One of the great things about internet marketing is that allows you to measure your return on investment fairly simply…if you're doing it right. The following three mistakes made by many internet marketers, however, make it very difficult to measure your return on investment. If you can correct them, then you can ensure that you're using your marketing dollars wisely and making the most of your marketing efforts.



1. You're Not Making the Sale. The whole purpose of a business website is to compel your visitors to purchase your product or service. This means that you have to sell what you've got. You can't just assume that your visitors are going to poke around your site and be so overwhelmed by the magnificence of what you have to offer that they're just going to jump right in and buy. You have to motivate them to buy. You have to ask them to buy. So simply including a “Contact us” button or a “Request a demo” button isn't going to do the trick. You need to have multiple offers on your website, offers that your visitors will have a hard time refusing. You need to have clear calls to action that motivate your customers to do something right now. And your landing pages need to be designed well so that visitors will see and respond to your offers and calls to action contained therein.

Make sure that you have plenty of offers, and make sure that those offers help your visitors make the connection between the challenge they are facing and the product you are offering. You compel potential customers by showing them that your product helps them go in the right direction.

2. You Haven't Done Your Keyword Research. Most business owners truly believe that they've done sufficient keyword research when they've really only scratched the surface. Keyword research needs to be an ongoing process rather than a one-time endeavor. It isn't enough to give your webmaster a list of keywords to use when creating your website and then call it a day.

Effective keyword research involves a number of factors. These include: identifying relevant keywords, identifying which keywords have high search volume, identifying which keywords are easy to rank for, constantly monitoring traffic generated by each keyword, and determining which keywords are turning into leads. If you do this regularly and rigorously, you may be able to increase your traffic up to tenfold.

3. You Don't Know Where Your Leads are Coming From. This is the key to internet marketing. When you know where your leads are coming from, you can determine what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong in your efforts to attract potential customers. The most important thing to do is to figure out which efforts are attracting the visitors who become your leads. What works most effectively for you? Keyword optimization? Social media sites? Focus on those and you'll see that your leads increase. Avoid spending too much time worrying about how many page views you have or how long your visitors spend clicking around on your site. Those factors aren't going to tell you anything valuable and they aren't going to help you make the necessary changes that will increase traffic to your site.

Internet marketing professionals and SEO experts are invaluable when it comes to helping you figure out the kinds of mistakes you're marketing in your internet marketing strategy, so don't hesitate to solicit their input as you correct the errors you've been making so far. While the task of fixing your mistakes may seem overwhelming, these professionals have the experience and expertise to quickly determine how you can turn your internet marketing campaign around so that it works for you. Fix your mistakes quickly and see how your business grows!