The popularity of digital marketing is undeniably growing. As time passes by, more and more various organizations, companies, and even startups are starting to integrate digital marketing into their marketing strategies.
For some of the startups, digital marketing can even be the only feasible marketing option as with its help they can expect to achieve great results and do that at a relatively low cost. Digital marketing gives businesses numerous new, inventive, and somewhat innovative options to reach audiences and grab their attention towards something. From lead generation to SMS marketing, businesses have a lot of easy to use options in order to succeed in the current market.
While all of the above can sound very motivational and easy, there are still many nuances and details to consider before launching a digital marketing campaign. As with numerous things, digital marketing is a tool that needs to be mastered and used properly. Without doing so, many will find that even the most effective and easy to use digital marketing campaigns fail to generate much attention, or attract customers or increase sales. Many mistakes can be made that will surely hinder the success of your business.
Thus, in this blog, we will be discussing 10 Deadly digital marketing mistakes that you can make. These mistakes indeed can be deadly, so be sure to get informed about how you can avoid them at all costs.
1. Missing Your Target Market
If your landing pages are getting a lot of attention, and you are getting many visitors, it is important to identify whether those visitors represent your target market. The traffic you are generating is not your target audience. Which indicates either misplaced digital advertisements or inaccurate marketing communication.
If you’ve ended up making such mistakes, it is important to reevaluate your marketing campaign. More specifically, where do you place your ads, what platforms of communication do you use, etc. After re-evaluation, your campaign should be more appealing to your desired target audience.
2. Not Implementing Search Engine Optimization or SEO
Search engine optimization is one of the most important steps in the current market that has to be taken to achieve proper success. SEO is essentially a must for being sustainable and fighting off competition. Professional digital marketers can do SEO for your websites to boost your business. You must implement a proper SEO strategy in your marketing plan. Overlooking this step will cause your website or any other domain to appear much less when searched online.
To avoid being overlooked, also be sure to decorate your website content with proper tags, descriptions, or headlines. When ranked at higher spots in the search boxes, customers will have a much easier time finding your websites and other domains.
Let’s not also forget that proper website optimization also helps to generate more leads. Lead generation will eventually make potential customers buy the products or services that you offer when they search for keywords that are related to your business. Besides, when your website ranks higher in the search box, it will inevitably leave the impression of a reputable company.
3. Lack of Clear Marketing Goal
This might sound like an obvious mistake which you will never make, but many small businesses and startups have managed to fall into the trap of being too reliant on digital marketing. They make the mistake of being too reluctant to simply use the tools that digital marketing provides them without any clear goal. SMS marketing, social media, and YouTube ads are just a couple of examples of so-called “tools” that can help businesses market themselves. Still, they will not be of much use unless the organization has a clear marketing plan.
When making a clear marketing plan, any organization is setting a specific goal for itself that it shall achieve by using the necessary tools. Without it, using digital marketing tools will simply leave customers baffled and confused. Without a clearly developed marketing plan, you won’t have a target audience, a proper action plan, as well as a goal that you want to achieve ultimately. Your efforts will be simply in vain, and you will end up spending funds on advertisements that will neither generate leads nor give information about you and your business to the proper audience.
4. Ineffective Content Marketing
Having effective and well-written content is massively crucial. Always be sure to implement the best content marketing strategy for your business. For example, well-written pieces of content will be received much more positively by the audiences. Well thought out and made videos are also no exception.
Be sure to research proper titles and keywords that you are going to use, improve the reliability score of the content by hiring and using proper professionals. Always try to focus on creating real value for your customers by publishing high-quality content for your targeted audience online. Lastly, be sure to implement strategic funnels that will generate leads.
5. Underselling Your website
In this day and age, having an accompanying website for your business has almost become a necessity. However, the world wide web is chock full of websites, and you can’t expect that your customers will find yours. Unless you properly promote it.
In order to drive in web traffic that can bring profit to your company, you are going to need to invest in your website promotion. Investing in SEO, SEM, making sure to develop high-quality content, and promoting your website on search engines, will surely boost your website.
6. Abandoning the Good Old Methods
It seems now that new marketing strategies are emerging much faster than they used to before. Companies and organizations are keen on following all of the latest trends and implement them however they can. A recent example, as of the time this blog has been written, was the banana tape. It has become a trendy topic, and many companies used it to create content that would promote their products and services. Companies are constantly using trends such as that one to showcase their trendiness and active engagement with the world and the community around them.
Still, that doesn’t mean that some of the old methods of marketing and advertising have already gone absolute and should not be used when implementing a marketing strategy. SMS marketing, for example, is considered by some to be already an outdated method of digital marketing, but according to numerous stats, text marketing has the highest rate of visibility. This essentially means that there is a much larger chance that your message will get across to the customer if you send it via a text message.
