Get ready to feel defensive, because I have you pegged, and I am going to tell you what you are doing wrong. I am going to share seven (of many) things that suck about your marketing efforts. These are things that you are doing wrong, or not doing at all which suck so bad it is like a vacuum cleaner pulling money right out of your pocket. I am not telling you how terrible you are at your marketing just so you can pout about it and leave nasty comments on my blog. I am telling you this so you can stop going broke and making bad excuses for your failures. Note that I am also not telling you this to sell you a solution, because if you are screwing these things up, you are probably not in my target audience. I get paid for my work, and if you are screwing up this badly, you cannot afford me.

Got it? OK then, pick up your bottom lip and stop drooling on yourself about all the money you are going to earn with this new information. I am not giving you the keys to the kingdom. I am just going to try and help your marketing to suck less. So let’s stop sucking and start fixing some of your marketing screw-ups.

Think about paper clips for a moment. They are about the most basic thing you will find in your desk drawer. When you consider your marketing, try to imagine selling paper clips. You probably do not think much about what brand you are buying when you need to replenish your paper clip supply. This is likely true of your product or service, too. Unless people have a good reason to remember you, it will be a lot harder to grow your paper clip market share and to become more prosperous.

If you challenged multiple companies with a truckload of paper clips to sell, somebody would sell out sooner than the rest. One would almost surely hit their stride and empty that truckload of paper clips before the others, and there must be a reason.

People search for the craziest things online. Looking at your website statistics to see the searches people use to find your website can be an eye-opener. I discover thousands of bizarre and unexpected searches which lead people to my websites, and some of them quite useful. This can be quite entertaining, and also very beneficial for understanding people and the ways they search.

I constantly hear from people begging to be at the top of search engine results for specific terms. I often find that the things they want to rank for are about as well researched and thought out as balancing a three ton hippopotamus on a popsicle stick above your grandmother’s fine China collection. There are two problems with this: 1.) Somebody is going to get hurt. 2.) It does not work well, mathematically.

Most website owners do not have a clue about how to select the search terms to target, or even what people are already using to find their website. Even fewer know how to target useful search terms, or anything at all about the enormous value of lateral keywords which can often account for far more website traffic than the terms they desire. This is to your advantage, because now you do have a clue. You can thank me with your comments.

As a kid, I recall many times when good thinking would elude me. Those were the times when my father would say, “Do I have to draw you a picture?” Dad got pretty good at drawing when I was a kid. Now that I am a dad, I often find myself drawing pictures, too. These days, we call this kind of pictures “infographics” (informational graphics). I drew one for you, plus an alternate just in case.

Why the Infographic?

There is a constant challenge for marketers to explain the process of social media marketing and search engine optimization. The many various Internet marketing methods and tools which we use cannot be summed up in just one infographic. However, I believe that this infographic provides an explanation of the job sufficient for most clients, while not overwhelming them with information.

I talk to a lot of people. I have some amazing friends, with amazing perspective. The wise ones are not afraid to talk about recession, and brainstorm ways to improve their respective place in this recession.

You are a bit scared, right? I hope so, because you should be. If you have just consumed a small fraction of reality over the past couple years, you have certainly noticed something different about people’s spending habits. Lines at restaurants are shorter, and lines at homeless shelters are longer. Let’s not sugar-coat it. Shit hit the fan and business is harder to come by these days.

I was taught that it is not nice to call somebody a liar, but if you hear these things from a search engine optimizer, there is a good chance they are lying to you. They are either lying about the facts, or lying that they know the job of SEO. In either case, it is unreliable information that can cost companies a lot of money and can have some disastrous results.

Let’s have some fun and review these common lies told by SEO. If you have stories to tell, please add your experience in the comments of this blog post.

SEO Lie Number One: Meta Tags

One of the most common lies I have ever heard is when the SEO says, “You just need some keyword meta tags to improve your ranking.” The truth is that meta descriptions are important, but the keywords tag is mostly meaningless. Meta tags are a minor part of SEO and if somebody tells you that adding meta tags is your answer, they are lying to you. Here is some more information on the topic: “SEO Meta Tags: Oh, You Must Be Another SEO Expert!”

SEO Lie Number Two: Search Engine Submissions

Here is one of my favorite SEO lies. The SEO says something like “We will submit your website to 40,000 search engines and directories.” This is not only an ineffective thing to do, it can also be very damaging when your website links are in a bunch of penalized websites called “link farms”.

If you just must submit your website somewhere to make you feel productive, submit it to DMOZ and Yahoo! Otherwise, leave it to the search engines. They will find you if you have something that other people believe is worth linking to.

