Marketing Profs

Poor Eddie the e-marketer has been plagued by errors in judgment all his life.

From always picking the longest line at the tollbooth to buying lots of dot-com stocks right before the bubble burst, he has constantly struggled with making the right choices. From disagreeing whether a car actually needs oil changes every 3,000 miles to insisting that the eight-track is going to make a comeback, Eddie has bumbled through life perplexed.

One area that particularly suffers is his e-marketing efforts.

You see, Eddie recently got himself a new Web site for his business. Unfortunately, he's been trying in vain to turn it into a vehicle for getting leads and making sales. He's confused. He's dazed. He thrashes about lost in a maze.

Although he at least understands the importance of e-marketing for driving traffic to his site, he's like a hamster running on a wheel, wasting energy and getting nowhere. Let's take a look at a few of the more typical e-marketing errors Eddie regularly makes—and what he should do instead.

Treat the Web as a different medium

The other day, Eddie's business partner, Betty, showed him a recent half-page ad they ran in one of their industry's magazines. Eddie, excited at how pretty the pictures were, wanted it up on their Web site pronto.

Did he alter it in any way before they posted it to the site? Did he add a specific call to action hyperlink in it? Did he optimize the large print graphics so they would download fast in people's browsers?

Nope. He just took the ad, as is, and posted it. Eddie has never been able to grasp the idea that traditional marketing and e-marketing, while related, are not the same thing. What works in print doesn't always work online.

Why? Different mediums require different approaches. Look for Eddie's static magazine ad in his first TV commercial, just the motionless ad on the screen for 30 seconds. Riveting.