What an amazing bunch of people Internet marketers are. You would think that businesses who use the Internet to market their products would be using a whole host of online resources. But you would be wrong.

Shocked and amazed - that's what you will be when you take a look at the chart on the right showing the online marketing methods used by Internet marketers. What you will notice is that of the wide range of online marketing methods not one of them is used by more than half of the Internet marketers in the survey. Email marketing is the most commonly used - and that's only used by 46% of Internet marketers. Just over a third of Internet marketers optimise their web sites - meaning that most don't. Equally, the vast majority of online businesses don't even analyse their Internet performance.

Whilst it's not such a surprise that few online marketers user podcasts, blogs or webinars, it is frankly draw jopping to discover that so few people use even the most basic online marketing technologies. What this study confirms is that the vast majority of so-called "Internet marketers" simply produce a web site and then "hope" that it will produce some income for them. Well Rick Page wrote a book called "Hope is not a strategy", yet it would seem that this is precisely the strategy used by most Internet marketers.

What this means is that even with the simplest of Internet marketing strategies you can outwit your competitors who clearly appear to be relying on hope and luck to achieve success. So here is what to do:

• Write even the most basic plan for your marketing


• Select online marketing methods, such as email, blogging, podcasting etc., that will be suitable for your target market


• Establish a schedule of online marketing activities; timetable your emails, podcasts and so on


• Collect data about your online marketing activities and use that information to optimise your web site

In all honesty it's not that difficult to sell stuff online - unless, of course, you just chuck together a web site and then wait - expecting your customers to do all the work for you. Successful online businesses work at it; stop hoping.

Labels: internet marketing

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