Any competent business owner knows that marketing mistakes can be incredibly costly. From the missed opportunities that come with failing to reach your target audience to competitors muscle in on your market share and negatively impacting sales, marketing tactics that negatively impact how clearly you’re able to communicate your value to users can destroy brand growth in a matter of months, weeks, or even days.
Oddly, you’ll often hear and read stories about how to do digital marketing the right way, but those sorts of articles and stories don’t address what exactly went wrong and what you as a business owner can learn from these mistakes.
In an effort to help you learn what not to do when creating a digital marketing campaign so that you can quickly and efficiently build campaigns that won’t suffer from reduced ROI, here are a few digital marketing problems to watch out for that significantly affect not only overall traffic, but also have a negative impact on customer behavior and business growth.
So here is the list of 9 Digital Marketing Practices that can Ruin your Business’s Growth
1. Thinking Small
Small thinking needs to be discarded. Online stores that are owned by corporations located abroad are selling products at a higher frequency to customers in New Delhi, Mumbai or even Bangalore than any local vendor. The world can now be reached with a tweet, an email or a blog post that is shared on social.
2. Undercutting SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is no longer an option, it is an absolute necessity when it comes to digital marketing. It is a no-brainer that more people are using the internet than ever before, and online purchasing has gone up exponentially in the last few years.
If you want to reach out to your target audience, you must make sure that you rank high, on search results, of all major search engines such as Google and Bing for keywords related to your industry. SEO ensures that your website beats out the competition when your target audience searches for the products and services you offer.
However, efficient SEO is more complicated than what most of us know- it comprises many elements, and its methods are changing constantly. Google’s algorithms are tweaked and updated regularly, almost on a daily basis- which means you have to update your SEO techniques accordingly.
3. Lacking A Solid Digital Marketing Strategy
One of the biggest mistakes which businesses make is not setting out formal digital marketing. It can be easy to get caught up with ideas, trends, and tactics and jumping straight into execution without taking the time to think about the bigger picture. However, a strong digital marketing strategy lets you define your goals and work out the best way to get there.
It is important that different techniques and tactics are not approached separately, with one deliverable at a time, but rather building a strategy that encompasses all key elements at once, in which they all work together.
An effective strategy is not just about planning ahead. To build a strong digital marketing strategy you also need to continually monitor, track results, and make changes as your strategy rolls out. If you are wondering why tracking is essential, consider this: your business exists in a constantly changing market, and so you need to continually check-in and assess if tactics that have worked well in the past are still the best way forward. Doing so will allow you to make any adjustments needed to take your business to the next level.
4. Choosing A Low-Quality Forum to Promote Your Website
Community forums are created where experts or users provide information regarding a product so that new customers can be assured of their choice before making a purchase. They can provide a great way to increase customer engagement and become a valuable source of information.
Many businesses use these forums as a way to market their product, and this is quite effective. But there are some major disadvantages if you promote your product on many low-quality forums. Besides the obvious no wide audience reach problem, promoting on too many low-quality platforms could also lead to a penalty from Google. This also falls under Gray-Hat and Black-Hat SEO, which is not recommended and could affect your site’s ranking.
5. Selecting The Wrong Platform for Your Website
One of the most significant marketing issues is the incorrect selection of the platform on which your site is to be built. Once you start investing resources (and your time) into your website, it will not be possible to exchange it for a different one once you find out it doesn’t meet your requirements.
An inappropriate platform can cause a lot of (non)technical issues. Frequent outage or too slow page loading will make the visitors leave and not to come back. Also, some platforms do not allow plugin installation, which could help you with SEO or make the data management easier.
Therefore, when choosing a suitable platform, you should consider all the options and functionalities the platform can offer.
One of the popular platforms is WordPress, thanks to its variability in the creation of any type of website — simple presentation websites, e-shops, eCommerce solutions and directory & listings portals. Because of the availability and rich offer of WordPress Themes, you can choose a template that can be a perfect match for your business.
6. Posting Outdated Content
Consumers tend to assume that outdated digital marketing strategies and appearances indicate a business is outdated. Likewise, if a digital marketing campaign is unclear, confusing, or even distasteful, consumers will likely assume the company will also be difficult or offensive in their interactions.
These assumptions cause consumers to believe companies are not credible. Since there are so many businesses offering similar services that can easily be found online, consumers often choose to support companies with higher prices or fewer products if they believe the other companies are more credible.
7. Not Knowing Your Target Audience
When you are marketing your products, it’s important to devise the perfect strategy, find your target audience, and set goals. All these things need to be planned out simultaneously to give positive results. For example, many consumers feel annoyed when websites constantly ask for their information or get interrupted by ads on social media, without checking if these customers are even relevant to their market. Thus, before using any digital marketing technique, it is important to segment your customers according to your product need, and then target them with personalized content.
Not having a goal set is a beginner’s mistake, and hoping to see results within the first few days an even more foolish mistake. Digital marketing is a powerful tool but it’s not a wizard; it takes time for a positive response to be seen.
8. Making No Use of Personalised Content
Relevance is key to catching and holding attention offline and online. Delivering content that engages and sells means tagging customer’s interests as they discover you and subscribe to your email list.
There are now a variety of digital marketing technologies from email to marketing software that is now available that can provide personalized marketing. They are also within the resources and reach of most businesses. They will allow you to do personalisation at scale.
9. Providing Value Less Content
Everyone knows that content is king when it comes to generating new traffic to your website that builds brand recognition and gives your business more potential customers to convert. What a lot of businesses seem to miss is the fact that the content actually needs to be valuable. Users want to invest their time and money with your brand because they know you’re knowledgeable in your specific industry. If you don’t provide them with the content to showcase that, users won’t see your value.
In order to make content valuable to your audience, focus on the needs of your users, both real and perceived, and address them quickly and efficiently. Include vibrant imagery such as infographics, graphs, animations, and photos to reinforce messaging without overwhelming the reader with too much text. Also including quantitative data like relevant statistics to help substantiate any statements or thoughts you’re presenting in your content is a great way to add legitimacy and trust.
A failure to give and take when it comes to your digital marketing is what sinks the ship. Agencies and clients must strive to understand each other and accept critical advice. Otherwise, lack of communication and failure to understand what goes on behind the scenes will doom digital marketing campaigns and ultimately ruin a business’s growth.
No matter what kind of content you’re pushing out, you’ll have no trouble finding established best practices for attracting customers. But what makes all the difference is how well you communicate with your audience. Following the points mentioned above and staying away from harmful digital marketing, practices put you on the path to attracting new clients and growing your business. To learn more about how to successfully communicate with your audience, visit us at https://www.koffeetech.com/.
