Digital marketing has gained a lot of focus in recent times. Speaking of the trying times of the pandemic in 2020, businesses all the more adapted to the digital modes of marketing. Also, with the technology advancements, we see new developments happening on the digital marketing platforms. There is new learning every day. Ways to reach out to your customers keep getting better. Moreover there are improved ways to make your brand more visible and increase your revenue too.
Brands and businesses need to have their presence online, now more than ever before. This is where keeping minute details of different aspects of digital marketing come to play.
Digital marketing is vital for every brand. And this is how,
- It helps reach a wider audience globally.
- With digital marketing, one can target the right kind of audience.
- Promote your brand better on several platforms.
- With analytical tools available, a brand can make necessary improvements time and now.
- It offers a means to bridge the gap between the buyer and seller and ways to understand your audience.
With all these benefits, one has to rely on digital marketing to stay ahead in the game. But the point is adapting the right kind of strategy to reap these benefits for your brand. Marketers do make mistakes, even with all the know-how. With the use of complex strategies like SEO, content marketing, advertising on digital platforms, and more, it is easier to make mistakes.
Here is our list of 7 common digital marketing mistakes that brands make. And there are steps that can be taken to keep these mistakes at bay.
1. Little know-how of your target audience
Targetting the wrong audience is one of the easiest digital marketing mistakes to make. Every brand wants to reach out to a broad set of audiences. So the brand tries targeting anyone and everyone only to end up gaining very little from it.
The consumer is the key to a brand’s revenue. You have to know your customers first to design the right content. And only your target audience can help you design an apt marketing strategy.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Conduct thorough research on your target audience. Study the behavior of your existing customers. Find out what are their likes or what interests them. Based on this research, start by creating a buyer persona.
According to data, 82% of companies with the use of buyer personas had an improved value proposition.
So, with the buyer persona, you will have the demographics, interests, buying patterns, and more such information. Use this to target people with similar traits. It can be more beneficial. It can save you the efforts of targeting all kinds of people.
2. Unrealistic digital marketing goals
One of the biggest digital marketing mistakes is creating unfocused campaigns for your brand.
With unrealistic goals or vague objectives, one cannot create a successful campaign. Moreover, it is hard to know whether the campaign worked in your favor or not. So, the first step to designing a digital marketing campaign is to set your goals right.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Always set SMART goals. Your goals should be,
a. Specific- It should achieve an exact action like more clicks or more traffic.
b. Measurable- You must be able to trach your goals with relevant data and proper analytics.
c. Achievable- Set milestones for your brand or business and see what digital marketing goals you achieve with time.
d. Realistic- Set digital marketing goals that are with reach and are relevant.
e. Timely- Set deadlines to achieve your goals. Goals need to have a timeline to keep all other activities intact. To qualify as goals, they need to have a beginning and an end.
Setting realistic goals should always be the priority for they serve the basis of your brand’s complete strategy.
3. Less focus on your website design
A well-designed website can help build a good impression on your prospective customers. It can also help get more conversions. A user-friendly website can help visitors with easy navigation and offer a good user- experience.
Giving less focus to your website design is certainly a mistake.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Make sure your website is user-friendly. Plan your site well and test out different versions to see what works best for your audience. It should be easy to navigate through.
The page should load quickly. For this, run a check on all the images, videos, or other elements with large file sizes. Try compressing them for better accessibility.
Make sure you have a responsive website, ideal for mobile viewing. It should have design elements like readable text without having to zoom. It should be easily accessible on any device that your audience might use.
4. Neglecting the role of social media
According to data, there are 3.78 billion social media users worldwide, which is a five percent increase from the last year. If your brand is not on social media, it is one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes. By not being present on social media, you are missing out on the opportunity to reach out to a new audience, build a better relationship with your customers, and boost your brand’s visibility.
As per statistics, the average user spends 144 minutes of their internet time on social media daily. By using social media, brands can certainly reap enormous benefits.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Make sure to have an active presence on social media.
Social media platforms are one of the biggest channels for marketers to promote their products and services. As a marketer, one can use social media management tools that can help create and manage marketing campaigns.
A brand can use social media to have more personalized interactions with its audience, have more transparency, enable higher engagement, can cater to its customers in a better manner, etc.
- You can have a social media content calendar in place.
- Have a personalized interaction with your customers to understand their behavioral patterns.
- Maintain transparency with your customers at all times.
- Create ways to initiate more engagement.
- Choose the correct platform to promote your brand.
- Advertise on social media channels.
It’s high time to add social media marketing to your digital marketing strategies.
5. Letting go of remarketing opportunities
One of the big digital marketing mistakes that a brand makes is neglecting the aspect of remarketing. Remarketing refers to targeting customers who have already visited your website. This marketing strategy works best as it reaches people who have already shown interest in your brand, your products and services. It is cost-effective way to generate more conversions.
Businesses generally focus on acquiring more and more audience, neglecting ways to retain the existing ones. And this is where they go wrong.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Have a remarketing strategy in place.
Use different types of remarketing options, like content remarketing in the form of blogs, run ads through videos, in the form of email remarketing, etc. Emails can help remind users of products or services they had viewed earlier and of things they have put off in their carts.
For example, a consumer electronics retail company, Best Buy used this remarketing technique to remind its audience of all the items they had put away in their shopping carts, without having made a purchase. This just sends a reminder to the viewers and drives them towards the products or services of their interest, by revisiting your web page, inclined towards making a purchase.
6. A blog less website
Writing blogs or posting relevant content on your website acts as an important tool to drive more traffic to your page. Blogs are a way to tell more about your brand or say they can help build your brand identity. Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13 times more likely to benefit from a positive ROI.
There are many businesses that let go of the blogging aspect for many reasons. But we feel this is where they make a mistake. A website with no blogs is a big mistake.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Have blogs on your page. In today’s digital era, blogs have an incredible power to add great value to you and your business.
Blog on a regular basis so that people can find you and can follow your content. This aids in better reach and more web traffic. Focus on the quality of the content you put up rather than the quantity. Give customers relevant and useful information, they are looking for.
Build a content strategy with proper research on the keywords and buyer’s persona to build a framework for each of your blogs. Share your blogs and try engaging with your audience taking the help of the comments section of your blog.
7. Not using a call-to-action
A call-to-action is referred to as the exact action that is intended to take place on your brand’s page. It is the end result of what marketers want from their customers. A call-to-action is a piece of content that calls for an immediate response from the viewer, reader, or listener. Not adding a call-to-action is one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes made by businesses.
You can avoid this digital marketing mistake by,
Incorporate a call-to-action. A CTA can enable users to take any desired action. It can be either downloading a file, filling in some information, buying a product or service, or a mere click through to another page.
Also, make sure to have the right CTA in place.
Say, for example, Instagram has this CTA which clearly indicates the action to be taken. It uses a “Create Ad” CTA to make it appealing to the marketers who are interested in reaching a wider audience. Instagram also uses an image from one of the user’s past posts as a background for the ad, enticing advertisers to reach out to a new set of audience.
Conclusion
These are some of the digital marketing mistakes businesses make every day.
The takeaway here is simple. We all make mistakes but the way out is to realize those mistakes and correct them.
As a brand, one must keep adapting to emerging trends and technological advancements. But one must keep the brand identity intact. Experiment with new strategies and new technology. Study the competitors and follow new methods of marketing. Try keeping the goals realistic and design marketing strategies to achieve these goals.
Let mistakes be a learning experience for all. And if you are still in doubt, you can always seek help of the experts in the field of digital marketing.