I was just watching an episode of Barney Miller where Barney makes a rookie mistake by not inspecting the sandwich that was delivered to the precinct. As a result, Wojo ended up with arsenic in his gut. Barney kicked himself for making such a dumb error. So tell me, as a marketer, do YOU make rookie mistakes? It’s probably easy to do when you’re a rookie, but when you’re a seasoned marketer, they shouldn’t happen. But what rookie mistakes am I talking about? In this article, I’m going to go over my three big ones.

Probably the top of the rookie mistake list is the failure to put a tracking link into your ad. If you don’t know where your clicks are coming from, how are you going to know what’s effective and not effective? This is without a doubt the biggest rookie mistake there is. Beginning marketers think that all ads are created equal and it doesn’t matter where the traffic comes from. This is asking for some serious trouble. And tracking doesn’t even have to cost you anything. Just use something like Google Analytics, which is free, and you’ll have sufficient tracking for any purpose at all.

Another big rookie mistake is not proofreading your ads. How long does it take to read through a four or give paragraph ad? Maybe five minutes? It simply baffles me some of the emails that I get from well known marketers with typos in just about every paragraph in the email. I won’t mention any names, but one of these marketers actually has a reputation for typos. Is this something that you’re supposed to be proud of? Supposedly, this marketer wears these typos like a badge of courage. Well, in my opinion, typos show lack of caring and an unprofessional approach to your marketing. But maybe that’s just me.

Finally, there is the failure to build your list. I know this sounds like a cliche but the money really IS in the list. It wasn’t until I finally stopped making my stupid rookie mistakes and built my list that my income significantly increased. The key to building your list is to make sure that you actually develop a relationship with your list. You can’t just send them one sales pitch after another and expect them to hang around. You need to provide them with valuable content and actually show them that you care about solving their problem.

Avoid these rookie mistakes and you’ll be surprised how your marketing efforts will actually improve dramatically.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

If you’re sick and tired of all the lies and misinformation on the Internet, my FREE book “Blowing The Lid Off The Lies Of The Internet” should prove to be a real eye opener. You can get your copy at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/btl_squeeze.html