Making mistakes in the wild west of digital marketing is a bit of a given. But it helps when you’ve got some navigation cues to help you sidestep the worst of them. Even big brands don’t get it right every time. Why does that matter to you? Because there are no failures in business, only learning experiences. Thankfully, many businesses have gone before you, resulting in some tough lessons learned that you can use to improve your own digital marketing campaigns.
Digital Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Though this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s a good baseline to help you make the best decisions for your business.
Failing to Identify Your Target Audience
An unidentified and undefined audience is probably the biggest cringe-worthy mistake that brands make when it comes to digital marketing. Without knowing whom you are supposed to reach, how can you tailor your content to them? Brands should identify their target customer profiles using their demographic information, figure out what their weak points are, and design their digital marketing strategy accordingly.
Just look at AOL and Time Warner. They were titans in their industry, but each had two very different audiences. Failing to recognize that meant billions of dollars were lost.
Failing to Create a Well-Defined Digital Marketing Campaign
While you need background information to make a plan, if the plan or concept itself is faulty, no amount of information can help you. To succeed in digital marketing, you must put in the time and effort to develop a well-defined digital marketing campaign. This should include setting goals, creating a timeline, creating a budget, and brainstorming the main concepts and ideas you plan to use in your campaign.
Failing to Develop a Content Strategy
Breaking things down a bit further, another marketing blunder a brand can make is not developing a proper content strategy. Throwing a bunch of content up on a website without any real endgame or goal in mind muddies your brand’s messaging. A well-defined content strategy helps clarify your messaging and assists you in reaching your target market.
Failing to Make the Most of Social Media
Digital marketing is incomplete without social media. Your website and social media often work synergistically. Social media allows you to reach your audience in an informal way, while your website is your online business storefront that people can visit for more in-depth information.
Failing to Prioritize the User Experience
When developing a digital marketing strategy, a key factor is how your user perceives the information you provide and perceives their experience with your business.
No matter how good your products or services are, if customers become annoyed because you send too many emails and messages, or there are too many hoops to jump through to use your website, or you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, their experience falls flat. Take lessons from Meerkat.
They put more time and money into celeb endorsements than user experience and Twitter ended up essentially blowing them out of the water with Periscope. User experience is paramount.
Failing to Find Balance Between Content Quality and Quantity
Content is still king of the interwebs, and quantity does matter to some degree. But more important than that is the quality of your content. It should be insanely useful or meaningful to your audience, otherwise, it’s just filler and doesn’t do much to establish brand authority.
Failing to Understand SEO
If your brand isn’t creating content optimized for search engines, that may well be the most cringe-worthy of digital marketing mistakes! In the land of Google, they also can’t send the right people to your content if it’s poorly optimized. If you don’t have time to learn the basics of SEO, hire someone knowledgeable who can help.
Best Way to Sidestep Mistakes? Team Up With Us!
Digital marketing is still relatively new when compared with traditional advertising, which means mistakes are bound to happen. Do your best to avoid the worst of them, and use the ones you do make to constantly refine your processes into a well-oiled digital marketing machine.
Or, you can trust our experts to handle all of the digital marketing heavy liftings for you! Contact us today for your free consultation!
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