Common ways people waste their Marketing Dollars!

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Article by MARKET YOUR WEB

4.	Spending money for Links when you don't have an Online Marketing Plan.

Why? Paying for Links is to improve Page Rank, however it seldom results in a genuine increase in traffic. The old adage of "Make a Plan, Work the Plan" holds true. If you don't have a Marketing Plan how do you know the best strategy for marketing your web site? Page Rank is not the Holy Grail. It's definitely important for many web site strategies, but there are different ways to "Acquire" PR. Perhaps reciprocal links might be a more appropriate method for your needs.

If you still want to pay for your links, here are some things to take into consideration:

-	Do you know what is the Page Rank of the page, and not the web site, that your links are being put on?
-	Is the page relevant to your site?
-	How many links are you sharing with on that page?
-	Is it part of a link farm?
-	Are the links written with scripts rather than straight html?
-	Is the link text just your url or your keywords?

Basically, are you getting bang for your buck? And since you don't have a marketing plan, what do you consider sufficient "Bang for your Buck"?

5.	In fact, spending any money on Marketing your Website without a Plan.

Why? It's no different from a "Bricks and Mortar" business. Would you go and spend $1,000 on an ad in a magazine unless you new a) what you expected to get in return and b) if that was inline with your budget? I don't just mean a 4" by 8" 4 colour ad on the inside cover, but exposure to 40,000 of your target audience sitting on their coffee table for a year.

There are lots of pieces of software on the web to help you market your site. some are free, some cost LOTS, some could be very relevant to you, others may be totally redundant. A few examples of such types of software:

-	Automatically find relevant sites to link to with auto generated email requests.
-	Tracking software, where's your customer been and going, what brought them to your site.
-	Creating and testing your salesletters (taguchi testing).

Know your ROI - Return On Investment - or at least what you want it to be.

6. Setting up your PPC Campaign and just leave it to run unmonitored.

Why? The cost to list your ads over time just keeps going up (that or your ad disappears).

It's all demand based: the more web site owners that set up PPC campaigns and choose specific keywords, the more expensive those keywords become - it's a bidding war. There are only so many keywords that will be relevant to your product and your competitors will go for them just as you do. So if you leave your campaign running, the price you pay for your keywords just keeps rising.

Unlike the concept of Google which places your ad based on how often people click on you, Overture enables you to bid on the position of your ad. It is possible to set your ad to appear at the top of listings automatically. Naturally the higher your listing, the more it costs. Unfortunately Overture is in the enviable position where you and I just keep bidding up the price to be first on the list. So my point is, that if you set yourself up to always be first, and leave your campaign running, the cost of each click thru will just keep rising in your absence.

And if you aren't worried, because your click thrus aren't on a big scale, beware some PPC sites have minimum payment requirements. Even if your account doesn't accrue enough clicks in a month they will bill you a certain amount. Be Vigilant!

In Summary

Have a Plan

- So you know where you want traffic from.

- So you know what type of links you need and how many.

- So you know your budget - TIME and Money

Do things manually

- Submit to search engines manually.

- Ask for links manually.

Monitor the results - make sure that's in your Budget too!

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About the Author: Blair Ballard is founder of the MARKET YOUR WEB group. His experience spans from that of Corporate Project Manager to Webmaster for a Non Profit organisation. http://www.marketyourweb.com.

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Market your Web

Common ways people waste their Marketing Dollars!

Article by MARKET YOUR WEB

Spending money for Links when you don't have an Online Marketing Plan.

In fact, spending any money on Marketing your Website without a Plan.

6. Setting up your PPC Campaign and just leave it to run unmonitored.