What Happens When You Follow the Wrong Online Marketing Advice?

The chances are good, if you read our articles on an ongoing basis, that you’re here looking to learn more about the best ways to promote your company and grow your business online.

Because most of our advice (and real-world experience) focuses on building sites that are easy to find and generate inbound leads, it’s only natural that we would devote most of our mental firepower to those topics.

But, what happens if you ignore our guidance and follow the wrong marketing advice? What are the consequences, really, if you choose to take a gamble on what’s out there and go for the quick and easy tactics that we are always trying to get marketers to stay away from?

This isn’t a completely academic question. In the same way that parents feel compelled to teach kids about the dangers of doing drugs instead of going to school, it could be argued that it is our duty as successful online marketing professionals to share the other side of the story. In other words, we shouldn’t talk about the opportunities without also discussing the risks.

So, in case you’ve ever wondered, here are the three things that happen most often when you gamble on the wrong kinds of online marketing advice:

1. Your website is virtually nonexistent.

We say virtually because your pages might well be real and visible for anyone who happens to find them. The only problem, though, is that no one ever does. In this day and age, where your website is competing against literally billions of others, having a site does nothing for you – without the right kinds of promotion and attention-grabbing, very, very few people are ever going to stumble across your pages by accident.

If your online marketing plan isn’t strong enough (or worse, you are being blacklisted or ignored by Google and the major social media sites), then you might as well not have a site at all. That’s a pretty big disadvantage to entertain in any competitive situation.

2. You’re always stuck looking for the next gimmick.

As we have noted in the past (and probably will keep doing so again and again), tricks and gimmicks don’t make for successful online marketing plans. To the degree that they ever work at all, the traffic you’ll find will be short-lived, and the long-term consequences make it not worth the trade.

So, low-end Internet marketing companies make their living by churning from one client to the next and moving through a succession of gimmicks that rarely ever work for more than a few weeks or so. You don’t want to bet the future of your company on that level of thinking.

3. You “do” a lot, but nothing ever happens.

In some ways, this can be the worst fate of all. That’s because web design companies that think they’re doing the right thing will often load their clients up with every web marketing tactic or strategy under the sun, but fail to execute any of them in a common-sense way that ties them together. As a result, the client is always doing “more,” and paying more for it, but never seeing the kinds of results they had in mind when the campaign started.

Adding insult to injury, businesses are often afraid to switch agencies or make changes at this point, because decreasing the level of activity seems like a step backward, something that seems risky when results already aren’t up to par.

Are there other (or even worse) things that can happen when you put your trust in the wrong kind of agency? Of course. From experience, though, we can tell you that these three situations are a lot more common than they should be and that they cost North American businesses billions of dollars every year.

If you’re serious about using the Internet as a tool to create inbound leads and new sales opportunities, then it’s time to stop thinking about tactics and gimmicks, and start looking for results. Contact a member of our team today and let us show you how to take the first steps.