Digital marketing is a great way to build your business and increase sales. However, it isn’t for the weak at heart. The process takes tons of time, patience, and effort to see success. In fact, many people wrongly give up on the process before they ever even see results.
As with anything in life, there are also things that you could be doing that are hindering or slowing down your digital marketing performance. Here are 10 of the top digital marketing mistakes that people make.
#1: Not Setting Goals
The worst and easiest digital marketing mistake to correct is not preparing for the process by setting goals. After all, if you aren’t writing down what you hope to achieve, it can be challenging to take actionable steps to make it happen.
It is also important to ensure your goals are specific and not arbitrary. For example, saying something along the lines of “you want to make more money” isn’t specific enough. You want to make it much more concrete, such as saying, “you want to make a thousand more sales than the month before.” See the difference between the two?
#2: Being Too Optimistic When Setting Goals
Setting goals is great, but another area where many people make a mistake is being too optimistic when doing so. If you can’t accomplish the goal, you’re likely to get frustrated and scrap the campaign altogether, when it really might have been giving you success at a slower pace.
Let’s go back to our example from above. If you want to make a thousand extra sales for a specific timeframe, this needs to be somewhat attainable. Saying you want to do it in three weeks is probably unlikely, but if it makes sense over three months, that would be a more suitable goal. Try not to be too overly optimistic.
#3: Not Testing Their Efforts
Another common digital marketing mistake? Not testing your efforts. This is a major issue because it makes it difficult to measure and gauge where you are at in achieving your goals. After all, you can’t make changes if you can’t tell what is working and why.
The best way to do this is with A/B testing. This process gives you plenty of data to see if there’s a problem regarding specific campaign elements. Essentially, the process gives you baseline data to determine where your results should be and the options you have to scale them accordingly. Try to use testing as often as you can when running digital marketing campaigns.
#4: Relying on Content and Keywords Only
One of the more common digital marketing mistakes people make is relying solely on content and keywords to try to carry their entire effort. Newbie marketers often believe that all they need to do to see a boost in search engine optimization and traffic is to toss a bunch of poorly written content with specific keywords onto their site and wait.
The truth here is that there are multiple facets to digital marketing and quality matters. While the content does reign supreme in most cases, it has to be done correctly. Try to stand in the place of your potential customers and site visitors and determine what they really need to know. Answer their questions with your content and position yourself as an expert in your industry. Not only will this boost your reputation, but it will also make your content more likely to be shared and potentially even improve your search engine ranking.
#5: Keyword Stuffing and Optimizing Too Much
While optimizing your website is great for your digital marketing performance, there is such a thing as doing too much. Google looks poorly on what they call keyword stuffing—i.e., adding too many keywords to your site.
Instead of attempting to boost content through way too many repeated uses of a keyword, only use them where it makes sense in the normal language flow of your content. If you feel like you must get a few more keywords uses in, consider writing longer content to help make the use of the keyword feel a little more natural.
#6: Not Doing Any Paid Marketing
Many people who are new to digital marketing make the big mistake of not engaging in paid advertising. This is often due to a lack of budget or merely trying to keep costs as low as possible. However, it can really hurt your overall digital marketing efforts.
Paid advertising methods like pay-per-click and social media ads are like having the opportunity to skip to the front of the line when trying out a new digital marketing campaign. It allows you to see your gains quickly and make changes that affect your slower going organic growth. This data is essential, and not having it can make your digital marketing journey a much tougher road.
#7: Not Having an Email List
Think email marketing is dead? Think again! Another mistake many people make is not having an email list. What’s worse is that they feel that simply having a website or a social media presence takes the place of a dedicated email list. Wrong!
Having your own email list gives you full control of when you get to contact your customers. The beauty of engaging in email marketing is that if Facebook or Twitter were to shut down tomorrow, you would still have immediate access to those who are interested in your business and brand. Simply put, don’t ignore the benefits of email marketing.
#8: Skipping Mobile Optimization
Not optimizing your website for mobile users is another big digital marketing mistake. The sheer number of people who use smartphone and tablet devices to access the internet is growing every day. By not making your site friendly to a variety of screen sizes, you are alienating a large section of potential customers.
If you really want to take the mobile optimization topic a step further, consider having a specific app built just for your website. This not only shows professionalism but provides your customers with easy access to either get in contact with you or buy directly from you the moment they decide they’re sold.
#9: Not Utilizing Partnership Opportunities
One more digital marketing mistake is not utilizing partnership opportunities. There are likely plenty of people either in or related to your niche or related to your niche that has already built an audience who would be just as interested in your products or services. Teaming up with others is a great way to increase awareness for your brand and help swap potential customers between the two of you.
Not sure who to do this with? Get creative. Think about what your customers need and who they buy from or hire. Talk with those companies to help brainstorm potential partnership opportunities.
#10: Attempting to Do Everything Themselves
Let’s just put this out there: it isn’t possible to handle an entire comprehensive digital marketing mix by yourself. At least, not if you expect to handle every aspect with top-level dedication.
Usually, it is best to just focus on the things that you’re good at and leave the rest to someone else. This might even mean hiring a freelancer or a dedicated marketing agency to try to make this happen. Not only will this save you time and effort, but it will also likely yield better results because you’ve brought in a team who is knowledgeable about the specifics that you might not know as much about. A win-win for everyone!
Are you a seasoned digital marketer? We want to know what mistakes you see newbies do the most. Leave us a comment below.
