Common Errors in Digital Marketing Campaigns
Digital marketing, although complex, is a function that every business needs to master. Even great experts in online marketing can fall victim to unintentional mistakes. And these mistakes can eat away your results. Therefore, we present to you the seven most common digital marketing mistakes. When you know what you need to avoid, you will more likely stay on the right track.
Digital marketing is continually evolving, causing many headaches to marketers and businesses trying to establish a strong online presence. If you are at the beginning of your career, you are embarking on a roller-coaster of a journey. You will feel the thrill of the challenge, get the opportunity to learn, develop your skills, and be rewarded with a sense of accomplishment upon the end of a successful project. Simultaneously, you will struggle with constant algorithm changes, new best practices, trends you need to jump on, and so much more.
Digital Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Below are the most common mistakes marketers make you should do your best to steer clear of:
- Failing to set clear goals
- Targeting the wrong audience
- Measuring the wrong metrics
- Relying on paid advertising only
- Not sharing quality content
- Ignoring SEO
- Not having well-planned social media campaigns
Failing To Set Clear Measurable Goals
Whichever form of marketing you go for, you must know what goals you want to achieve and how to avoid digital marketing mistakes. Otherwise, you will have no way of knowing how to approach your marketing activities, and you won’t be able to tell whether your efforts are paying off.
Failing to define your objectives is the biggest mistake not only digital marketers make, but anyone in the marketing business. Without goals, you can’t know which metrics to measure, and you can’t be sure if the campaign is yielding any results.
The most significant advantage of online marketing is that it allows you to track results in real-time. It means that you can tweak the campaign at any given moment if you notice that it’s not doing anything for you. But it only works if you know what the campaign should do.
Targeting the Wrong Audience
You know your goals, have a solid plan and think you are doing everything right, but the sales are still low. According to Convert More, the most likely cause is that you are not targeting the right people. This is one of the most common digital marketing mistakes.
Your website bounce rates will go through the roof if you don’t define your target demographic. You need to target people who need your service or products, not just anyone. Those uninterested will click back from your website when they notice it’s not relevant to them. However, the interested audience will be much closer to the end of your sales funnel once they get to your website. Once they find what they look for, interested people will be willing to find out more and stay on your website longer, and the longer they stay, the closer they are to making a purchase.
Measuring the Wrong Metrics
When creating a campaign plan, besides knowing your objectives, you have to know precisely how you will measure them. One of the most common digital marketing mistakes is looking at the wrong metrics to measure the success of a campaign.
For example, if we look at social media campaigns, inexperienced marketers will measure the success of their efforts by looking at the number of followers. What they should be looking at is their online presence and popularity. So, in this case, you should strive to increase engagement, get more people to mention you, improve the number of shares, etc.
Relying on Paid Advertising Alone
Paid advertising is an excellent way to get a company name out, increase the following, and grow a business. However, marketers have to keep in mind that the results of PPC marketing and other forms of paid advertising are only short-term. The moment you stop paying, the effects stop. This can only work if you want to sell your product or service without maintaining customer relationships and fostering repeat purchases.
In all other cases, you should focus on long-term results, which are best achieved through high-quality content and search engine optimization. And that brings us to the following mistakes.
Not Sharing Quality Content
Content marketing impacts your online presence more than anything else. Top-quality content is the best way to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. It is your hook. Potential clients who need information will come across your blog. That blog addresses their pain point perfectly. They will likely come back to you next time to find a solution to digital marketing mistakes. That’s how leads are created, and that’s how your sales will increase.
Always remember that people turn to the internet whenever they need something. Give your audience what they need through helpful and informative blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc. You will maintain a healthy relationship with them.
When you have created well-researched, easy-to-understand, and engaging content, you have to get search engines to serve it to your audience. And you do that through SEO, which brings us to the next mistake.
Ignoring SEO
The only thing that can make your brand visible online is SEO, so you must not neglect it. Yes, SEO will take time to yield results, but those will be long-term results, which is what you want.
For a digital marketing strategy to succeed, marketers must be patient and keep up with the continually changing SEO trends and ranking factors.
- Failing to identify the right keywords
- Allowing poor quality content to slip by
- Not optimizing websites for mobile phones and other smaller screens
- Not getting backlinks from authoritative websites
- Having a poor internal linking structure
- Using unclear URLs
- Neglecting website security
Not Having a Plan for Social Media Activities
Neglecting social media is the only thing worse than wasting time on social media without a clear plan. Your activities on these channels need a strategy too. It’s not enough to post just anything anywhere. To drive engagement, improve your reach, and get results, you need to post:
+ The right content
+ On the right platform
+ At the right time
+ To the right audience
The best way to avoid mistakes with social media is to:
- Set a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) strategy
- Identify the channels where your audience spends the most time (you don’t need to waste time on all platforms)
- Hire an experienced social media strategist
- Cooperate with influences in your niche
- Create engaging and valuable content
- Create a content calendar with specific goals
These have been some of the common digital marketing mistakes you should avoid or storm making immediately. Knowing all the things that can hamper your performance will help you achieve desirable results and bring your career as a marketer to the next level or grow your business.
CREDITS and FOOTNOTES
- Image Credit, assorted-color social media signage photo available from Unsplash
- Image Credit, SEO text wallpaper photo available from Unsplash
- Image Credit, monitor screengrab photo available from Unsplash
- Image Credit, person writing on white paper photo available from Unsplash
- Image Credit, multicolored marketing freestanding letter photo available from Unsplash
