Internet Marketing Failures

Why We See So Many Internet Marketing Failures

Have you noticed that Internet marketing has been losing a lot of its prior luster as of late? A couple of years ago when I joined the web business team the term Internet marketing was heard right and left and we all wanted to jump into the online sales fair. But nowadays it appears that when shoppers hear the term Internet sales they act like they smell a dead rat. The rest of this article lists some of the main reasons for the Internet marketing failures we see on the web today.  We also list the things we can do to help build buyer trust once again so they will buy online.

1. Causes of Internet Marketing Failures

Too Many Stores

We can’t say for sure what is causing these Internet marketing failures but we all can see that many web sales efforts are going sour. One of the biggest problems is that the number of Internet marketers far exceeds the number of shoppers per square inch of the web space.

Internet “Gurus”

Another problem is that in their attempt to get a piece of your wallet too many Internet “gurus” came on the scene over a short span of time to throw more gasoline into the Internet marketing failures fire. Many of these “gurus” sell junk products that promise to help people make a living on the web from their bedroom while still in their pajamas.

The only thing wrong with this idea is that while 1,000 Internet marketers competing for 10,000,000 possible customers would result in 10,000 potential buyers for each marketer, the numbers are a lot less favorable as more copies of the money making software get sold.

Decreasing Customer Pool

If the software maker sells 10,000 copies of his program now each web marketer only has a pool of 1,000 possible customers.  Can you see how this worsens our Internet marketing failures landscape?

What happens if 15,000 copies or more are sold? Only about 2% of people who see an ad fall for it enough to check it out which means that your customer base drops down to 20. And from those 20 only 2% would be willing to buy which comes down to 0.4 possible buyers. Since one reason people shop online is to find cheap products you will probably not sell anything unless you offer huge discounts or some “bribe” to entice them to buy.

Also, reaching those buyers can only take place if the “guru” who sold you the product gives you the means to reach them.

Excessive Up-Sells

Two or more partially working software products do not add to one full real working product. When you try to buy one of the “gurus” products and pay for the product you immediately get taken to another sales pitch for a product that you need to buy “if you want to succeed” with the product you just paid for. For example, you see a sales pitch that tells you software “ABC” will get you 24/7 targeted traffic to your business offers. Since traffic is what you need you buy it. But as soon as you pay for the software you are taken to another page where you are asked to pay an additional $199.00 plus $49.00 per month to receive traffic from some traffic from the vendor’s servers. Since the original purchase promised to deliver traffic and only cost $49 you decide not to buy the other items.

You are all excited with your new traffic software and install it on your PC just to find out that the traffic software is a text editor to write articles to submit to article directories. You are expected to place your link on the article, submit it to an article site, and hope people find and read the article and click your link. That would be the “targeted traffic” the software promised to deliver. If you said that you can find at least 20 freeware programs on the net that can do the same thing at zero cost you would be right.

Internet marketing failures and Desensitized Consumers

When we see a unique ad for the first time we might be tempted to check into it and find out a little more about it. But when we see the same ad time and time again it stirs the “TV commercial” mindset in all of us and makes us want to skip the ad. One of the roots of Internet marketing failures is that web surfers see the same ads many times per day and are quickly desensitized to them.

Lack of Incentives

Lack of affiliate incentives could be a big reason for Internet marketing failures as it causes affiliate marketers to not try harder to sell products online.  Radio Shack has one of the best customer incentive programs I have seen.  When a person who knows how to repair TV sets decides to start a TV Repair Shop he can go to Radio Shack to buy parts. When you let the Radio Shack folks know that you run a repair shop they grant you an immediate discount of up to 20% on your parts and materials.

When you ask how to make money online the first thing you learn is that you can sell Clickbank products. But unlike Radio Shack that gives you a discount if you are in the trade, Clickbank does the opposite. If you have a Clickbank affiliate ID and use it to buy a product, Clickbank “keeps” your discount until at least five different credit cards are used to purchase products through your affiliate ID.  If you are like me you will only use a single credit card with a very low line of credit for online purchases to protect yourself in the event your credit card data falls into the wrong hands.   Since only about 2% of affiliates succeed in web based sales, this may just be a trick for Clickbank to keep the money.  Supposedly, this is done to protect the product vendor but I doubt the money is actually returned to the product makers.

These policies contribute to the Internet marketing failures discussed in this article because they discourage affiliates from doing a better effort to sell.

2. Preventing Internet marketing failures

A person who would like to avoid Internet marketing failures selling online should attempt to find or create unique products to sell.  If you have the skills to build your own line of products you might perform a lot better than the rest of us that resell other peoples products.

Also, if you are a newbie Internet marketer you should avoid webinars unless you know the person giving the seminar is someone you can trust with your eyes closed.

How Vendors Can Help

Product vendors should assume more responsibility for preventing Internet marketing failures and make sure they sell products that actually work.  They should avoid the I sell you the car but if you want to drive it off the lot you have to pay extra for the ignition keys.

To help reduce the amount of Internet marketing failures software vendors should offer a complete working package rather than three or four little packages that when combined may make one real working product.

Desensitizing Prevention

To prevent Internet marketing failures and the desensitizing of your audience you can design your own unique ads and banners so your sales pitch will look new and eye catching.

Providing Real Incentives

Since a lot of would be web marketers spend a lot of money in products to help them set up and build their business Clickbank should offer some extra incentives.  If a person can buy a product with a discount she would be less likely to ask for a refund even if the product turns out to be useless.  A person should be given the discount whether they use one or ten different credit cards.  OK, so Clickbank would lose a lot of money they now get to keep but they may get better results if people don’t return the product because they feel part of the sale belongs to them.  But who knows, I might not be seeing the big picture and maybe internet marketing failures are required to insure some firms survive.

Good Gurus Also Exist

With all this talk of Internet marketing failures you might think all Internet marketing software vendors are crooks. That is far from the truth!  Not all Internet products are junk. Some Internet “gurus” are real good at what they do. One name that comes to mind that I am proud to buy products from is Bill McRea.  I bought the product “Above the Matrix” from Bill McRea and I can only say that the software he sells works.  So yes, there are some good honest “gurus” out there; but you have to do your research to find them.

Conclusions

Creating and selling your own products may be the best way to succeed with online sales.

If you decide to buy software research the product real well.  Many of the products you can buy online are just freebies that someone found on the net and repackaged it to sell it and take advantage of others.

Internet marketing failures happen because software vendors sell incomplete products and companies like Clickbank and ClickSure fail to force vendors to provide true value.  There is also a lack of incentives for affiliates to work hard to succeed in online marketing.

In addition to those problems you have an audience who dislikes ads and has learned to ignore online advertising.

For quality articles on web sales visit our Mobile Money Heaven website.

Copyright © 2013 C.E. Soleris. All rights reserved.