Even savvy and experienced digital marketers can launch a campaign that turns out to be a dud – AKA – it doesn’t yield the desired results. So it makes sense that small businesses who have relied primarily on print advertising would stumble and make some common digital marketing mistakes when just starting out.
Here are 6 of the most common digital marketing mistakes you should avoid making to ensure your campaigns give you big returns.
Not Having Clear and Measurable Campaign Goals
This has got to be the biggest mistake businesses make. If you don’t establish clear analytical goals before launching a campaign, you’ll never be able to track it or know what’s working and what’s not.
Always define goals – calls, sales, sign ups, form completions – and be sure that proper analytics are set up for these goals. These insights will help you adjust your current campaign and develop optimized campaigns in the future.
Targeting the Wrong Audience
Creating valuable digital content is not enough if you’re promoting it to the wrong audience. With digital communication channels becoming more and more crowded, it takes focused effort to cut through all the noise and get your message noticed.
Best way to do this?
When defining your target audience, don’t just think description or demographic, think behavior, relevant life events and purchase behavior. Also, consider using tracking pixels and cookies to reach out to people who have visited your site or blog.
Believing That Email Marketing is No Longer Effective
Dangerous myths pervade even the digital marketing world. Just as print IS NOT DEAD – email marketing is very much alive and well. Sure, mobile and social get all of the attention, but who cares, these channels often can’t deliver as well as email marketing.
Eric Stahl, senior vice president of product marketing at Salesforce Marketing Cloud said it best, “As the lines between sales, service and marketing blur, email remains the customer journey’s connective tissue.”
A survey from Marketing Sherpa found that 91% of US adults like getting promotional emails from trusted brands. Of those, 86% said they prefer monthly emails while 61% preferred weekly emails.
If you’re not embracing this digital channel, you’re losing out on a goldmine.
Ignoring Mobile
Unless you’ve been living under something very large and very heavy, you have most likely heard that mobile has quickly become the dominant and preferred digital platform consumers use. Does your company have a mobile strategy in place?
Your first step is to ensure your main website is compatible with all mobile devices. Failure to do this will unequivocally lead to loss of revenue. Beyond this, consider whether an app might be a good platform for you to directly engage with customers and deliver relevant and meaningful content that nurtures relationships.
And finally, be sure you have sales and special offers that are tailored specifically to mobile sites.
Not Embracing a Customer-Centric Mindset
If you want to keep customers coming back for more, you must deliver a customized brand experience. This can be done through a customer-centric mindset and personalization, targeting, journey mapping, and data analysis.
Using Social Media to Sell
We’ll end with another one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes, and that is using social media as a platform to broadcast your sales pitch. Remember, sites like Facebook and Twitter are really meant to be a space for dialogue and engagement.
Use these platforms to inspire, answer questions, share thoughts, and develop deeper relationships with customers. Though these acts don’t blatantly sell, they do increase sales over the long run.
There’s no denying that the marriage of print and digital can be powerful and beneficial to your bottom line. And, as long as you avoid these 6 common mistakes, your digital campaigns should give you the returns you’re looking for.
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