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Unfortunately, internet marketing is not properly understood. There are countless terms used for it and numerous sub-types that are mentioned, and they are all misunderstood.

Most of what you will hear about internet marketing is a lie (or a gross misunderstanding of what it actually is).

While practically every single day I hear something wrong about internet marketing, usually because people do not have the foundation needed to do good work, there is one that really gets on my nerves. It comes up in several different ways, with different wordings and in all niches.

The lie is:

“Follow this plan and you reach Y goal.”

Examples:

• “Use these steps and you will make $10,000 per day.”
• “Create the same type of campaign as brand X and you get the same results.”
• “Do what Neil Patel does and your search engine traffic grows”
• “Follow our blogging guide and you make money in one month!”

Simply put, the idea is that you do what someone else did, you copy, and you get the same results. This is just a lie.

Every single brand is different. This is the most important thing you need to understand if marketing is something that interests you. What worked for someone else will most likely not work for you. Marketers that tell you to follow a specific template want something from you, like you to subscribe to a newsletter or you to buy something.

The Deception Of The Make Money Online Niche

Here’s the problem. People want to make money online. They read stories and believe everything is easy. This is especially the case now because:

• People lose their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic.
• Many have a lower income because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Unfortunately, we are faced with a point in time in which countless dishonest “marketers” will try to take advantage of people.

The exact same thing will happen with companies as they will do all they can to increase sales. You can expect them to take advantage of the fear that affects so many and although this is a dishonest practice, it is so much more common than it should be.

Real Marketing

Real marketing starts with market research. People that try to sell you something, especially a blueprint to make money, usually already did research.

Then, creating a marketing strategy revolves around the research and what ideal customers want or need.

It is close to impossible to always have the exact same target audience for two different companies, brands, individuals, etc. Let’s say you sell toilet paper since this was such a hot topic in the past weeks.

At first glance, all toilet paper is the same. You can be tempted to use the same strategy another manufacturer used with great success. If you do this, there is a good possibility your campaign will fail while their campaign will succeed. Why is that?

Who buys the toilet paper you sell? The decision to purchase the toilet paper will depend on:

• Price
• Quality (2 layers, 3 layers, and so on)
• Packaging (some people love koalas – a shoutout to a very bad JCVD movie, Welcome to the Jungle)
• Availability in stores (when your favorite brand is not available, you buy something else)
• Scent (I like peach)
• And so much more

These are just some things that influence the buying process. If you do not analyze all those related to your product/service, you cannot build a marketing campaign that will be effective. Copying what any random successful toilet paper manufacturer does will not be successful.

Learn Real Marketing

Please use your common sense. Whenever you hear anything that seems too good to be true, it most likely is not true.

When you want to learn marketing, learn how to make money, how to be more successful at X or anything similar, use good sources.

Look at the videos recorded by people that know what they talk about and whenever someone tries to sell you something in an aggressive way, double check all the information offered.

Marketing takes time to learn and there is no shortcut to get results really fast.