When marketing your product or service, you need to have a firm understanding of your audience, the message you want to deliver, the offer you're willing to make, and the optimal timing for your marketing campaign.
Too often novice marketers, even marketing veterans, make costly mistakes that result in poor performance of their marketing campaign. Common marketing mistakes can be avoided with adequate planning, attention to detail, and ongoing measurement and evaluation.
If you're considering a traditional marketing campaign, an Internet marketing campaign, or something that's never been tried before, be sure to avoid these common marketing mistakes.
1. Timing. You may have a great list, a fantastic offer, and even a well designed marketing piece, but if your timing is off, so too will be your results. As an experienced marketer, I have seen some very expensive marketing campaigns that were very compelling but failed to produce results. This is because the campaign reached consumers at a time in which they had no interest in buying the product. For example, trying to sell snow shovels in July would not be considered good timing.
2. Failure to Test Your Headline. As the first thing your prospect usually reads, the headline is essential for luring your prospective buyer into the message, your offer, and the action you want them to take. Regardless of the medium, you should continually test your headlines (or subject lines) by running split tests and evaluating response. This ensures that your marketing message attracts the largest number of prospective buyers.
3. Failure to Test Your Offer. In direct marketing, the offer is directly correlated to 40% of your response. If you have the right offer, people respond. There are other factors to consider as well, but providing a compelling offer is required in most instances. Offers can range from discounts to "hurry while supplies last", but the commonality remains. Test your offers for optimizing response.
4. Having a Good List. Having the best offer and award-winning design is not enough. For many types of marketing campaigns, success is directly tied to having a targeted list. With today's sophisticated list generation tools, you can acquire lists that are highly segmented based on demographics, psychographics, buying behavior, and many other characteristics. The key here is not to be penny wise and pound foolish. If you're wondering where to invest your marketing dollars, spend them on developing a good house list (names you acquire on your own) or by renting/purchasing a well segmented marketing list.
5. Relying on a Single Communication. On average, consumers are hit with over 2,000 marketing messages everyday. In fact, recent studies have indicated that consumers need to see your marketing message an average of 12 times before they take notice. If there is any truth to the claim in part or in whole, it means that you must communicate to prospects on a regular basis. Placing a single ad in the newspaper or sending a single email cannot deliver effective results. Determine the media that prospects use to gather information and develop an ongoing campaign that works within your budget.
6. Not Measuring Campaign Effectiveness. Over time, your business is going to do a lot of marketing. Even if you are a small business wondering how you're going to communicate to a prospective audience, you're going to eventually have some type of communication. Regardless of the marketing campaign size or expense, you need to track your results. This can be done with a simple spreadsheet or a multi-million dollar CRM system. The bottom line is you need to record what works and what doesn't so that you can improve your results in the future.
7. Failure to Continue the Dialogue. After consulting for a number of large companies, I'm still amazed at how many fail to communicate to customers on an ongoing basis. Often times, consumers or businesses only hear from the seller when its time to buy again. If you have an established customer base, chances are you've worked hard to acquire them. You should be spending some of your marketing budget to retain them. Be sure to open a dialogue with customers, solicit their feedback, and communicate with them regularly. This will help to build your business over the long-term.
If you're new to marketing, have experience as a marketing professional, or simply want to improve your current marketing results, be sure to learn from the mistakes of others. To be successful, continually work towards improving your marketing effectiveness. Avoid the 7 most common marketing mistakes, and you're on your way to delivering tangible results.

Apa sih media sosial dan apa peran mereka dalam pemasaran?Pertama, mari kita bicara tentang apa yang media sosial. Sosial media merupakan alat murah yang digunakan untuk menggabungkan teknologi dan interaksi sosial dengan menggunakan kata-kata. Alat ini biasanya berbasis internet atau mobile. Beberapa bahwa Anda mungkin pernah mendengar tentang termasuk Twitter, Facebook, MySpace dan YouTube.
Media Sosial memberikan pemasar suara dan cara untuk berkomunikasi dengan rekan kerja, pelanggan dan konsumen potensial. Ini merekpersonal dan membantu Anda untuk menyebarkan pesan Anda dalam suasana yang santai dan cara percakapan.
Merebaknya ke media sosial, jika Anda dapat menyebutnya itu adalah bahwa ia harus menjadi bagian dari kehidupan sehari-hari Anda untuk menjaga momentum dan perhatian yang Anda butuhkan agar bisa sukses.

Jika Anda berpikir bahwa media sosial hanya untuk pemilik usaha kecil yang mencoba -coba, aku harus benar mengkoreksi anda. Berikut adalah beberapa perusahaan yang berhasil dalam memanfaatkan media sosial:

• Absolut Vodka - Online Video di YouTube dan Menggunakan Facebook lewat Halaman Top Bartender fan page.
• BMW - Memanfaatkan Facebook untuk mempromosikan 1-Series Road Trip mereka dan mereka telah menciptakan sebuah Page Rampenfest untuk penggemar.
• Dunkin Donuts - mereka telah menemukan nilai dalam media sosial dan mengatur account microblogging Twitter.
• Barack Obama - Dalam contoh, saya tidak bisa meninggalkan keluar masa depan Presiden Barack Obama. Dia telah dilihat sebagai pemimpin dalam penggunaan dari Twitter selama Pemilu Presiden. Dia telah lebih dari 170.000 pengikut dan mengikuti lebih dari 165.000. Secara pribadi saya ingat "Twitter buzz" selama Debat Presiden serta pemilihan.

