7 Sins Committed Online

This will be short and sweet – but could save you a sack of woe and a ton of money.

I have a partner called Al. I hate him, because he does what he does in the country in Devon – far from the filth and smoke of the metropolis.

What he does is help people get better results online; and what never ceases to amaze me, and him, is that out of all the dumb things you can do, practically everyone seems to favour seven in particular.

Any one of them can cripple your business; whilst if you commit them all, well, it will end up stone dead.

Here they are:
1. Not using all the ways you can to get people to your site.

• Search engine optimisation
• Pay per click (Adwords etc.)
• Online PR
• Blogging
• Affiliate programmes
• Links exchange
• Emails and Viral
• Banners, Pop-ups, Pop-Unders
• SMS
• Offline and other digital media
• …or anything you can think of!

2. Talking about yourselves and how wonderful you are instead of your prospects and the wonderful things you can do for them. (Read out what it says on your home page. Is it flatulent puffery about you – or clear facts about how you help people?)

3. Not making sure that wherever people land on your site there is something helpful for them (there’s no rule that says they must land on your home page).

4. Not offering something valuable that lets you capture their names so you can follow them up.

5. Not following them up until they give in or tell you to stop. One of my clients sends out 118 follow-ups – because he knows that people buy when it suits them, not when it suits you.

6. Not tracking – which is insane when Google and others make it possible for little or nothing. But just as fatal, not doing anything intelligent with the information when you get it.

7. Not testing. Why guess when you can know?

There are many other dumb things people do, but those seven will just about do enough to ruin you.

After he read this Al (who knows more about this than I do) added three more.

They are:

8. People being too damn coy to put themselves on their site. Video sells. Use it. Or if not, try audio

9. Self indulgent intros and pointless animations that do nothing to push the prospect nearer to doing what you want.

10. Not getting someone who knows nothing about the subject to jump on their site to see if they understand what you’re talking about, what you want them to do and why they should do it.

All this is basic direct marketing – but most business people are too idle or stupid to study marketing at all, which makes it easy for the rest of us.

– Drayton