Top 10 Signs That Your Online Marketing Has Hit the Wall


What are the top 10 signs that your online marketing has hit the wall? Here goes:

10. The only person to “friend” you on Facebook in the last 6 months is an inflatable kangaroo

9. You just spent $5,000 on printed marketing collaterals, only to discover your marketing agency’s proofreader is dyslexic and your URL has a typo

8. Severe writer’s block on your biz blog finds you drafting a post “Which are Cuter, Puppies or Dust Bunnies?”

7. So many people have “un-followed” you on Twitter that your “follow” number is now negative — and all Twitter Support can say is, “Gee, we’ve never seen that happen before.”

6. The last time someone commented on your blog was 2006 — and that was your Mom

5. You sold your soul (er, I mean a link) for a T-shirt, only to learn everyone else gets $100

4. You let your domain name lapse, and it’s now owned by an online gambling site from the Cayman Islands.

3. You have one review of your new YouTube video that cost $3,000 to film — and it gets one star

2. You are talking with a prospective advertiser for your site who wants to know if the visitor traffic figure was per day or per week, and you say, “uh, no, that was the total for last year.”

1. The only thing you rank for in Google is #138 for “miserable failure.”

* * * * *

The inspiration for the above came during the Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference recently. Wayne Small, who came all the way to Ohio from Australia, brought a terriffic icebreaker: an inflatable kangaroo, named Ken Garoux (pronounced ga-roo). At the opening night’s networking event, people started pasting their business cards on inflatable Ken. Before you knew it, Ken had a Facebook page and was “friending” everyone.

Let me know what you think. If you have any funnier snippets, please leave them in a comment below. Or point us to your own Top Ten.

42 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

42 Reactions
  1. Very funny stuff! What’s up with the inflatable kangaroo?

  2. Hilarious! 🙂

  3. How fantastic! #9 reminded me of the Federal Duck Stamp released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this year. Instead of having 1-800-STAMP24 printed on it, it has a phone sex number instead (I’ll leave it to you to find out what the printed number was, ha.)

    I’ve been working on a “Top Signs You Work For A Small Business…” list. I’ll make sure to pass it around when completed.

    Thanks for the morning laugh, Anita!

  4. #11:
    You know your online marketing has hit a wall because you only seem to get invites on Facebook by folks that have names like “ComeAgin5” “OrientalLVR77” and “MLMWizard.”
    Joel Libava

  5. That’s funny, love the kangaroo. Joel, your #11 is a good addition!

  6. #6 – Hey, don’t make fun of my mom! She happens to be an avid fan. 🙂

  7. These are all very funny – #6 in particular gave me a chuckle for some reason as did #5. Good stuff, wish I had one to add. But gimme time, I’m thinking about it . . .

  8. Wayne wrote about his inflatable friend, Ken Garoux, here: http://blog.sbsfaq.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=239

  9. seems like a few year’s someone pretty well known to us all had their bio come up number one on Google for “miserable failure”….

  10. Funny list Anita. Perhaps another is that you get excited as your web traffic has gone up dramatically, then check and realise it was only your own visits to your website.

  11. Anita,

    When will you attend David Letterman’s show?

    I have been involved in item #4.
    “4. You let your domain name lapse, and it’s now owned by an online gambling site from the Cayman Islands.” For more information, read my post, Martin Lindeskog Name Domain.

  12. Hilarious list! There is so much truth to your list. I think that delivering it in such an entertaining way helps others to laugh (including laughing at themselves) and to perhaps realize what might be going wrong!

  13. I laughed out loud when I saw #8. If we had a blog I’d be like that. Struggling to write about something …… anything. 🙂

  14. These are inspired. I only wish I had more to add – but you’ve listed some of my realities (should I write about dust bunnnies) and the traffic is from the entire year – yes that would be me 🙂

  15. My tip for promotion: being interviewed by magazines, newspapers, or on radio and television can spread the word quickly about your capabilities. Landing interviews is not that hard to do if you remember to start small. Begin by approaching easy targets like association newsletters, neighborhood newspapers, and local cable programs or talk radio.

