

The Self-Starting WAHM

The Self-Starting WAHM is the creative Work-At-Home-Mom that has a small internet business she runs part-time. While she has done a great job and getting her business off the ground, she realizes that she needs help optimizing her web pages for the search engines and testing new offers to see which ones perform the best. With her limited work schedule, she knows she needs help but is hesitant to invest a large amount of money hiring a consultant. 

In the above two examples, do you see how I might change my marketing message depending on whether I was communicating to The Local Brick-and-Mortar Business Owner as opposed to the Self-Starting WAHM? My core marketing message and call-to-action would be very different.

You’re never quite done crafting your personas. As you learn more about your customers through surveys and other forms of feedback, you’ll be able to better define and create compelling messages that will connect directly with the needs and wants of each group.

Take the time to learn and build upon your Buyer Personas. It’s truly the first step in creating targeted high-impact communications.

By: Corte Swearingen

About the Author:Corte Swearingen, at various times in his career, has worked as a particle physicist, jazz pianist, composer, marketing manager, bird trainer, magician, metal bender, business development manager, piano tuner, and e-commerce director. He is the developer of the Integral Marketing System™ and CEO of SmallBiz Marketing Tips. For more information on personas, see The Buyer Persona.

As I push my shopping cart through the checkout aisle in my local grocery, something catches my eye, or should I say, several things catch my eye. Headlines screaming, “Lose 30 Lbs, the Easy Way”, “Get the Sizzle Back in the Bedroom” and “Health Tips in Prevention of Breast Cancer.” All of these people promising me a solution to every problem under the sun including world peace and living a longer life. What’s a girl to do? Of course! I purchase. I load the tantalizing magazines for that promise to answer my most prevalent problems onto the belt. I’ve got priorities you know.

In the meantime, my toddler is able to quickly grab a treat from the checkout stand on the other side while I am distracted, because of course they put the chocolate low enough for the kids to reach and take a bite into before I notice and now am forced to purchase! No wonder women buy over 80% of consumer purchases.

I recently came across these statistics from Catalyst Research and Lusk-Moore and Associates (LMA).

- Women are leaving corporations at twice the rate of men, many to start their own businesses.
- Women buy over 80% of consumer purchases, including over 50% of electronics, computers and investments.
- Women own 66% of home based businesses

Knowing this, who are you gearing your marketing ads to? The amount of women to men on the Internet is just about equal these days, yet I see so many opportunity ads geared towards men.

According to another article I was reading about marketing to women (although I have been saying this for years), Women (mid-20s to mid-50’s) don’t have a lot of time available to absorb the information. I am seeing more and more women these days discover the whole concept of getting their cake and eating it too. Things are reversing and a huge number of moms are working from home doing a balance act of running a home based business while being a mom to their children.

So offering smaller chunks of information for women to read likely will cut through the clutter they are juggling on a daily basis. These are things to remember when marketing to women for your products and services. Women don’t have a great deal of time, so make it pithy and offer something enticing to come back for more such as a bonus gift.

“Discover the Marketing Secrets of Successful Marketers!” 

Brad & Kelly Smith are founders of Mindset Marketing, mentors and leaders in Mentors in Motion, Master Key System and Amigo Health. They share their passion and knowledge of the industry within the past 5 years with others in Success.