Digital marketing can be a minefield when you’re just starting out. Look out for these 5 digital marketing mistakes – and implement these solutions – to keep yourself on track to creating a successful business.
Effective digital marketing strategies are changing rapidly, leaving many brands to either evolve or die. There’s this relentless need to re-evaluate what works whilst avoiding specific mistakes in these trying and crucial times.
According to Statista, 59% of the global population are active internet users. Businesses, therefore, can’t ignore online marketing, be it B2B or B2C, if they are to effectively make sales and create brand awareness. Digital marketing, when used effectively, can lead to a 50% increase in sales despite the current state of the economy. But here’s the catch – spending huge amounts of money on online marketing doesn’t guarantee good returns. Only effective strategies can.
Are you bothered by your low return on investments (ROI) despite all your digital marketing efforts? Then, it would be advisable to reassess your strategies and discover the digital marketing mistakes that are affecting your business. Only then can you learn how to avoid them.
1. Focusing on Your Products Instead of Your Audience
In 2019, Facebook changed its rules on the number of posts followers can view, meaning that not every follower gets to see your feed. For that reason, you need to “bolster meaningful interactions” with your followers in order to get high customer engagement.
An excellent way to achieve this is by creating valuable customer-centric content. This kind of content shouldn’t only be available on your Facebook feed. Instead, you should also post it on your website, other social media platforms, and use it for any other business copy. Some companies make the mistake of focusing solely on their product instead of their customer – don’t fall into this trap!
“What’s in it for me?” is a fundamental customer behavioural question that your business should always answer. Posting content isn’t enough; it has to create value for the reader. Your writing needs to create an interaction that connects to the customer and creates an online community.
Having an online community still tops the list of best strategies to generate online sales. In the long run, communities promote brand loyalty. On top of that, an online community gives you first-hand information about who your customer is, what influences their purchase decisions, and how to improve your products to suit your clients and their needs. Starbucks and Xbox are perfect examples of brands that have taken full advantage of this strategy and are reaping its benefits.
While creating an online community can be quite the task, the end result is gratifying. To attract loyal customers, you need to create authentic content. Figure out the unique features your clients love about your brand, build a tribe around it, and watch recommendations increase your sales. Recommendations, whether by word-of-mouth or otherwise, are the end goal of digital marketing. They ensure that your business has incoming revenue through the generation of sales.
Avoid one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes of emphasising only your products and neglecting that all-important customer interaction.
2. Not Evaluating Your Data
Irrespective of your industry, there’s a need to have audience metrics, gather data for it, evaluate it, and understand it. Business decisions made with accurate, comprehensive data enable your company to create an ultra-efficient online marketing campaign.
Some audience metrics you should track on your website are page views, bounce rate, average session duration, and users. However, your marketing data shouldn’t comprise only web analytics or ads. It can also encompass social media, email marketing, and lead generation. For social media, you’d need to track engagement, audience, and content, amongst others.
Why Is Marketing Data So Important?
Properly utilising your marketing data prevents you from targeting the wrong audience. With marketing data, you can understand different groups of customers and their preferences. Then you’d be able to improve your marketing strategy and attract prospective buyers.
Marketing data provides insights into your sales analytics, including the content that motivates purchase, the location with the most leads, and how long it takes to convert to sales.
How to Avoid Underutilising Your Marketing Data Analytics
Monitor your data
Thankfully, there are a host of analytic apps that can monitor your data, both free and paid. Google Analytics is one of the best tools for website analytics, and it’s free too. Most social media platforms, like Instagram, have their built-in analytics tool to help study the demographics of your customers.
Strategise your results
Merge your goals to the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) using your data findings. KPIs track your marketing strategy’s potency and address your desired result.
Analysing marketing data is a crucial step to having effective digital marketing. Even though keeping up with the numbers can be overwhelming, studying your data analytics improves marketing performance.
3. Inconsistency
Rome was not built in a day; neither will your brand’s online presence be fully developed in one day. Consistency is vital in digital marketing, and not regularly updating your feed is one of the most common digital marketing mistakes to avoid in 2020. Running a digital marketing campaign can be discouraging for some. From experience, it’s worse when there are unrealistic goals. If you overestimate your results, you’ll get frustrated and cut your digital marketing journey short before reaping its benefits.
Organically building a strategy that stands the test of time may take a few months or even years. Always remember that digital marketing thrives on dedication and consistent content posting.
Tips to Avoid Inconsistency in Digital Marketing
Here are some useful tips to help avoid inconsistency:
Have a schedule and plan your posts
There are several techniques you can incorporate to schedule and plan your posts effectively. Some of them are:
• Prepare a plan for your posts, either manually or with planner apps.
• Write down topics you would like to share and create engaging content.
• Form the habit of posting your content at a specific time daily. Your data insights are a great way to figure out what time of the day generates better engagement.