7. Forgetting About Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
Implementing a good Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing strategy will help you reach your targeted audience, who are going to be keen on using your services and acquiring your products. Besides, paying for ads will ensure that your business or startup will enjoy the benefits of more exposure.
You will also be able to choose your desired system of advertisements – search advertising or display advertising system. Using this method will allow your customers to get exposed to your websites and other domains much more frequently. But, don’t forget that high traffic keywords will cost you a lot of money if you end up using this method, so you have to develop your PPC strategies carefully not to waste any money.
8. Writing Content That Doesn’t Convert
Lead generation is the lifeblood of marketing. If the content you’ve created doesn’t inspire a reader to click on a CTA, buy a product or use your service then it can’t be considered successful. Every well-made piece of content must serve a purpose if your content isn’t generating any leads or isn’t converting then you might be focusing on some these points:
- You are focusing on your product/service features, not the benefits
- You’re rushing to gain profit
- You are not taking into consideration consumer objections
- You’re not linking to a relevant offer
The content you create, no matter the format, should always connect with your consumers. Always keep your buyer personas in mind, as it will help you understand for whom your offer is for and what will they get out of your content.
9. Removing the Personal Touch from Digital Marketing
Keeping in mind the right audience, it is also important to personalize some of the content that you create. This largely applies to mass text messaging, as with text messages, businesses have the option of being in touch with each of their customers. Even if your business is large and has a large number of customers, text messages can be tailored to fit a personalization of some groups that can be divided based on various factors.
See below a couple of examples of personalized SMS marketing, although the examples presented can also be used through other tools of digital marketing.
10. Using Clickbait in Your Content
There is an old trend to use clickbait as a means of luring customers. Clickbait is content that puts a clever spin on words to make it sound more appealing than it actually is. Clickbait is widely considered as lying and deceiving your customers. Any customer who feels cheated and is made a fool of, will make sure not to return to the brand that made him feel so.
11. Overspending on Google & Facebook Ads
Many businesses and startups know that they can use either Facebook or Google ads in order to promote themselves. However, it is important to choose which one of those services will be the best for your business. You have to assess that yourself by taking into consideration your business, audience, and your goals.
By carefully analyzing your goals and by preparing a well thought out ad campaign, you will not overspend by placing ads everywhere.
12. Failing to Track Marketing ROI
Marketing ROI (MROI) can mean different things to different people. Some of the businesses base their marketing success on short-term goals, while others are looking for annual budgetary expenditures. In order to quantify and measure success, you will have to analyze every component of your marketing campaign. Always remember that your business marketing should be a revenue-generating exercise and not a cost center.
Online, there are many tracking tools available for you to take advantage of. HubSpot and Google Analytics, for example, guess your business’s ROI. This will help you keep a time log of lead generations, keyword searches, form conversions, etc. You’ll see precise points where you need to do some more work, later being able to set yourself new goals based on the results.
13. Your website is not mobile-friendly
Making your website mobile-friendly should be one of the top priorities in your mobile marketing strategy. This is a mistake that is overlooked by numerous smaller businesses and startups. The solution to this issue is quite simple. You have to make your website mobile-friendly.
According to GSMA real-time intelligence data, there are now over 5.15 Billion people with mobile devices worldwide. This means that 66.60% of the world’s population has a mobile device (cell phone, tablet, or cellular-enabled IoT devices.) With this huge number of mobile users, you can be sure that most of them will eventually try to look up your website using their phones. If your website is not tailored for the mobile, it is going to leave a bad impression of your business. Besides, your generated leads won’t work properly on mobile users.
14. Ignoring the Feedback Being Sent by Customers
Many of your customers will be willing to send you feedback regarding your business. There are multiple channels through which customers can send you feedback, including social media post comments, emails, calls and through other means if you provide them. Feedback is very crucial for any type of improvement, which is why you should avoid ignoring it at all costs.
Even if you have to dedicate a separate recourse just to answer the feedback given to you across all platforms, do it! It is crucial to respond to the messages, every time, as ignored, customers won’t be staying loyal to your business, that’s for sure.
15. Not improving your personal skills
Digital marketing is evolving rapidly, it is essential that every digital marketer has sufficient knowledge about the latest trends, technology, and means of advertising. Many online and offline courses are available for digital marketers in order to keep their knowledge up to date. Those types of courses are available for free and at very low costs. Outdated skills can render your digital marketing efforts ineffective, resulting in a waste of resources.f
All of the discussed digital marketing mistakes can be deadly for your business or startup. Be always sure to keep a close eye on your marketing campaign and never fall under the impression that digital marketing is easy and simple. Hopefully, all of the discussed mistakes will give you a proper insight into their dangers to your business and how to avoid them at all costs.
It is a competitive market out there, so be careful and good luck!
