Mass Email/Spamming
Have you ever received a sales pitch from someone offering to sell you millions of email addresses for marketing your site? If so, you probably received this offer through an email you did not sign up for. Even if someone tells you the email addresses they will sell you are targeted (for instance if you sell glassware, they may say that people on the list are interested in buying glassware), you should avoid using the addresses. Unless someone has knowingly signed up to your mailing list, you should never advertise your products through email. If you do, you are considered a spammer, someone who sends unwanted email to people trying to make sales. Spam is annoying and intrusive and therefore can ruin an online marketing campaign in a heartbeat!
Search Engine Software
While some programs are excellent tools for submitting your site for listing to search engines, much of the available software is useless. Many times, the software will submit your site to irrelevant listing engines. Even worse, using some of the packages can even get you banned from the popular engines because of incorrect submissions or multiple attempts.
The best way to get your site added to search engines and directories is to visit the site, read the submission guidelines, then submit your site individually for each engine. Shortcuts can be costly in terms of time and money.
Non-relevant Postings
Posting a message about your site to relevant forums and message boards can help draw visitors to your site. But if you simply post a message to every forum, bulletin board and discussion area you find, you will quickly draw the wrath of members. Be sure that wherever you post a message about your site, commercial messages are allowed in that area and that the messages (your type of products) are relevant to the discussion area. For instance, just because an aviation forum may allow commercial posts, that doesn't mean your message selling hand-crafted rugs will be tolerated.
The bottom line? There are literally hundreds of ways to successfully market your site; but when you do, make sure any messages you will be sending to people are welcome. Intrusive tactics like those mentioned above are not only a waste of time, but may also hurt your online reputation. Your reputation to people in cyberspace will eventually make or break your marketing efforts.
