We all learn from our mistakes, but rather learn from the worst digital marketing mistakes made by others before making your own. By the end of 2020, the digital ad spends reached a total of £16.5 billion in the UK, making digital marketing one of the most dynamic and lucrative ways to create brand awareness, generate leads and drive higher ROI (Return on Investment) for your business.
Identifying some common digital marketing mistakes can help fix them before it’s too late without damaging your conversions, chasing customers away and wasting too much money on the wrong digital marketing strategy.
We’ll take you through some of the most common digital marketing mistakes and how to fix them.
1. No clear strategy
It’s quite simple. Not having a defined strategy means there is no clear goal and that is one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes any company can make.
Without setting a goal it’s impossible to measure success, learn from shortcomings and makes business growth an immense challenge.
How to fix it
Define your business goals and the timeframe you would like to achieve them in. This will help you define a strategy that is in line with your overall objectives and help you make any adjustments needed to reach these desired results.
2. Targeting everyone
Not everyone wants the same content and targeting everyone is a waste of time and resources. Defining and knowing who your customers are is the foundation of any strong digital marketing strategy.
Understanding your customers’ needs and how they behave is a crucial step in how you will deliver your message for them to convert.
How to fix it
- Create buyer personas: This will make it easier to predict the needs of your customers and will give you a better understanding of your audience.
- Segment your audience: Divide your audience into appropriate groups such as location, demographics, lifestyle, interests, and income levels. By skipping this step, you are providing your audience with content that could be considered irrelevant if it’s not what they are looking for.
3. Ignoring automation
Almost everything in digital marketing can be automated. Ignoring automation can result in a lot of time wasted on tasks that could be handled by technology. Automation leads to an improvement in efficiency and productivity and gives your business more time to focus on new strategies and campaigns.
How to fix it
Start implementing automation tools in all areas of your business. This will help track results and recognise a new opportunity. Some of our favourite automation tools include:
Social media
Email marketing
- Mailchimp
- Optinmonster
- Drip
Marketing automation
- HubSpot
- Customer.io
- Marketo
4. Having a slow website that isn’t optimised for mobile
Having a slow website loading speed that isn’t optimised for mobile is the death of your marketing strategy and a huge digital marketing mistake to make. A fast website loading speed is vital for the user experience and research has shown that more than 40% of users will abandon your site if your page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. A slow speed also harms your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as it makes it harder to rank higher organically.
With more than half of the world’s population having access to the internet on their mobile devices, having a slow loading page that is not optimised for mobile means you’re missing out on over 4 billion unique mobile internet users to market your brand to.
How to fix it
Test to find out your website page loading speed and mobile-friendliness by using a tool like Page Speed Insights or the Website Grader from HubSpot. This will provide you with personalised insights as well as actions you need to take to make your website fast and fully optimised for mobile.
If you’re unsure of how to implement changes, then consider hiring a professional to help you. They can help you create a seamless user experience to help boost those conversions.
5. Disregarding the importance of a blog
Digital marketing relies heavily on high-quality, valuable content and what better way to achieve that than having a blog on your website.
Blogs help you establish your brand, connect with your audience, build credibility and increase brand awareness by producing shareable content. Companies that have a blog produce an average of 67% more monthly leads than those that don’t.
Blogs also positively contribute to your SEO efforts and can help your business be found easily through organic search.
How to fix it
Create high-quality content, well-researched, long-form content that adds value for the reader and doesn’t just follow trends.
Make sure to include the following in your blog content:
- Researched keywords to help you rank organically and get in front of the right audience.
- Backlinks to assist in positioning you as an industry leader.
- Image optimisation with keywords.
- A short URL that contains your specific keyword for that piece of content.
If you’re not a budding wordsmith but looking to incorporate a blog into your digital marketing strategy, consider outsourcing your copywriting to someone who is.
6. Buying your social media following
All businesses are on the hunt for a dominant social media presence with a big following. But one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes you can make is buying a following. It may seem tempting, but it does more harm than good and damages your credibility as a brand.
While the number of followers may look healthy at face value, it’s useless if it’s not backed by engagement. The social channels will automatically flag your account as spam, and your organic reach will become virtually non-existent.
This isn’t the only downfall to buying a social media following. The point of establishing a social media presence is to convert leads and earn a profit. Thousands and thousands of followers mean nothing if there is no revenue to justify it.
How to fix it
There’s no quick fix to building a strong social media following. It takes time and patience to build and nurture trusting relationships with your audience.
Here are some of our top tips on how to do so:
- Don’t just post content to your channels and expect magic to happen. Engage with your community constantly.
- Work hard to promote your content on all relevant social media channels.
- Post consistently.
- Repost user-generated content to make your brand relatable.
- Make yourself familiar with social media algorithms and how to outsmart them by reading this blog.
7. Being spammy
There is nothing more annoying than a brand that is trying too hard to get your attention. From too many website pop-ups to an influx of unwanted emails, you need to know when to draw the (very fine) line between being too spammy and letting the user forget about your brand.
How to fix it
Make sure you’re aware of your email frequency. Too many and you run the risk of losing a subscriber you’ve worked so hard to get. Too few and your competition could swoop in ahead of you. We recommend 1-2 times a week is best. Make sure your subject lines grab attention and entice the user to want to click “open.”
Time your pop-ups and make sure the audience has had enough time to engage with your content before trying to force them to act. Too many badly timed pop-ups can result in the user navigating away before they have any insightful information on what your brand offers.
8. Expecting immediate results
Good things come to those that wait and the same can be said for your digital marketing campaigns. Patience is a virtue, and your campaigns need time to give measurable accurate results.
How to fix it
Don’t get demotivated if you think results aren’t happening fast enough. It takes time, effort, consistency, and a lot of A/B testing before you can achieve your desired outcome.
9. Not using A/B testing
Test, test, test and then test again. Don’t expect one campaign to miraculously work the first time around. Testing multiple versions is how you gather comprehensive, precise data to determine efficiency and develop stronger campaigns moving forward.
How to fix it
A/B testing can be time-consuming and complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. Get the help of a marketing agency that can conceptualise and create different versions of your campaigns and offer the best advice based on your results.
10. Ignoring your performance
How will you know if you’re closer to achieving your business goals if you’re not tracking results and ignoring your performance? Data is your best friend, and you need to figure out which data is important to see what worked, what can be improved and what you exclude the next time around.
How to fix it
Establish clear, measurable metrics for each channel and use them as a reference to determine campaign success. Some of metrics can include:
- Engagement – Likes, comments, shares etc.
- Awareness – Impressions and reach.
- Click-through rate – Number of users who clicked on the link through to your website.
- Conversion rate – The number of people who converted once on your website.
Now you know what the worst digital marketing mistakes are and how to avoid them, apply them to your current marketing strategy. Consider what can be implemented, improved, or changed to maximise business growth and increase your profit margins.
