Since the beginning of time, humans have been attracted to shiny objects. It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid walking down the aisle of a toy store or an adult walking down the aisles of a convenience store — we’re always going to be drawn to shiny things.
When it comes to marketing, we can get distracted so easily by the newest trend that we fail to consider if it will benefit our business or customers.
However, to ensure that they provide the best possible value to their customers, marketers must avoid these digital marketing mistakes:
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Not Determining The Suitable Platforms And Channels For Ads
Depending on your budget and the target audience you wish to reach, you will need to choose between different types of platforms and channels for ads.
Do you want to reach a wide audience or a more focused one? Should you use video or text-based ads?
These and many other questions will determine which platforms and channels to use and which to avoid.
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Not Having A Reason To Believe In Your Product Or Service
Customers must have confidence in your product or service, which in turn means that you must have a good reason to believe in it.
The rationale behind this is simple: if your customers don’t believe in your product or service, they won’t trust it, which in turn makes them less likely to be interested in buying it.
This is why establishing a relationship with someone with a vested interest in your product or service (a stakeholder) is crucial.
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Focusing Too Much On Cost-Per-Click Or Cost-Per-Mille
Although CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and CPM (Cost-Per-Mille) are two different metrics, in the case of cost-per-click ads and cost-per-mile sponsorships, marketers generally refer to them as the cost of the ad.
This is important because both of these metrics factor in the price of the click or mile and the conversion rate (how many people will actually click on your ads or how many miles you will drive for a given brand).
If your product or service is expensive, and customers can’t easily find these products or services online, this may mean that your cost-per-click or cost-per-mile ads don’t provide much value.
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Focusing Too Much On Impressions, Not Qualified Leads
Although it is important to measure the number of times your ad is displayed, it is even more crucial to measure how many times a person actually clicks on it. Simply put, an impression is just that – an impression. But what is a qualified lead?
A qualified lead is someone interested in your product or service, meaning that they are more likely to buy it.
Although you can’t always guarantee that someone who clicks on your ad will become a qualified lead, you can improve your odds by ensuring that your ad is relevant to the person who is viewing it and that it contains useful information about your product or service.
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Not Having A Clear Objective And Definition Of Success
Although it is important to have high-quality content, that doesn’t mean that you should just churn out content to meet the minimum requirements. Instead, you should consider experimenting with different types of content (e.g., video, infographics, etc.) to see which works best for your target audience.
The most effective content strategists and marketers develop content that is useful to their target audience and constantly experiment to see what works best. When developing content, it is important to have a clear objective and definition of success.
For example, you may wish to create content that will help your target audience discover new products they might like, or you may wish to create content that will help your target audience find the best online prices.
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Underestimating The Importance Of Testing
Since the beginning of time, humans have been underestimating the importance of testing. From using trial-and-error to find the “right” combinations of ingredients for the “perfect” cup of coffee to believe that products sold online will automatically convert, marketers have been putting off testing.
Testing is simply taking a product or service that you believe in and proving it to your audience. By proving it to your audience, you are allowing them to see how your product or service works, identify any flaws and hopefully convince you to change something about it. The best marketers and content strategists know that if they don’t test, they will never know if their ideas will work or how the product or service will perform.
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Trying To Simplify Complex Marketing Channels
Whether you are creating videos to accompany your blog posts or using social media to attract potential customers, marketers must remember that these are entirely different entities.
Trying to simplify complex marketing channels is a critical mistake – you should always be testing and learning and never assume that any channel will bring in the profits your company is looking for.
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Assuming That Customers Know What They Are Looking For
Even when marketing to people who are already familiar with your company, brand, or product, you must always be mindful of how you present these options to your audience.
When marketing to a specific audience, whether they are existing customers or potential new ones, always consider everything from the wording used in the ad to the images and videos presented.
Many companies make this mistake, assuming that customers know what they are looking for even when presented with various options.
However, even the most experienced customers may not always be sure of what they are looking for, especially when viewing a range of products or services in a single place – something that is made more complicated by the online world where everyone’s knowledge base and resources are at anyone’s fingertips.
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Focusing Too Much On Specific Metrics Instead Of Looking At The Bigger Picture
Although it is important to focus on key metrics such as impressions, shares, and comments, it is even more important to look at these metrics in the context of the whole campaign.
Look at your Instagram video content from a single post-production standpoint. You may find that it is not as effective as you think it is – maybe you should rethink your strategy and test different video content or production approaches.
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Not Monitoring, Measuring And Adjusting Throughout The Campaign
It is important to monitor, measure, and adjust throughout the whole marketing campaign. This is especially important for paid and sponsored content, where you will need to constantly evaluate whether or not the content is actually providing value to your target audience.
Even after the initial set-up phase, it is important to monitor the performance of your content and ensure that it is always improving.
However, since many marketers are under a lot of pressure to produce original and valuable content, it is important to remember that content creation is a long process and takes a lot of time.
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Sending out unnecessary emails
People will no longer simply have to join a website’s email list in order to receive emails from that site. Instead, marketers will need to ensure that they send relevant and useful emails to their audience, which means they will need to tailor their communications to each recipient.
For example, if you’re selling luxury goods and your target audience is made up primarily of female millennials, you might want to send out a series of emails in which you discuss topics like fashion, beauty, and lifestyle.
Or, if you’re trying to sell financial services, you might want to consider using email marketing for lead generation and nurturing.
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Thinking that social media is only about ‘likes’ and ‘re-blogs’
Thanks to the information age we live in, everyone knows what social media is and how it works — but many people still don’t realize the true power of the platform. While it’s important to build your presence on social media, you must not forget about the value of individual interactions on the platform — like ‘likes’ and ‘re-blogs.’
When someone likes or re-blogs your content, you will see that pop-up notification as if the person had signed up to your email list — even if they didn’t. So, while likes and re-blogs are great ways to gain credibility on the platform, you must not neglect the power of an individual conversation.
Create A Valuable Content
If you’re producing content that’s only useful to Google, then you’re defeating the purpose of having a blog in the first place. Your content needs to be useful to your audience — and the search engines will take care of the rest. Creating content that’s only useful to Google isn’t bad if you need to fulfill a term of service with a content mill, or the search engines will blacklist you. But, for the most part, you’re better off creating useful content for your audience.
To grow your business, you should do everything possible to attract as many potential customers as possible while still being helpful and useful to your audience.
