This straight talk, blunt “reader’s digest” blog post is about Internet Marketing for people who prefer short, over-simplified sound bites as their main information source.

1. Most websites don’t work because their text, pictures, presentation, and conversion strategy is pathetic.  A lot of website content is created on a DIY basis by people who slept through English composition and literature in school and have no marketing/sales training.
2. Most websites don’t get significant targeted traffic because there is no effective SEO in place. Many website owners think all you have to do is use a highly competitive keyword as a meta-tag and mention it a couple of times in a web page and you end up on page #1 in Google – not!
3. Are you still in the print Yellow Pages? If yes…why? Do you enjoy throwing your money away?  Get with the new program and use Google Places (Google Maps) and equivalent and invest your wasted YP budget into SEO or PPC.
4. Many businesses miss major opportunities because they refuse to invest in search PPC ads.  Or they invest on a DIY basis and waste a lot of money with an ineffective approach.  Google wants you to succeed with PPC (Google AdWords), but will take your money either way.
5. As a business tool, Social Media works best for B2C companies, but it also works for B2B businesses. But in either case SocNets only works well if you use them correctly – most companies do not.  Social is not where you use ad copy as your post content. It is where you go to participate, listen, network, contribute, and link from. And by-the-way, learn how to separate your personal SocNet page from your business page; prospects don’t care about your vacation or that your kid scored a goal at the soccer game.
6. Geo and demographically targeted online display ads (AKA banner ads) are a direct (and better) measureable replacement for print ads.  But many businesses still devout a lot of money to placing ads in print media where they have no clue if it is doing any good or not – chances are it is not.
7. Email campaigns are still the lowest cost, most effective way to reach a targeted audience. The key is your email address list.  Most businesses aren’t disciplined about creating an email address list; are bewildered about how to get a list; or undervalue their list if they have one. And don’t get me started about ineffective email message content – same problem as with item #1 above.

Internet Marketing has high business value if done right and you understand the new normal in advertising.  But if you cling to spending your ad budget in traditional media channels while viewing the Internet as a game for amateurs where DIY is good enough, then do yourself a favor and get a professional Internet Marketing consultant – he will pay for himself. Otherwise just donate your ad budget to a worthy cause where it will do some good.