It’s easy to make mistakes, especially when it comes to digital marketing.
It happens to the best of us! The key is to identify them, learn from them and pivot to do better.
You can find out more about digital marketing (our beginner’s guide for a better understanding) and see our digital marketing to-do checklist to better streamline your tasks.
However, the following are 11 digital marketing mistakes that could be costing you money.
Mistake #1: Not setting goals or tracking performance
Don’t assume that simply doing certain digital marketing-related tasks will help your business.
Every campaign and effort should have specific goals, and you need to monitor the performance.
Without the focus and monitoring, you open yourself up to missed opportunities.
Goal-setting should be part of your planning process (what you want to achieve and how long you want to achieve it), while performance tracking just depends on the type of campaign you’re running. Most tracking can be done through Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and other applications.
Mistake #2: Targeting the wrong audience
It’s common for businesses new to digital marketing to want to “target” everyone. Unfortunately, that’s not targeting, and a message intended for everyone usually connects with very few.
If you’re a new business, you likely have a target client in your business plan. If you already have a customer database, stay up to date on who is your typical client. Continue to speak to them, but also don’t be afraid to identify a new audience to target (and help grow your reach).
Either way, you’ll want to identify (when possible but not limited to):
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Income
- Interests
- Hobbies
- Purchasing habits
This matters because you need to speak your potential customers’ language. What problems can you specifically solve for them? How can you build trust?
Mistake #3: Sending your prospects to your homepage, not a specific webpage
Think about the user experience. If you see something that appeals to you (a product or service) and you click the link on a post or online ad, do you expect to be taken directly to that product or service?
Deliver on the expectations you’re setting. While we would all like potential customers to broadly shop for many things at one time, you have to remind yourself of where the user expects to go.
Doing so will improve your conversion rates.
Mistake #4: No lead-capture tool on your website
Most website visitors won’t be ready to make a purchase immediately.
For that reason, it’s important to have some sort of lead-capture feature on your website.
You can offer any range of incentives to entice visitors to give you their contact information. You’ll want to be sure to activate this for your product/service pages, as well as your homepage.
Check out our 12 strategies to capture more email addresses without annoying all your visitors.
Mistake #5: Treating customers as one-sale wonders
One of the most expensive mistakes you can make in digital marketing is seeing your customers for only one sale.
It’s important to build a relationship with your customer before, during and after his or her purchase with you. Not only could that lead to an upgraded purchase the first time but can also lead to return purchases.
Some of this can be elevated with the use of a sales funnel. Check out these additional benefits of using a sales funnel.
Mistake #6: Neglecting the design of your website
Your website needs to be a lot of things, and you can’t assume that what worked even five years ago will continue working now.
A user-friendly website with mobile optimization is imperative.
Not sure what it takes to have a user- and mobile-friendly website? Check out our tips.
Mistake #7: Ignoring SEO
Strong search engine optimization helps drive more visitors to your website for free.
Of course, if you neglect your website’s SEO, you’re easily missing out on those visitors, and you definitely want to appear in search engine results to get that organic web traffic.
Here’s how you can check your Google search ranking for free and common mistakes that are easy to make with SEO.
Mistake #8: Not creating or curating content
If your website is like a planet that you want visitors to land on, content is the gravity that helps them get there.
Hosting a blog on your website both enables you to show off your expertise about topics that matter to your prospects and gives you ammo to post on social media and rank on search engine result pages.
But creating content isn’t for every business. In that case, consider curated content, which is content created by others that you can share on your social media accounts to engage and inform your followers. Here are our tips on finding and sharing quality curated content.
Mistake #9: Inconsistency on your social media
This is a particularly big mistake if your target audience largely lives on social media.
The average internet user spends about 28 percent of his or her browsing time on social media.
Social media is about engaging in conversations and building relationships. Inconsistency will lose customer trust, not build it.
Here’s how to determine what social media platform you should start focusing on first.
Mistake #10: Your phone number is not easy to find
This might sound simple, but don’t forget that while most prospects are online a lot, that doesn’t mean they all want to communicate solely through email, social media and so on.
Make sure that your phone number, address and any other relevant contact information is readily available throughout your website. Also, make sure it’s all kept up to date.
Mistake #11: Doing too much at one time
This is a case of limited resources, which most businesses work with daily. If you have too many campaigns and/or too many strategies going on, not only do you risk dropping the ball on any one of them, but you also will have a more difficult time understanding what’s working and what’s not.
Again, that’s why goal-setting is so important. Prioritize what matters most to your business right now, develop a plan and strategy around it, execute and then analyze the results.
Need assistance in achieving your digital marketing goals? DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo today.