•   Kita bisa menggunakan media sosial untuk memberikan identitas siapa kita dan produk atau jasa yang kami tawarkan.
•   Kami dapat membuat hubungan menggunakan media sosial dengan orang-orang yang mungkin tidak tahu tentang produk atau layanan atau apa yang mewakili perusahaan kami.
• Sosial media membuat kita "nyata" kepada konsumen. Jika Anda ingin orang mengikuti Anda tidak hanya bicara tentang berita produk terbaru, namun berbagi kepribadian Anda dengan mereka.
•  Kita dapat menggunakan media sosial untuk mengasosiasikan diri dengan rekan-rekan kami, yang dapat melayani pasar sasaran yang sama.
• Kita dapat menggunakan media sosial untuk berkomunikasi dan memberikan interaksi yang mencari konsumen.

1.   Anda tidak bisa hanya bergantung pada media sosial, Anda harus mengintegrasikannya dengan kendaraan lain pemasaran. Sementara media sosial akan menciptakan kesadaran, aku tidak yakin bahwa pada mulanya akan menjual satu juta dolar nilai produk. Itu tidak berarti bahwa satu hari setelah Anda membangun media sosial Anda "bintang" yang tidak akan, tapi mungkin tidak akan terjadi besok.
2.   Jadilah diri sendiri, mencerminkan kepribadian. Tidak ada tertulis "benar" atau "salah" aturan ketika datang ke media sosial, hanya Anda yang dapat menentukan apa yang akan bekerja untuk Anda.
3.   Jadilah konsisten, jika Anda tidak berencana untuk menjadi konsisten tidak melakukannya sama sekali - buang-buang waktu semua orang.

Increasing the performance of your online banner ads is essential for improving your Internet marketing ROI. By following these simple steps, you can optimize the performance of your banner ads and improve that rate at which prospective buyers take action.
1. Design Your Banner for Specific Sites.

Targeted marketing outperforms mass marketing 2 to 1. If you’re planning a specific banner advertising campaign, then chose a specific website where your prospects are visiting and design your banner for that website.
Banner ads that closely mirror the look and feel of the site upon which your ad is placed usually have the highest click-through rates. However, you may also try a design that is of stark contrast, to see if it produces greater results.
2. Animate Your Banner.

Research supports the fact that animated banners outperform static ones by a significant margin. This is because an animated banner is more likely to get noticed. There are various techniques you can employ such as blinking or movement when designing your banner. Try to stay away from static banners that only change when the page is reloaded.
3. Keep Copy Brief and Provocative.

Using words like “Free”, “Act Now”, “Click Here”, and so on are effective at getting a browser’s attention and encouraging them to click through to your offer. Try a number of different headlines or action verbs and see which results in the highest click-through rate.
4. Test multiple Design formats.

Create more than one version of your banner and numerous version types. The most complex banners (those which resemble Windows dialog boxes, scroll bars, submit buttons or blue-colored underlined hyperlinks) generally get the highest click-through rates. Some have even been known to receive more than 7%.

Test each banner for a period of 72 hours and see which has the greatest click through rate. Use this as your control and continue to experiment in an attempt to enhance your click-through rate by changing one element of the banner at a time. If you change multiple elements, and a change in click-through rate results, you won't know which element had the most significant impact. This is why it is important to take a slow and deliberate approach to updating your banner ad.
5. Use a Professional Graphic Artist.

Creating a banner ad today is much more complex than 3 years ago. You really want to source the creation of banners to a professional graphic artist. You can also visit some helpful sites with searchable databases of Marketing Experts like MarketingScoop.com or Elance.com to find a designer who can design a banner in the size you need it. It should cost you no more than $100 per banner and the results will be worth it.
6. Reduce The Graphic Weight of Your Banner.

If your banner is too heavy, it can reduce the speed at which a webpage loads. As a result, you can lose potential browsers of your banner ad. Attempt to make your banner file size less than 15k. Although this weight is a bit unrealistic for rotating banners, it’s a good benchmark.
7. Evaluate Performance Daily

Review the stats of your banner on a daily basis. Most banners show an average click-through rate of about .5%. These days, a traditional click-through rate of 2.0% is good, but sometimes difficult to achieve. If after 3 days, your banner hasn’t produced an acceptable return rate, then switch it out with another version.

Continue to optimize your banner by changing only one element at a time as discussed above. Also, be sure to advertise on multiple sites to see which produce the highest click-through but also the highest ROI. Some sites generate a lot of clicks but no-one buys. Obviously you want to reallocate your spend to those that show the highest click-through rate AND conversion.
Summary

By leveraging these simple banner secrets, you can make your web banners really perform. Be sure to use these techniques for online advertising buys as well as affiliate advertising. Wherever your message is posted, get prospective customers to click-through and take action.

In addition to optimizing your banners, focus on optimizing your landing pages. Just as banners benefit from compelling copy and design, so do landing (offer) pages. As described above, begin by measuring your conversion rates and change your landing page elements one at a time to increase your overall conversion percentage.