Marketing is about getting more customers but can sometimes backfire. Consider common problems and mistakes that will not only fail to get you new customers but can cost you customers.

Taking on too many obligations to maintain a blog or Twitter account and becoming unresponsive to potential customers is one big mistake. If you are not ready to put in the time maintaining your interactive invitations to your customers by responding to them do not include the option for them to interact since it will cause frustration for your customers.

Using Internet marketing that is not sufficiently supported to handle increased traffic in terms of taking, processing and delivering on orders in a timely fashion is also problematic.

Stay away from experimenting with a promised “new” way to market before making sure that it is legal for you to engage in that type of marketing. Even people who use Internet marketing companies can run into legal problems with their content or methods so be sure that you make sure your marketing efforts are legal.

Having insufficient safeguards to protect consumer privacy happens more often than it should. Security is an Internet expense that should not be looked on lightly because your company may be liable for fixing any problems it contributes to in terms of compromising a consumer’s privacy.

False advertising in the form of too many or untrue “testimonials” can damage your business reputation. Many consumers already take testimonials with a grain of salt. It’s important to incorporate this knowledge into your strategy if you decide to use testimonials.

One way to legitimize your testimonials is to show evidence of the product or service you provided in addition to including a genuine customer testimonial.

In addition to your own ethical commitments to your customers, consumer and governmental awareness of the phony testimonial problem on Internet marketing make it worth avoiding phony testimonials.

Proofread all of your content, proofread it again and then have someone else proofread it. In the age of fast communication, do not communicate with your customers unless you have proofread all material you are providing. A typo in price, a duplicate line, a stray or misused word can damage your professional image.

Using customer information to contact your customer too frequently will annoy them and will backfire as a marketing effort. An important variation on this warning is not to use reworded content as an excuse to contact your customers. The same offer in different words or the same blog in different language is annoying and will accelerate consumer efforts to opt out of your communications.

Do not use misleading titles and captions to lure customers into reading the same old thing. For instance, if you promise to write a title about “12 Tips for Saving Money,” and your article is about 12 ways your product or service can save them money, meaning you’re marketing to them, the heading is technically accurate although it is not actually what you’re writing about and people are going to be turned off.

Internet marketing efforts should not result in losing customers. Use the tips above to avoid common ways that Internet marketing costs businesses customers.