Common Marketing Mistakes

What do I mean by bounce rate mistakes? The bounce rate is typically what analysts note as the percent of people that come to your website and then almost immediately hit the back button.  When they “bounce” off they’re considered part of the bounce rate.

But most people look at the term incorrectly and start talking about bounce rate mistakes if your bounce rate is too high. Some even think Google cares about the bounce rate.  (more…)

One common marketing mistake small businesses seem to make is not leveraging operations activities for marketing purposes. As I highlighted in my “Dog the Bounty Hunter” story, the average, ordinary things that you do can be used as marketing.

I recently took a trip to Costa Rica, a fabulous country, and had opportunity to zipline with the Titi Canopy Tour group in La Foresta (outside of Manual Antonio National Park). The ziplining was fantastic. It wasn’t the scenery as much as the ride that really makes ziplining cool. And the crew at Titi Canopy Tours make everyone comfortable and safe each and every time. They are a class act.

But, they’re not making as much money as they could be. . . (more…)

Today I experienced a Ruby Tuesday Marketing mistake. You might consider it an operations mistake or just a miscommunication, but you’d be wrong. While birthday promotions involve the restaurant staff and the operations department, they are a type of “rewards program” designed by the marketing folks.

Today’s my birthday so I took a couple of my friends to Ruby Tuesday so I could get one of those fabulous handcrafted burgers. (You get a handcrafted burger on your birthday for free!) I checked my e-mail for a coupon from their SoConnected email club, but didn’t get anything. So I took my driver’s license that showed my birth date. (more…)

I'm not sure what the most common affiliate marketing mistakes are, but I saw an article by Jeff Herring today that clearly illuminated a big one. Jeff Herring (as he…

One of the classic marketing mistakes you'll see over and over is the inability of marketers to see the world from their customers' point of view. I was driving home…

One of the biggest mistakes in internet marketing is failing to understand the true nature of your conversion rate.

Conversion rate is such a lousy term, but for many business owners it has come to mean profit.

Unfortunately, businesses that want to provide you with internet marketing services will use the term conversion rate to get your attention and sell you services. But that’s precisely what you don’t want to hear. (more…)

I was told this week that “Hey” was the most successful subject line used in the Obama campaign.

The one that always gets me to open is “Got time for dinner this week?” As long as the guy is seriously saying let’s go to dinner, I’m totally fine opening those. I’d be upset if a marketer used that to get me to open an email about autoresponders.

Are you testing your subject lines? Did you know that in most email clients you can send a second email to the people who didn’t open the first? That means you could test your subject line.

I know in MyEmma (an email service like Constant Contact), they rolled our subject line testing this week. I love that!
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How many of you have thought about surveying your audience? I’m betting all of you have thought about it, but do you know how? Asking questions is great, but do you really know what you need to know?

Here are the top survey marketing mistakes people make when putting one together: (more…)