In this article, we’re going to review some of the more common digital marketing mistakes that you can avoid to save your company both time and money.
Identifying potential mistakes in a digital marketing plan is essential as these mistakes can and will have repercussions across a company. These mistakes can show up in lack of sales leads, lack of sales, reduction of your company’s brand visibility, and the potential to damage company’s reputation.
So to help eliminate these possibilities, let’s review some of the most common digital marketing mistakes.
NOT HAVING GOALS FOR YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
This is the single most common mistake that we run across regularly. We’ve been involved in conversations with both business owners and marketers who ask them, “what are your digital marketing goals” they will either have none or have goals that are so vague or generalized that they won’t support their company’s business goals.
Here’s an example. One of the most common digital marketing goals that we hear is “we need to increase the traffic to our website”. On the surface, this seems to be a good goal to have.
The problem with this goal is that it is too far-reaching as it doesn’t consider, let’s say, traffic to their website from people who will never do business with them.
If, as an example, the company in this scenario only sells their products and/or services within a particular geographical area, then any traffic coming to their website from people that live outside of their geography represents a success of the goal to increase traffic to their website; however, it would be a failure in terms of the businesses goal of selling more products and/or services.
S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting
The first step in setting your digital marketing goals is to use the S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting system. This system is ideal for setting laser-focused goals on accomplishing precisely what your company needs.
The acronym S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound.
Specific: Is your digital marketing goal specific? In our earlier example, rather than having a goal of getting more traffic to a website, the goal should have been to get more traffic to the website that is made up of people that have the ability to purchase the products and/or services that the company provides.
Measurable: How are you going to measure success for this goal? Again, going back to our earlier example of increasing traffic to a website, there is no measurable component to this goal. If, however, that example goal had a metric included, such as “increase website traffic by 15%,” there would then be a metric to measure success against. Remember, the more detailed the metric, the better your digital marketing performance.
Achievable: This element of a S.M.A.R.T. goal is critical because it asks, “Is this goal achievable given the context of the goals. So let’s look at the traffic goal that we’ve been using. If, as an example, you stated a goal of increasing website traffic by 75%, but you were not funding the goal with any additional digital marketing budget dollars, then this goal would not be achievable.
Results Oriented: To address this component of the S.M.A.R.T. framework, you need to answer “how will we know we’re making progress .”Instead of just saying “increase website traffic by 15%”, a goal statement that’s more results-oriented would be “increase website traffic overall by 15% with X% in the second quarter, X% in the third quarter, and x% coming in the fourth quarter”. This will give you specific information to determine if you’re on track to accomplish your goals.
Time-bound: This is where you put the commitment to the goal. Time-bound asks the question, “when will this goal come due .”Is this a 12-month goal or a six-month goal? Is this for your calendar year or your fiscal year? This question has to be part of your goal statement, or you run the risk of never accomplishing the goal.
NOT INCLUDING CONTENT MARKETING IN YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
When it comes to digital marketing, if you’re not serious about the content that your company is putting out, you will fail within all of the digital marketing channels. Think about it; everything online is content! The words on your website, the words that you use in your Google ads, and even your video marketing is content.
You literally can’t do anything online without content. For this reason alone, you should be taking content marketing seriously.
If you agree that content marketing is this important, the next question you most likely have is, “how do I do content marketing correctly.” After all, there is a sea of content out there, so to stand out, your content must be purposeful.
Here are a couple of tips on how to elevate your content marketing.
Know Your Audience: This is the most critical tip I can give you about content marketing. If your content doesn’t resonate with the people looking at it, they will not take action on what you’re saying.
We have created a content strategy worksheet that will assist you in making sure that the content you create is focused on the right audience segments.
This worksheet was developed for both B2B and B2C companies and focuses on the three stages that a buyer goes through on their journey to a buying decision; Awareness, Research, and Purchase.
Audience Segment: You have several different types of buyers regardless of whether your company goes to the market as a B2B or a B2C, and the kind of marketing messaging you use will be different for each segment. It’s essential to identify which of your buyer segments you will be talking to with your content.
Content Goals: What do you want your content to accomplish during each of the buyer’s stages? Remember when you’re setting these goals to use the S.M.A.R.T. framework for goal setting.
Content Type: Identify the content type you’re going to use for each stage. You may find that certain types of content will perform better within different stages of your buyer’s decision-making journey (i.e. demo videos during the research phase).
Digital Marketing Channels: Your buyers are all over the Internet landscape and where they look for information can change based on where they are within their buying process. It will be critical for content marketing success to have the right message in the right channel to get your buyers to engage with your content.
NOT PERSONALIZING YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING CONTENT
According to Statista, “Personalization is becoming not only a competitive advantage but also something that customers now value and expect .”Engagement, conversion, and even retention are all negatively affected when personalization is not employed within a company’s digital marketing strategy.
Personalized marketing (audience segmentation) is more than just adding someone’s first name to the subject line of an email message. Content personalization tips include:
Don’t Be Creepy: We’ve all heard people hate being followed around by display ads about the product they just looked at. Don’t ignore that feeling! People are telling marketers what they don’t want.
You can dial down the creepy effect by reducing the frequency and ensuring that your messaging is relevant. Use the available data to provide an experience that is what the customer is looking for.
Use Dynamic Content: Send interesting emails to the different customer segments you have. If, as an example, you send out an email to current customers and prospective customers, write two separate emails. One for current customers and one for prospective customers. Recognize how you speak differently to these groups in real life and do the same in your email messaging.
Also, utilize different landing pages based on which customer segment you are trying to attract, either via search ads, emails, or display ads. You’ll get a much higher engagement and conversion rate by personalizing the images and text to fit the people you are attracting.
CONCLUSION
Digital marketing can be tough, but by utilizing these couple of tips, you can significantly improve the result you will get from your digital marketing efforts. If you’d like more information on digital marketing, please reach out to us through our website, and we’ll be more than happy to answer your questions.
