A properly planned marketing strategy opens the door to the success of online business. But even the best minds do make mistakes that result in failures. It helps to know some possible mistakes and avoid the pitfalls in preparing your strategies.

1. Not focusing on the right market
Picking the right market is the most important part of a marketing plan. Right products for the right markets is the motto you should always practice. A very good product placed in a wrong market can lead to a disaster. Employ some tools to select the right market and also invest time in searching for the most suitable keywords that fit the market.

2. Dropping your present customers from the marketing plan
One fatal mistake made by some planners is to just focus on acquiring new customers and ignoring the existing ones. If you do this your old customers will desert you in no time. When you include your current customers they will pass on the good word about your website and products to their friends. That is the time you benefit by getting new customers virtually free of cost.

3. Be careful with hard sell
Hard sell never sells! It only turns off some otherwise keen customers. Dont make the mistake of making every webpage sell to the customer. Instead concentrate on making it interesting and useful to the visitor. Visitors should feel happy in making the decision to buy. Any ad copy that forces a visitor to buy loses him for you for all time. Ensure that your web pages present the details in a sober/matter of fact manner, with sophistication so that the customer buys your product and leaves satisfied. Remember that selling is an art. Practice it judiciously and pleasingly.

4. Offering no content
Too many web site owners get very excited with the idea of online business and forget to place interesting content on their sites that can keep their visitors attracted to their site. While making money is vital, providing good information is even more important to build lasting goodwill of the customers. Focusing only on showing many advertisements on your site will not get you good results.
Quality content is the only answer to this challenge.

5. Ineffective Web Site
Many webmasters feel that only a dazzling, flashy website is attractive to the visitors. This not necessarily true. There are different ways of ensuring that your website looks good.

Use a catchy headline that draws the customers attention. Offer genuine customer testimonials which will help the visitors relate to the other customers and buy your products based on their recommendation.

Desmond Mantor is the Director of Marketing for Have Traffic a business specializing in delivering highly targeted traffic for commercial web sites, proven to convert to sales at higher rates in comparison to regular major pay per click sources. Please visithttp://www.havetraffic.com for further details