  16. Shout out to Susan – yup – I have had the traffic jump from my own visits phenomenon as well 🙂

  17. Good stuff, Anita…

  18. Anita,
    Great list – too bad I can relate too well to #6. I’ve seen it firsthand – stop blogging regularly and people stop commenting. Thanks for infusing humor into your presentation. Sometimes we get too serious!
    Janet

  19. Wow. Gary Hart, you must have enjoyed Anita’s top ten list to tell her that in your comment.

    Anyway, Thanks Anita for sharing this. 🙂

  20. Anita,
    Nothing like a little comment spam to keep things light, huh?
    Sarah, thanx!
    Joel Libava

  21. Businesses for sale

    Yeah that’ll work! But will they remember the message behind it?

  22. Good to see you at the SBMU conference Anita. I thought the sessions were
    extremely helpful, informative and offered solid ideas to take back
    to our businessess. Thanks for the free book too! Perhaps I’ll share my comments on the book.

  23. I just want everyone to know (especially my husband if he sees this) that I’ve never met Gary in person. He’s a regular commenter here, though, so I cut him a lot more slack than a new person and that’s why I left the comment in here.

    Thanks, Gary, for commenting, but if you could clarify it might be helpful. 🙂

  24. 12. The only “people” who are following you on twitter are blog-tweeting-bots for spammy stuff.

    13. Your daily google search for your top keyword returns multiple sites that all say the same thing: want to find the secret info that google doesn’t even know about — CLICK HERE!

    Fun list, Anita!

    Twitter: SweetSue

  25. They are funny, but it should be paired with a serious article on the subject.
    Anytime soon?

  26. Please accept my apologies for my overzealous, minimalist phrase that lacked context and should have been – I love Anita’s writing!

    Of the dozens of articles that I read daily, few are written with flavor or color. Anita invests tremendous time, energy, and personality to make Small Business Trends more than just another resource.

    By the way, my wife of 25-years does not allow me to love anyway else and I obey this rule faithfully.

  27. Gary, thanks for the clarification!!! 🙂

    And I really appreciate your kind words — it’s good to have people like you who appreciate this community and help make it what it is.

    Anita

  28. Hi Luz,

    Oh, I didn’t mean it to be mean spirited! Not at all.

    On the contrary, I personally identify with the feeling that at some point we all hit stumbling blocks no matter how hard we try.

    Believe me, I’ve had lots of trials and tribulations over the years on my own Web efforts. For instance, #2 actually happened to me several years ago.

    Everybody hits a wall at one point or another — I’ve hit many. If we don’t laugh about it, we’d have to cry. 🙁

    Anita

  29. Number 9… Number 9… believe it or not but it happens. Eventually had to buy the type-o domain and use it as the marketing domain hours before launch of the website! Believe it or not!

  30. Thats an excellent article! Nicely done!

  31. #12- You find yourself posting on business blogs to get more high quality link ins…in other words online marketing is like any marketing endeavor, it takes effort and persistence.

    All joking aside, why must a website grow exponentially? Mine has held steady at basically the same traffic level (400 a day), making me a nice living for over 4 years.

  32. Very funny. How do I befriend the kangaroo?

  33. Great top ten!

    One more…

    You send out a great e-mail campaign to every client, with all the bells whistles. You know it will be a knock out! You check your stats later, and no one opened it.

    Great…..

  34. Hi Robert,

    Ken Garoux the inflatable kangaroo’s Facebook profile page is: http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1532161949

    You have to be signed in to Facebook to see it.

    He’s a real party animal. 🙂

    Anita

  35. haha, very good but im not sure if you should be ranked higher or lower for miserable failure…

    is it better to be the best of the worst or the worst of the best… if that made sense

    maybe ranked #2 out of 2 possible results….

    nice!

  36. some good once anita, as far as youtube videos are concerned, I always disable rating of my promotional videos 🙂

  37. Hi Pushkar, thanks for pointing out that you can disable ratings of YouTube videos. That’s helpful to know. Anita

  38. Hi Anita,I just replied to your comment about squidoo in my blog here

    I need to do some catching with SBT I guess, I am subscibed to it since ages, but just lost touch of it

    Pushkar

  39. That image of the kangaroo was hilarious enough.

    Great list. Some are just hilarious. Others are like.. yikes.. i wonder how people have gone through that before!

  40. Good stuff, I love the item with the only friend on Facebook being an infklatable kangaroo. While this is meant to be funny (and is), you brought up some great examples I have seem multiple times over the years, many of which are simply the result of apathy.