GeekAffiliate

If you’re a geek, scoffing at sales and marketing is almost a badge of honor. But geeks often fail miserably at online marketing, whether it’s affiliate selling, content monetization, or product creation and promotion. Here are the top reasons why geeks fail at Internet marketing and some ideas on how to change failure into success.

1. Thinking “sell” is a four-letter word.

Get over your natural dislike of the selling process. Selling doesn’t have to be sleazy. Compared to other forms of selling, online selling greatly levels the playing field. It’s more about building trust with an audience than schmoozing potential customers. Think pre-sell instead of sell.

2. Not learning about online marketing.

You read books, online manuals, tutorials, and blogs to learn new things about technology, don’t you? So why aren’t you doing the same thing with online marketing? Do you really think there’s nothing you can learn? Continued education is key. The next time you visit your favorite bookstore, head to the marketing section (here’s Amazon’s) and buy a business book or two.

3. Selling products that no one wants.

It’s tempting to only promote the expensive products with the highest payouts, but that’s rarely the path to success. Neither is creating a product just because you think it’s a cool idea. Here’s a tip: don’t start with the product, start with the audience. Find a market with an untapped need or want, then find (or create) a product or service to fulfill it.

4. Not being honest.

Let’s be frank: online marketing is ultimately about making money. Admit this and you’ll find it easier to focus on the things that can actually make you money. Your customers already know it, and pretending otherwise just makes you look foolish. Be honest with them about your intentions and about the products or services you’re promoting — they’ll appreciate you all the more.

5. Talking about features, not benefits.

Geeks love to talk up features. Linux is great because it’s open source or This system is twice as fast are typical examples. But that’s not what interests your customers. They want to know how a product or service will benefit them. What problems does it solve? How will it make their life better? Those are the questions they want answered. Don’t know how? State your feature and then ask yourself So what? and come up with a list of benefits.

6. Not knowing when to outsource.

The term outsourcing has lost its shine these days, but the truth is that most businesses outsource things that fall outside their core areas of competency. Payroll, IT, security, travel and event planning, public relations — these are just some of the things that can be outsourced. Geeks can outsource, too, and spend their time working on the things that matter most. Why manage mailing lists yourself when $20/month is all it takes to have someone else do it for you? Why get woken at 2 in the morning to respond to a network problem with your servers? Get over your geek pride and spend your time on the important stuff, the things that make you money.

7. Thinking “if I build it, they will come”.

Sure, you know how to build a fancy website. You can do it in your sleep. But who cares? There are programs out there that will create decent-looking enough websites for not very much money. Or you can hire someone on Elance to do it for the price of your next latte. Even building a new product (e-book, video, script, application) isn’t that hard, for similar reasons. The hard part is the marketing and promotion of your product/service — getting human eyeballs to see what you have to offer and convincing them to open their wallets and buy it. You may not be able to make the horse drink, but you still have to lead it to the water.

8. Not investing enough time to succeed.

Like anything you want to do right, online marketing takes time. Time to write and distribute articles and press releases. Time to create websites. Time to build your mailing lists. Time to analyze your sales to see what’s working and what’s not. Time to keep your knowledge current (see #2). Time, lots of time… The only overnight success stories are from marketers who spent a long, cold winter in Antarctica. (And probably without a high-speed Internet connection.) Devote some time each day to marketing activities.

9. Not having a plan.

When you sit down to code, you have at least a minimal plan formulated in your head, or even a formal plan written on paper. Otherwise how would you know where to begin and when you’re done? The plan lists the steps you need to take to succeed and the goals you’re trying to achieve. Good marketers make plans. Those plans aren’t always right, but they provide focus and a way to measure accomplishments. Make a plan.

10. Getting bogged down in the details.

How much time have you spent getting a web page to render perfectly across all browsers? What was the cost of that perfection in terms of opportunity cost? You’re better off to automate as much as you can and spend your time dealing with the hard parts: writing copy that sells, interacting with others, researching keywords, etc. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough.

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There’s no way to guarantee online marketing success, but there are definitely things you can do to guarantee that you won’t succeed!

Eric Giguere is an online marketing geek. When not pretending he’s an AdSense expert, he develops software for iAnywhere Solutions as part of the AvantGo development team.

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