Marketing Gurus Revealed: The White Lies You’re Being Told (and how to avoid them)

Build a website and new customers will come. Get on Twitter & Facebook and people will be banging down your door to do business with you. Get to page one of Google now and your business will explode with sales.

It’s what you want to hear right? In a lot of ways, it’s exactly what the market is pushing for. And the more people buy into it, the more failure to succeed with marketing online that we see.

Below are the top 3 lies we hear clients being told by “Internet Marketing Guru’s”.

We See You’re Not Found On Google

So there are multiple problems with this statement and each one of them a problem in itself. First, there is no guarantee that you can get to or for that matter can stay on page one of Google for any search term. However, there is a great probability in getting to page one for keywords that no one else cares to be on page one for! Hmmm…ponder that one. In other words, anyone guaranteeing to get you to page one for a search term anymore has full intentions of going after non-competitive keywords or not specifying a keyword at all.

Secondly, not all keywords are created equal. Traffic should not be your primary objective when engaging in search engine optimization. The key here is quality traffic. When we say quality traffic – this goes beyond high enough search volume on a highly relevant keyword. This speaks right to the psychology of human purchasing behaviour and more specifically what stage of the buying process the user is currently at. Are they simply surfing out of curiosity for information, completing product research (one of the most common uses of the web for the buying consumer), product comparison shopping, or searching for a deal?

Ideally, you want to be found through all of these stages providing a repetitive message, but often budgets cannot afford this. Therefore your strategy must take into account the traffic you are receiving.

You Have To Be On Facebook

Social Media for business is a waste of time….if you approach it blindly! That’s exactly how you’ll feel too if you don’t have a strategy and milestones with measurements in place before you attack it. The truth is – most businesses are failing at social media, and racing to be one of the crowd is probably not in your best interest. Should you start to get involved? Absolutely! Should you be everywhere and pound away at it? Absolutely not!

• Related: What is the Right Social Media Network for Your Business?

Build It And They Will Come

Probably one of my favourites. Although I think I am hearing it less often as more and more businesses start to understand there is a lot more to web marketing than a website. Build it and they will come simply doesn’t work. Even the biggest brands in the world have to shout it out loud! As I said though – this problem is quickly diminishing and being replaced with “I don’t like it” – the design that is. All I’ll say on this for now is – would you run an unattractive newspaper ad if it worked 100X better than a graphically pleasing advertisement that you liked?

The Best Internet Marketing Guru’s Promise Of All!

I know that there are so many misleading promises being made out there, and I’m sure that there are many I haven’t heard – so let me know in the comments some of the promises you’ve heard.