Have online marketing goals
Goals improve your focus. They help you measure sales and the customer conversion process. I always recommend digital marketing goals to be:
Precise: Setting ambiguous goals leads to running campaigns with no clear focus. Marketing goals should be explicit, ruling off all ambiguity.
Adjustable: Avoid rigid goals. Digital marketing goals should be flexible and respond favourably to unforeseen circumstances. Businesses with modifiable goals thrived better and faster during the coronavirus pandemic. However, there are still marketing tips to increase sales despite the pandemic.
Realistic: While it’s good to push yourself to get the best result, going over the top can be counterproductive. Unrealistic expectations are the perfect recipe for a failed digital marketing campaign. So, set realistic and achievable goals based on the time and resources available.
Time-sensitive: Your goals should be time-bound. Outline your monthly targets and set short, medium, and long-term goals.
Track your goals and analyse your success
It’s advisable to have a clear cut, realistic, and time-based goal. You can celebrate your little successes as you edge towards achieving your target. On the other end of the spectrum, put in extra efforts to achieve your goals if you notice a lag.
Visitors don’t always translate to sales
Expecting all clicks to convert to sales would only reduce your confidence in the effectiveness of digital marketing. The best approach is to study similar businesses in your niche and draw up an estimate of visitors that can convert to customers.
Also, avoid pushy advertisements. Don’t beam your focus on selling your products. Instead, advertise subtly and concentrate on the benefits of the product to the prospect. Every visitor is a potential customer. Shoving your products down their throats will only produce adverse results. Subtle ads, however, convert your blog traffic to sales.
4. Less Than Enough Promotion
Having great content isn’t enough; you need to promote your content adequately. It’s best to share your posts and ads through all the platforms that connect you with your audience. Neglecting to amplify your content is one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes – so be sure to rectify that now.
How to Promote Your Content
Here are common ways to improve your content promotion:
Use proper keywords
According to the Global web index data via Datareportal, 81% of people search for products online before making a purchase. It’s crucial to use high ranking keywords if you want a larger audience to see your posts.
Find out the search terms your ideal audience will input in the search engine results page and use the keywords accordingly. Remember, it’s always about the customer, not you. You can utilise apps that generate high-ranking keywords in every niche.
Don’t neglect the email list
Most business owners make the mistake of not having an email list early. By the time their site generates massive traffic and they add an email list, they’ve lost several prospective buyers. Your list helps you reach out to a vast audience of prospects that can become loyal customers. Maximise the opportunity it presents and share your content with them all the time.
Avoid click baits
Click baits are not good marketing tools. Although they might initially draw attention to your posts and landing pages, they hardly ever convert to sales or lead to effective conversion. They might even annoy customers and reduce sales. Avoid click baits because they’re against the industry standards.
Use platforms that work for your business
Not all platforms are beneficial to your campaign. Some businesses get better results with LinkedIn, while others have found out that Pinterest or Twitter work better for them. Some other companies prefer to use a combination of two or three platforms for their digital marketing campaign.
Remember that not all platforms are suitable for your marketing strategy. So, learn to stick to what works for you.
5. Trusting Only Paid Advertisements
There’s more to effective digital marketing than running paid ads. While paid advertisements can improve a brand’s visibility, your content’s intrinsic value will keep the target audience glued. Don’t make one of the most common digital marketing mistakes and use the entire marketing budget for paid ads. Instead, invest in other strategies to utilise your marketing campaign fully.
Other Digital Marketing Strategies
Work on improving your content
Customer-centred content never runs out of value and is consistently rewarding. You’d need to research problems affecting buyers in your niche and share meaningful posts to alleviate the problems. Customers pay attention to messages they can relate with.
Personalise your communication
Prospective online customers would most likely inquire about your products via comments and email. Replying to such inquiries promptly and appropriately is essential. Having a history of acknowledging emails and comments can stir up brand confidence and loyalty.
No matter how brilliant your marketing strategies are, a weak feedback system will ultimately result in losing customers. Invest in a stable online customer-support system to produce organic growth. You can also incorporate other communication strategies your competition isn’t offering, like sending birthday shout outs to your loyal customers and offering discounts on coupons.
Share your story
Share your story in a relatable way to connect with your audience. You can utilise this useful model at any business stage. Even if your products aren’t popular, share the story of your journey so far. It creates brand awareness.
Employ highly qualified staff
Marking out the bulk of your budget for paid ads while ignoring highly qualified personnel always turns out disastrous. To run a good marketing campaign, employ a professional team to analyse your data, draw out a plan, and conduct an effective campaign.
Adding inexperienced or undertrained digital marketers to your team will result in weak lead generation. To get maximum ROI, a competent and well-equipped team should run your campaign with the required resources.
Conclusion
Having a successful marketing campaign isn’t as difficult as it seems. Adhering to what works and avoiding digital marketing mistakes that may mar your online campaign can take your business up the ladder of success in record time. Besides, online marketing is always evolving. Taking up courses will keep you and your team updated about practices that work.
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