Eric's Estimate

When did it all go to shit?

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Eric6 Comments

I’ve got a question: When did internet marketing become throwing shit at a wall until we get a piece to stick?

I haven’t been in IM since the beginning, but from what I can tell all of the wanna be internet millionaires who whine about crap information are just that… whiners.

They don’t want to be marketers. They don’t want to run a business. They just want someone to give them some key to some vault which has all of their dreams stored up in some bag with a dollar sign on it.

WAKE UP!

There is no secret. There is no dream campaign that all of the big guys are keeping from you. There’s just marketing, and then there’s shit being thrown at the wall…

So which type of internet business are you running?

Are you actually trying to connect a consumer with a product that they want or can use? Or are you uploading 10,000 keywords into Yahoo Search Marketing and hoping that one of them will convert on that Walmart gift card offer?

If you want to make a living at the internet marketing game, you’ve gotta stop thinking like a drone, and start thinking like a marketer. You’ve got to come up with a concept that makes sense, and that connects real people (yes they are people on the other end of your website, not just conversion numbers) with real services/products.

I’m not saying you can’t get a $250 Walmart gift card to convert well. I’m just saying that putting it on a blank page that says click here to get it isn’t going to do fuck all.

Where does this come from? Well I found a site (I won’t list it here because I just feel sorry for the guy) that was just a page with a black background and a bunch of affiliate banners on it. They weren’t similar banners. In fact there was one for dating sitting next to one for auto insurance.

He had claimed that he was sending PPC traffic to this site and trying “everything” he could to get it to convert, yet he was just losing money. These types of people just shouldn’t even try to be internet marketing people.

And in fact, if you are reading this and you own a site like that… just get out… get out NOW!

Marketing is about telling a story. A story that jives with the views of a group of people (for those of you who don’t know who these people are… they are your “customers”). Your story has to be convincing… and your story has to be consistent (as in, don’t say you have the best customer service when you don’t ever answer the phone).  And yes, even if you are promoting email and zip submit offers, this story needs to be there.

So ask yourself; what story is your site telling?

More on this later, but for now do yourself a favor and pick up Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars and start being a marketer, not a chump.