I received yet another email this morning, from someone who’s lost a lot of money, after taking bad advice from a marketing blog.  This seems to be a growing problem, as more and more small businesses look for free advice online, in a bid to help grow their business.

So, to help you (or your clients / friends) avoid making the same kind of costly mistakes, here are a few tips to help you spot the fakes. 

Please share this post on your favourite social networks, as it’s really important that as many people as possible know about this.

Marketing blogs: What to watch for

If someone claims to be an expert at marketing and he or she can’t even market their own blog – stay well away. Because it’s so easy to fool traffic sites like Alexa.com into showing you get thousands of visitors a day, you need to look for more obvious signs that a marketing blog is valued by a large reader community.

A great place to start is by looking at the number of comments it gets.  Marketing people, even very average ones, know how to build a blog that attracts comments on every post.  If you spot a marketing related blog with no comments or very few, it shows the person behind the blog does not know how to market the blog correctly.

It’s also worth checking to see if their blog is listed or ranked by a respected, neutral, third party.  This blog, for example, is ranked on what many consider to be the most influential in our industry, the Adage Power 150 – that’s their badge you see on the lower right hand side of the blog.

Testimonials are easy to fake: What to watch for

Look for proof that the marketing expert actually works with REAL people and companies!  Testimonials are easy to fake. So, look to see if the marketing expert is talking about the companies or people they work with or the projects they are working on.

For example, if people want to check me out, they can see me write about clients I am currently working with AND they can see me openly tweeting with clients and former clients too.

Does the marketing expert exist in the real world?

Fake marketing ‘experts’ exist only online and in their imagination.  The genuine marketing professionals you encounter online, are like any other REAL business. They will happily provide you with their FULL contact details; that’s their physical address and a land line phone number.  We WANT people to call us and write to us.  Always be extra cautious if a marketing ‘business’ only operates behind a website, a ‘box number’ and a Skype or mobile / cell phone number.

This is where YOU come in!

Those are just a few, very basic steps you can take to avoid bad marketing advice.  I would really value YOUR suggestions.  What are your tips for spotting the fakes in your industry?

Please share them here and make this post as valuable as possible for your fellow readers.

UPDATE:
This post from my ideas blog, covers another tool you can use, to identify how many people link to a particular website / blog.

Related posts:

1. Marketing advice
2. Growing and securing your online network

Recently, I have started getting a lot of emails from people; asking me a version of the same great question.

Here’s the question:

Jim, I hear that you don’t use any form of paid advertising or link exchanges – yet your posts often get dozens and dozens of comments. According to alexa.com (or whoever), this new blog gets lots of traffic. How are you doing this?

So, what’s my ‘secret’ then?

My secret is simple. It’s all down to Equality and Attraction!

Equality

I provide marketing material for people just like me; small business owners and those who work in sales / marketing.  If I know what I am doing, you should fit into that group too.  We are all totally equal here.  I don’t buy into that Internet celebrity or marketing guru bullshit. I’m just a normal person who happens to run a successful marketing business. I have the marketing answers you need and I work hard to get as many of them to you, in as clear and interesting a way as possible.  I don’t have a tribe; I have a network of friends and great contacts.

This is a level playing field, where you and I are part of the same marketing community.

Guess what?  That means when you email me, I always email you back.  When you comment on this blog – if your comment requires or requests an answer, I give one, always.  If I like your work, your blog or your product, I promote it for free – you won’t even know most of the time, until you check your stats, sales (or Twitter follow numbers!)

My readers seem to like my guru-free approach to delivering the marketing information they need and helping them succeed.

As a result, you recommend this blog, my RSS feed and my newsletter to your contacts.

You are the reason a 3 month old blog is attracting so much attention. You are the reason I don’t need any paid advertising.  You are also the reason I continue to do this; even though I have been financially secure for life since I was 29 years old (I’m 43 now).

That’s despite starting off in life broke; with no connections, the son of immigrants and covered in scars and even a gunshot wound from a violent childhood in the slums. I’m proud to say that I earned my money selling millions of pounds and dollars worth of ‘goods and services’ – NOT selling books or seminars on ‘how to sell!‘

Although my primary focus is always on giving, I have already generated thousands of pounds / dollars worth of sales for my business, from this new blog.  I did over £7,500 worth of business from enquiries here in the first 10 days alone. If you have a website or blog and you would like to attract more business or leads, here’s how I do it.

Attraction

My work is all about attracting sales and enquiries -  not chasing them.

Why?

Simple – people hate being pestered by salespeople!  They hate being pursued by overzealous networkers (online and offline.)  They hate having unwanted advertising thrust upon them.

People LOVE to buy things but they HATE being sold to!

Here’s how people often get it wrong
This morning, I decided to help my Twitter followers build their follower numbers and get some traffic to their blogs.  I asked them to send me the URL of their blog.  Then, I sent another message out to around 4,500 people – with a link to all the blogs that had been sent to me.

What do you think happened?
Within minutes a couple of people decided to send THEIR blog over and over again; so their blog address appeared multiple times in the link I sent!  I received over a dozen messages from people telling me they had blocked these users and some had even advised their followers to block them as well.

That’s because people hate being pushed, pestered, chased or pursued.  Whenever someone tries to use these tactics to generate sales, they come up against resistance. What a hard way to generate new business!

People come to this blog looking for free marketing ideas, strategies and information.  They come here to connect with people and ask questions through the comments section.  So, that’s what I provide.  I don’t ‘push’ anything.  In fact, there is only ONE page on this entire blog where you can learn about my marketing services.

You attract sales, leads and referrals by being attractive.  In the online world, this means making your site or blog as valuable to your ideal profile of client / customer as possible.  You do this by focusing on delivering quality and quantity. It requires a mindset, where you are prepared to give high quality information away for free; not just the watered down free stuff you see on most websites or in free ebooks!

If you keep all the good stuff back for your paying clients, how is a prospective client going to know how brilliant you are?

You need to make your blog or website an Aladdin’s cave. This means, when your prospective clients or customers arrive, they need to believe they have just stumbled upon a goldmine of great information.

If you sell widgets, make YOUR site or blog THEE place to find out everything they need to know about widgets!  If you sell a service (like I do), use your blog or site to showcase your expertise. Show you really know your subject, answer people’s questions and position yourself in their mind as an expert in your field.

Of course, we are not only attracted to people, groups, blogs and sites that offer great value – we love to SHARE them with our friends and contacts too.

I always advise people to take a look at their marketing and decide if it is genuinely attractive to prospective clients / customers or not.  If you are not sure or you just want to make your marketing even more attractive, ask yourself the Aladdin’s cave question, which I touched upon earlier.

“Would someone visiting my website or blog immediately think they have just stumbled upon a goldmine of great information?”

If the answer is no, look for as many ways as possible to add massive value!

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