Triune Designs Blog: Web Design, Development, & Marketing

My little guy hanging out in the shower.

I was giving my two year old a bath, and as sometimes occurs, he urinated in the water. It was at the end of his bath anyway so I figured it was time for him to get out. As I was getting the towel I warned my little guy not to drink the water (as he frequently tries to do) because of the fact that he had just peed in it. Despite this warning he tried to drink the water forcing me to abruptly stop him.

So what does this have to do with web marketing? Well, I began to think of our clients and the advice we give them when incorporating a web marketing campaign (or known to us as Web 2.M). I have noticed that on occasion, our recommendations are not followed and our clients’ efforts are thus hindered.

So in an effort to bring about action, here are a few important reminders of marketing pitfalls to avoid (not listed in order of importance):

1. Avoid the gobbledygook – Think of gobbledygook as the cliche terms, jargon and other words that basically do nothing for your product but “make you sound very, very important.” And we all know how much we like those people who try to make themselves seem more (smarter, powerful, religious, popular, etc.)…just plain annoying. (And a big thank you to David Meerman Scott for searing the term gobbledygook into my brain.)

2. Avoid having a small, stagnant website – Essentially a small, stagnant website is just a like a billboard along the internet highway that you saw 50 miles ago, but even less effective. Having a constantly updated, fresh and growing website is what you need for a strong marketing campaign. Your fresh website is like having continuous good, juicy news about your company that the town crier and gossips cannot wait to talk about to everyone else.

3. Do Not Ignore Inbound Links – Inbound links are so vital to a good marketing strategy that you cannot ignore needing them. Google (yes, that Google) places such a high importance on inbound links that they actually incorporate them into their search engine ranking system. If you completely ignore inbound links you might as well save yourself some time and abandon any type of web marketing effort at all. For more information on that, check out Hubspot’s article on Google’s PageRank.

Avoid these web marketing pitfalls and you stand to help your marketing efforts exponentially over the course of time. Conversely, falling into these pitfalls is more like drinking the pee-filled bathwater after having been warned.

Tags: SEO, Web Marketing, web marketing