Never trust the SEO who sells directory submissions and pink ponies. REF: SEO Directory Submissions and Pink Ponies For Sale

I share a lot of information about marketing topics and SEO (search engine optimization), but I realize that many people still wonder if SEO is real or just make believe. I have a pretty good idea of why this is the case, and I will share that with you. It is usually due to a history of low return on investment (ROI) for their SEO efforts, or a fear of low ROI for future SEO efforts. This pretty well covers it in basic terms.

Let’s face it, if you knew that you could hand a dollar to the search engine optimizer and they would hand you three dollars back, you would go to great lengths to get your hands on more dollars … to hand over to the SEO. So, what in this world would ever hold you back from that? I will venture an experienced guess. It is mostly a concern of whether you can actually see a return on investment, right? You want to know there is profit in the future, before you spend money on something you may or may not fully understand.

A big step to achieving this good math I speak of is to use mathematical logic in your marketing and stop fussing about low budgets, drained bank accounts, or anything else outside of these more important numbers of how to grow your profit. You see, this math will be lost on deaf ears unless you can overcome your own obstacles surrounding effective marketing. If it is mathematically sound, and a better answer for your business, it is your job to do what it takes to achieve better results.

Wouldn’t it be great if all of your marketing efforts worked just exactly as planned? Just imagine how great it would be if every piece of marketing material that you put on the Internet or elsewhere was a smash hit. That would be amazing! You could cut your expenses, earn squillions of dollars, enjoy more leisure, and retire early.

Now rub your eyes, grab another cup of coffee, stop daydreaming, and get to work. This is the real world, and we welcome you to come back and join us.

Nobody is brilliant 100 percent of the time. Some people come closer than others, but none of us walk on moonbeams while tending to our herd of unicorns. It is just not going to happen, but that should not discourage you from trying.

What is more important than creating 100 percent brilliance is to keep trying and testing new things. Even the least glamorous of your marketing efforts can have some level of success. This is more important to remember on the Internet than any other place. If you are holding back your efforts because it doesn’t peg your spectacular-ometer, you will miss out on a lot of what makes your brand what it is. Like any brand, your brand is made up of people … people and their opinions. These people are not all the same, and even some of your bottom percentile marketing efforts will be appealing to some of them.

Have you been here before? I do not just mean here at my blog, but have you been faced with questions or doubts about your efforts. Maybe you question whether people understand the intent and purpose of your blog, or maybe you question the intent and purpose of the blogs you read. These are legitimate considerations for a lot of bloggers, whether producers or readers.

I am a big proponent of blogging. In fact, if you just google “reasons to blog”, you can see that I am practically a poster child for the benefits of blogging. If you need encouragement, I suggest giving my list of “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” a thorough read. If you need blogging tools, I would recommend “6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers“.

Let’s face it, great blogging is hard work. I have actually considered making a video of my steps to produce a blog article, but then I want to break my own fingers just to avoid the temptation of all the video editing on top of the other efforts.

What does it take to produce a blog article? Here is a one-sentence rundown for you: I get a bright idea, then I research, write, print, proofread, edit, print, give it to an editor, edit again, find a graphic, edit the graphic, categorize it, tag it, keyword it, write a description, produce an excerpt, record a podcast, upload podcast, tag the podcast, preview the article, edit it, preview it again, publish it, tweet it, facebook it, linkedin it, stumble it, reddit it, ping it, diigo it, mixx it delicious it, then watch my web stats and keep my fingers crossed while hoping that some people will digg it, stumble it, facebook it, and etecetera.

Shoppers lie. It happens all the time that they say they want one thing, but the truth is actually quite different. This happens because most shoppers feel a bit insecure about their purchases. Just picture yourself walking into an auto dealership to understand this better. You probably make up reasons to say “no” before you even drive on the lot. It is how consumers “protect themselves”, and it is rooted in cynicism. People want to buy things on their terms, and not the seller’s terms, and if that means they have to lie, they will often lie.

I am not going to call everybody a liar. No, I am not going to do that. What I will say is that during the purchase process, there are often things which are not exactly as they seem. This begins in the very earliest steps to a purchase, and it is the marketer’s job to overcome those smokescreens. We do this in many ways, including fact-finding about our market to better understand the ideal customer and how to meet their objectives. We perform careful propensity modeling to determine exactly who to target. Then we create a strong call-to-action to entice customers to take action now, before they can dream up another lie to help excuse themselves from committing to the sale/purchase.

It should not be surprising that much of this process is made far more difficult by trying to market to the wrong people. A lot of marketing efforts miss the target miserably by skipping the research and trying to sell to people who are only marginally interested in the offering.