How I Finally Stopped Wasting Money On Online Marketing (and How You Can Too)
Nov 10th, 2008 by Rich Page
Welcome back! I'm excited and honored to announce that I am going to the be author of a new book called 'Website Optimization - An Hour a Day'! Learn More About the Book
It seems like forever ago that I first started learning HTML (back in ’96 I created a Doors fan site!) Since then, I have been involved with many websites, from startups to big media companies. I have even worked as an online marketing manager before. And believe me, over the years I’ve seen many companies waste away money on poor pay-per-click campaigns, bad email marketing, and pitiful banner advertising. And I still see this wasteful online marketing happening all the time!
Only fairly recently did I come to a big realization about online marketing and how wasteful it is. Some might call it an ‘e-piphany’….
How did this come about? Well, as a web analyst, I started to become much more in tune with visitors needs, and how building customer centric websites effects metrics and KPI’s (key performance indicators like revenue per visitor) in a good way. And putting my online marketing hat back on, I then had my big realization – anyone can send traffic to a website, but what is the point if the website doesn’t meet the visitors needs, and they never come back? That’s online marketing money down the drain. That could be spent on improving the website instead.
So what is the secret to stop wasting money on online marketing? Some hair brained crazy SEO linking scheme?
Nope. Its much simpler. Focus all your efforts on attracting repeat visits. Why? Because repeat visits are pretty much free! And you may be asking the best way to attract repeat visits. Well, think about it. If your website isn’t meeting your visitors needs (and you probably think it is, but are likely wrong), you are decreasing the chances of the wanting to come back. So, if you pause all your online marketing, and actually analyze and help optimize your website, by the time you turn back on your online marketing, you won’t need to spend anywhere near as much money to generate the same amount of traffic (because so many of your visitors will be coming back naturally!). Its what I have been doing recently to all the websites i’m involved with, and i’m having great results, for much less online marketing cost!
But… there’s much more to learn. In fact, so much that I decided to write an ebook revealing all the ways that I stopped wasting money on online marketing, improved my website, and got boat loads of free repeat visitors. So, if you are at all interested in stopping wasting money on Google Adwords or SEO, or any other online marketing that you may do, and getting more free repeat visits, then you should learn all my online marketing secrets by reading my free online marketing improvement ebook. Your website visitors will thank you for it too…
Oh, and did I mention its a free ebook, and its got some great feedback! 
I totally agree. Returning visitors find something useful and there you have a direct access to word of mouth advertising. You might even find new visitor through their sharing of your site link with friends.
So Rich, are you saying that I should focus on where these return visitors are coming from more than other areas to advertise? I still sense that you’re for online advertising, just a smarter version of it.
Jacob – my smarter way of online advertising is first helping to optimize your website. Without doing this first, you are wasting a good chunk of your online marketing – visitors are likely to just leave your website, never to come back. The main thing is to get people to return to your website, then you can analyze where they are coming from and optimize that marketing channel further still.