While there are many online marketing strategies that will help you connect to your ideal audience and grow your business, there are others that can have the opposite effect. Sometimes, businesses are so focused on expanding their reach that they resort to cheap and nasty tactics that appear to be worthwhile. In reality, these less-than-useful strategies can end up causing more harm than you may realise.
Which are the absolute worst online marketing strategies to avoid? Better still, what can you do instead?
The Worst Online Marketing Strategies
We have shared some of the worst digital marketing strategies to avoid. Today, we have some additional online marketing strategies that you should stay clear of if you are serious about genuine, holistic growth include the following:
Forum commenting
Unless you are making a genuinely informed comment on a topic that you know very well, forum commenting, and even social media commenting are a waste of your time and effort. The chance of someone clicking on your link is minimal. Instead, you will find your comment caught by forum and page moderators. Instead of blinding commenting, add feedback only when it is helpful, on topic and done in a way that is not spammy.
Unsolicited email blasts
We shouldn’t have to remind you, but sending out emails to those that have not subscribed is never a good idea. Other than the fact that it puts you at risk of being blacklisted, recipients that have not subscribed to emails are almost never likely to open emails that they have not asked for or wanted. Often, these emails go straight into spam folders. On the off chance that they do make it into inboxes, they are deleted very quickly. Instead of spamming your ideal audience, invest in lead generation and email marketing and do things the right way.
Black Hat SEO
In our guide to White Hat SEO, we spoke about why it is always better to avoid illegal, dodgy and otherwise unethical strategies to get ahead in the SERPs. Why is Black Hat so bad, though? For starters, trying to trick the system through keyword stuffing, underhanded link strategies and scraping can end up causing you to lose rankings rather than gain them. Although it seems frustrating at times, the only way that you can truly improve your SEO efforts is to do things the proper way and build your ranking naturally.
What are the worst strategies that you have encountered? Share your worst digital marketing strategies below and let us know.
