What forms of marketing are a complete waste of time?

[CyberAlchemist]

First off, I don't believe that there are any marketing methods that are a complete waste of time but it can happen if we do wrong way and i want to know what forms of marketing are a complete waste of time for you? Think of marketing like having various ways. My goals for it just to drive more traffic and increase sales for my site.

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

To keep from personal opinion, I'd recommend taking a look at statistica. Look for advertising industry stats.

Online ads have lower ROI than traditional, with the exception of SEO and PPC.

 

[Rob Whisonant]

That's actually a very hard question to answer. The answer is going to be different for each person and for each niche.

What I do to determine what is a waste of time for me is to apply the 80/20 rule. I look at what marketing methods produce the most income for me and concentrate on them. I'm basically concentrating on the top 20%. I drop the remaining 80%.

Using this method has never done me wrong so far.

 

[TheStrugglingNewb]

Rob hit the nail on the head. The only that you can really determine the answer to
that is to track your marketing efforts and eliminate anything that's not generating
conversions.

And there are a lot of different factors that can affect that.

That's why you must track & split test everything that you can.

Every link, every ad, split test landing pages, email headlines...track and test everything.

That's the easiest way to determine what's working and what's not working in
your campaign...

And it will definitely tell you which one of your marketing strategies is a waste of time.