We are all a little guilty of taking the easy way out sometimes. Maybe we didn’t have the time or energy to give it our all or maybe we thought we could get away with doing the minimum for a while. Whether it was your personal or professional life, just about everyone has taken a few shortcuts here and there. However, if you’ve take the “good enough” approach with your marketing (either for your own business or on behalf of clients), you’re going to end up doing more harm than good.

Here are 4 common “lazy marketing” tactics you want to avoid:

Automated Phone Calls
You know the phone call I’m talking about. (I probably get an average of 2-3 a day!) You answer the phone and can barely get out a “Good morning” before a voice on the other end is telling you about this great affiliate program you just have to join, or how to increase you business by 100% in six months and so forth. I’ve actually picked up the phone to hear the voice on the other end start the message with “Don’t hang up.” If you want to have any chance of actually talking to your target audience, automated phone calls are not the way to go. Sure, you may “reach” 200 people a day with them, but 199 probably hang up within the first 6 seconds. The other 1 listens a little longer than lampoons your tactics in a blog post.

Spam E-mail Blasts
E-mail marketing is still an incredibly viable online marketing tactic, but there is a fine line between e-mail marketing and spamming your lists. When someone opts-in to your company newsletter, they are giving you permission to contact them, not to spam them. You have to determine what kind of message your audience wants to hear and how frequently they want to hear it. A shot in the dark e-mail blast won’t do you any good and is probably going to annoy a lot of people on your list, forcing them to unsubscribe to get you to leave them alone.

Microsites
I’ve spoken with many site owners who firmly believe that developing dozens of keyword heavy microsites is the only way to rank well in the search engines. The microsites serve as doorways to the main site, adding an extra click between your target audience and your actual site. Instead of building a strong website from the get-go, investing time in link building, content marketing and social media to help that site rank well, the lazy marketer will launch a dozen microsites instead. It may take a lot less time, but it is also a lot less effective.

Ad Blasting Social Networks
Social networking sites are not for you to “talk at” your audience. They are not another ad platform for your products and services, but a place to directly interact with your target audience. If you flood your Facbook and Twitter profiles with ads, or “content” that is really just a thinly veiled ad, you are taking the easy way out.