Ian Lurie of Portent Interactive wrote piece for ImediaConnection where he outlines the five biggest online marketing mistakes. I’m going to paraphrase them here.

Here they are:

1. Thinking That Keyword Advertising Is Everything. Ian points out that a being in the top 10 search results is just as powerful as an ad that costs $5. Remember, people only click on a paid result 20% of the time anyway.

Instead of focusing exclusively on keyword advertising, you have to strike a balance with organic search, eNewsletters, email, blogs, and all the other marketing vehicles available on the web today. Utilize the entire universe of options and you will lower your overall cost per click.

2. Thinking Cool Design Equals Good Marketing. Instead of building a cool site with a 45 second flash intro that appeals to the execs and web designers, you need to build a site that addresses the needs of your visitors.

Remember that your customers want have an intelligent conversation with you, where you exchange information, discover their needs, and offer solutions. If a Flash animation helps accomplish that goal, fine. Otherwise, focus on solving your customer’s problem, and leave out the fancy graphics.

3. Ignoring Measurement. The web gives us plenty of tools to measure our success and learn more about our visitors and customers.

At the very least you need to learn how to use basic site analysis tools like awstat. As Ian points out:

At my seminars, I’ll ask the audience how many of them know how to find simple web traffic statistics like page views. Sometimes not a single hand is raised.

4. Ignoring Return on Investments. This one always fascinated me too. Most business people measure ROI a hundred different ways on most other expenses, but throw it out the window when it comes to the web and online marketing.

Even though your web geniuses may tell you that it’s impossible to measure success (I’ve been in the room countless times when the marketing weenies make this claim), it’s actually not all that difficult.

The great thing about the Internet medium unlike just about any other is that you can analyze, adjust and advance based on what you learn.

5. Assuming that Meta-Tags Can Help With Search Engine Optimization. - This seems like a smaller mistake than the others, but Ian must have put it in because it annoys him much.

I was all ready to argue this one, but the point is this:

you need to look at code, title tags, and site structure all together to have any real impact on search results. Take code. Well-written HTML code is at least half the battle, because smart HTML is more easily crawled by search engines. Clean HTML also brings your body content closer to the top of the coded page, which definitely provides a boost. And clean HTML code minimizes the chance that you’ll have something on your page that stops a search engine in its tracks, or gets you banned as a suspected unscrupulous marketer.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 8:07 pm.
Filed under Internet Marketing, Your Site.
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