We often share hints and tips on SEO and internet marketing tactics that reap great results. We thought it would be helpful to also share some of the marketing faux pas that we see regularly, but that simply do not work. Buying likes and followers – This is regarded as cheating, and a black hat technique. And yet, there are still many companies that pay to have their following or likes on social media increased. It is not illegal for a company to offer services like this, but the customer could easily be realised if found out. And in our opinion, the risk to the good name of the brand is a price that is far too high to pay. Question any marketing service which offers you this type of service as a way to succeed online. They are not marketing professionals and do not understand how true SEO works. Buying databases of email addresses – Be very careful if you are considering the purchase of a huge email database. This is an area where you really do get what you pay for. There are legitimate companies who will sell email addresses for specified target demographics. But these services are reputable and not cheap. They are genuine email marketing professionals and they know what they are doing. They use genuine email addresses, belonging to real people. And they always follow Data Protection Law to the letter. There are many companies claiming to be trustworthy but in fact, they are selling email databases gathered in unscrupulous ways. Many of them also contain false email address, or out of date information. We often recommend that clients do not use this approach at all, especially if they already have a healthy email database of real customers. Unsolicited emails to random email addresses do not have a high return rate at all. Your investment would be much better spent elsewhere Spam articles – Because they increase the number of keywords and backlinks that are online, article marketing is extremely popular. And when it is done properly it is highly effective. However, companies that resort to paying for spam articles will see negative results in the long term. And they generally do not result in additional customers, or visits to websites. Spam articles are solely used to cheat the search engines into thinking there is a lot of activity. They are not designed to be actually read by real people who might turn in to customers. If you want to attract readers who could become qualified leads, you should hire professionals to create regular articles of the highest quality that also have links to your website.