How effective would you say your digital marketing strategy is? In an ever-evolving technology era, we can agree that your digital marketing efforts are vital to reaching and engaging today’s consumer. You see, people desire to interact with brands on their favorite social platforms, find them in search, and remain informed via email, to say the least. So, your digital strategy must be effective at showing up when your customers are looking for you and keeping them connected to your business.
Yet, there are common digital marketing mistakes many businesses are making that are hindering them from succeeding in digital marketing. It seems that they’re doing all the right digital marketing activity, however, they’re not driving the desired results in traffic generation, lead conversions, and sales.
Can your business relate? If so, here are some of the biggest digital marketing mistakes and how your business can avoid and correct them today.
Common Digital Marketing Mistakes Your Business Might be Making:
#1) No True Clarity on Your Audience or Digital Marketing Goals
The first step to establishing a digital marketing plan is having a clear understanding of your audience and the specific results you want to achieve.
Knowing who your ideal customer is will ensure that your content resonates with their interests, pains, and problems. Therefore, you’ll attract the right audience every time.
Also, setting clear, measurable goals will offer direction and help you better gauge your digital marketing success. So whether your goal is increased traffic, better social engagement, or more leads, set a measurable goal on what that looks like so you’re able to track your outcomes.
Now, one of the best ways of gaining clarity of your audience is by creating buyer personas. Investing the time to develop buyer personas will provide amazing value to your content creation team.
This extends beyond knowing the basic demographics. You’ll glean knowledge such as their role in the buying process, what keeps them up at night, their intimate goals…all key ingredients to creating awesome content that attracts them to your brand!
#2) Failing to Create a Documented Strategy
Failing to do your due diligence in digital marketing planning is one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes around. It’s important to not only establish your goals but to clearly map out the activities your business will do in order to make them happen.
A good recommendation here is to focus on 2-3 digital strategies at a time if you have a small marketing team or to leverage a digital marketing agency to help you create a documented strategy.
By honing in, testing, and concentrating on your tactics, you can quickly discover what’s working and what isn’t. This way, you can double-down on what’s driving results and make adjustments to everything else.
#3) Posting on Social Media without an End Goal
We all remember the post Mark Zuckerberg released earlier this year on Facebook regarding focusing on meaningful interactions:
“…we’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to help you have more meaningful social interactions.”
It later reveals how Facebook users will see fewer posts from brands and businesses. Except, that it should encourage one thing: meaningful interactions between people.
Although this was officially shared in January, creating valuable content that purposely engages your audience was and will always remain a best practice for social media marketing. Simply posting just to post doesn’t cut it. It must have an end goal of connecting with your follower, adding value, and getting them to take a specific action.
In fact, here are a few tips for bolstering your social media marketing strategy:
- Your post should educate, entertain, or inspire.
- Spend time crafting great headlines to stand out. Questions, facts, and how-to’s work well on social media. Also, use a tool like CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer to create better headlines over time.
- Encourage engagement by responding to each comment.
- Live videos are all the rave, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Use them to your advantage to build authentic relationships with followers and move them to action!
#4) Not Honing Your SEO Strategy
Improving your SEO is a top tactic to increase visibility in search and help your business get found by your target audience. The good news is that there are time-tested SEO techniques that continue to help websites and blog posts show up in search engines. Some of these include:
- Including your primary keyword in the title tag, meta description, URL, and naturally and semantically throughout your post.
- Adding visuals and interactive content to improve dwell-time.
- Including authoritative backlinks.
However, search algorithms continue to change. Meaning, what works today may or may not work tomorrow. Therefore, keeping up with the latest SEO practices is crucial to remaining competitive. By not honing your SEO strategy, you’re committing one of the largest digital marketing mistakes there is!
Another benefit of working with a digital marketing agency is that you’ll be able to use their expertise to advance your online marketing efforts. Instead of having to stay abreast of what’s constantly changing, they’ll ensure your website is up-to-date to give your brand a slight edge in the industry.
To learn more about how a digital marketing agency can work for you, contact us for a free consultation.
#5) Underutilizing Case Studies
Did you know case studies are a powerful tool for helping you convert leads into buying customers? In addition to performing incredibly well for decision stage content, case studies can boost your organic traffic, improve website-experience, and increase lead conversions (Source: Moz)!
You see, stories sell! People want to see how your business has successfully helped others to determine whether or not you’re a good fit for meeting their needs. It increases your credibility and builds trust. It’s one of the most valuable assets you could have in your digital marketing arsenal.
Yet, many brands are making one of the most common digital marketing mistakes by not using case studies to their full advantage to experience these amazing results. They either feel their results are not impressive enough, don’t have the time, or simply don’t have the client’s permission. However, you’ll be amazed at how willing your clients would be to share their success story with your company.
So, begin implementing case studies in your content marketing. Foster relationships with your clients and let them know that you would love to spotlight their company and customer success on your website. Then, leverage these stories in your email, search, and social media marketing to catapult your overall digital marketing efforts!
Conclusion – It’s Time for Digital Marketing Dominance!
Use this guide to overcome any mistakes your business may have made in its digital marketing. Be sure to test your efforts to see what produces and what needs to be modified. In due time, you’ll experience greater results in follower engagement, traffic, lead conversions, and sales.
Is your business looking to achieve digital marketing dominance? Beyond following the tips laid out by this article, make sure to contact us today to see how we can help!
