MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Learn How to Market and Promote Your Website

Top 2 Mistakes Made by Newbies

Not a single day goes by without receiving an email where our clients and readers ask us how they can better market and promote their website.  So, let me share some advice with you that I hope will help you on How to market and promote your website successfully. 

Here are the top two mistakes that I see new online marketers make when they first start marketing and promoting their website.

Mistake Number 1: The Shot Gun Approach

Many new online marketers start out by doing a little bit of everything.  However, there are far to many options and choices on how to promote and market your website online.  I could litterally give you a list of hundreds of things that you can start doing today.  However, that is exactly the wrong thing to do! 

What you really need to promote your website better do is to figure out what is going to have the single biggest impact on moving your business forward and focus only on that.  Forget all the noise and all the clutter and focus your attention. 

There are two key benefits of focusing on what matters most:

Benefit 1: Over time, you will get really good at the things that you focus on.  If you are trying too many things, you will probably know about a lot of things but not be very good at anything. 

Benefit 2: Focus gives you clarity.  If you lack a plan and a strategy of what items to zero in on, then you will feel overwhelmed and helpless.  However, once you focus, you know exactly what you need to do to move your business forward.

How do you figure out what to focus on to better promote and market your website?   Almost always they will be:

To get traffic focus on:

1. Paid traffic (such as Pay-per-click advertising)
2. Free traffic (SEO, blogging, etc.)
3. Affiliate marketing (do this only after you know you have a site that sells!)

The trick, however, is to figure out what to focus on within each area and here the 80/20 rule is critical.  This rule means that 20% of the activities and work will get you 80% of the result. 

As Dave McClure pointed out in our article on "Successful Website Marketing" there is another way and that is that you have to master "viral marketing."  I think Dave is dead on and will get back to you on what it takes to succeed with viral marketing. 

Mistake Number 2: No tracking and metrics

I just can't say this enough:

"You can only improve the things that you measure.  If you have no metrics it is like driving at night without the lights on - you have no idea where you are going."

We just started working with a new client on Google AdWords and when I asked him how his website is converting he said "I don't know."  To me that is just shocking because tracking is not that hard and it is so important.

If you run a business and you cannot answer this simple question, then stop right now and get your metrics and tracking in place.  If you don't know your metrics then you are gambling.  You might be successful for a while but you will have no means to test, tweak, and rapidly optimize and improve your site.

The key to successfully running a business is to:

1. Find out what's working and do more of it!
2. Find out what's not working and stop doing it!

If you lack the metrics to find out what's working and what's not working then you will have a much harder time turning your new venture into a successful business.

Plus, metrics can be incredibly motivating because they help you to set concrete and specific goals that you can visualize and start moving towards. 

How to Market and Promote Your Website is a very broad question so I hope listing two mistakes that newbies make will help you avoid making these mistakes with your venture. 

If you want to start dabling with pay-per-click advertising and Google AdWords then check out these articles to continue learning more about Google AdWords.

• 5 Days to Success With Google AdWords
• Definitive Guide to Google AdWords

• Avoid Getting Burnt With Google AdWords

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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