Before starting any internet marketing campaign you should be aware of some common problems, and expectations, and your expectations should also be reasonable, and feasible. This includes your financial commitment, a reasonable return on investment, a defined target audience, market limitations, business overhead limitations, and the amount of time you are going to put into your internet marketing campaign. Building a house with no blueprints is surely going to fall apart, and the same goes for you internet marketing campaign.

 

knowledge

Financial Commitment

First off, you need to make sure you’re financially prepared to invest money on internet marketing. I have been asked by many businesses if they can start internet marketing on a $500 a month budget. Some only want to spend as little as $100, or even $50 a month. Budgets so little are already setup for failure. If your budget is this small, I would recommend waiting until you are more financially prepared. My personal minimum recommendation is $2,000 per month, and for certain highly targeted niche markets, $1,000, but also be aware, that many businesses spend upwards of $50,000 to $100, 000 per month.

Return on Investment

Return on investment varies between many industries. I have seen some companies making a 35 to 1 ROI and others are happy with anything between 1 and 2. ROI means for every $1 you invest into marketing you pocket X amount of dollars. A 35 to 1 ROI will put $35 back into your pocket at the end of the month. If I took all my clients, and averaged out their ROI, it would even out to 5. This should be your target, unless you determine it’s impossible for your industry, or it should be much higher. Affiliate marketers should aim for ROI of 2 at the very minimum. Don’t set your expectations to low or to high, and don’t undercut yourself or the competition. You should always be raising the bar to pocket more, and more over time.

Defined Target Audience

Who is your client? You should not be guessing who your target audience is when beginning an internet marketing campaign. Knowing your client will help reduce your advertising costs. Are they old or young, male or female, do they live in big cities or small, what are their interests, and what culture differences do they have compared to what you are used to. Understand your client, what they are thinking, and why they are searching for your product or services. Sometimes this can be very difficult, especially if you are dealing with a much older or younger generation.

Market Limitations

Some markets have no competition while others are flooded. Some markets have millions of searches per day, while others barely get 100 impressions a day. Know your market limitations and competition. If you plan on entering the web hosting market, be aware that search volume is limited, but very competitive, and expensive. CPC is running anywhere from $9 to $18 per click. YUP!!! That’s $18 for one person to visit your website, and they might hit the back button seconds after clicking your ad. Don’t start a marketing campaign only to be shocked on the amount of competition and the cost per click. Do your research!

Business Overhead Limitations

Advertising nationwide or globally can put a large strain on a business that is understaffed, and unprepared to handle a large volume of orders. Imagine going from 10 orders a day to 100 orders a day, or maybe even 1000. Can your business really handle the extra work? Be sure to analyze whether your business is capable of handling the volume of orders. I have seen so many clients fail because they were getting too many orders. Can you believe that? Failure due to a highly successful marketing campaign, you would think this would be a dream come true, but in reality, if your business cannot handle the customer support, and order fulfillment times, you could end up losing more money than a campaign that won’t convert one single order. Why is that? Because not only did you pay for the advertising, but now you paid for shipping costs, warehousing, inventory, the cost of any chargeback’s, returned products, and even worse, legal and litigation fees.

 

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Campaign Management

A common misconception about internet marketing is that you can basically select a few keywords, turn on your campaigns and tell Google how much you want to spend and you’re all done. WRONG!!! If you are going to manage your campaigns yourself, be prepared to spend anywhere from 5 hours a week minimum, to as much as a full 40 hour work week. Some campaigns can become so intense, that it requires more than one person to successfully run them. Campaign optimization requires patience, time and a lot of analytical research. Expect to test, re test, and test your test against another test. That’s right, testing and constant manipulation of your campaigns is what makes them successful. If you do not have the time to do this, you could end up over paying on your advertising by as much as 50%. Imagine that… If you expected to pay $5,000 a month for advertising, you could be paying $2,500 with proper optimization, or you could be reinvesting that extra $2,500 to generate more sales and leads. If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, outsource the work, it will be more successful and you wont be wasting time, or money.

Be a wise entrepreneur, do your research, ask questions, and seek professional advice. You can even get a free market consultation from a professional SEM company. They will tell you what you can expect, and what all of the above answers should be. It’s not a secret. You don’t have a magic product that will outperform all the rest. Internet marketing is highly predictable to trained professionals, and industry average numbers are public knowledge.

 

If you had trouble understanding any of the above abbreviations
please read my acronym article

Internet Marketing Acronyms - The Definitive Guide

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