10 ONLINE MARKETING MISTAKES TO AVOID

Your success as a business depends mostly on your marketing strategy. An effective strategy leads to more traffic, higher conversions, and more sales.

The main reason why most companies fail to meet their goals is that they fall prey to some of the most common marketing mistakes. So, to help you dodge that bullet, I’ve compiled the top 10 online marketing mistakes that you should avoid.

Keep an eye out for these mistakes and effectively raise brand awareness, reach a bigger audience, build brand loyalty, and make more money.

1) TARGETING EVERYONE

This is one of the most common mistakes that businesses make. If you try to reach anyone and please everyone you will fail. To succeed, you have to understand your business, the value it brings, as well as the right people to target. Identify people who will be interested in what you are offering and market to them.

Specify your audience to grow your business and ensure you provide what prospects want. Define your audience based on gender, profession, age, interests, geographical location, and so on.

Once you know who you want to target, invest in turning them into long-term clients.

Consider your product or service. What sort of problem does it solve? And What value does it bring?

Remember, the only way to turn users into customers is to get them interested in your offer and make them see the value that your product brings. So, identify your value proposition and market to prospects.

Identify their needs and cater to them. Understand their most common challenges and help mitigate them.

Marketing to a specific audience allows you to easily identify customer needs and cater to them. It helps you quickly and effectively raise brand awareness, generate more leads, build brand loyalty, and boost sales. So, define your audience and avoid trying to advertise your business to everyone.

2) IGNORING CONTENT MARKETING

Many businesses fail to meet their marketing goals because they focus on sales and profits and neglect the customer. You may have the perfect product and use effective marketing channels but fail to meet your goals. Why? Because people buy into what they trust and believe in and the only way to build trust is by forming meaningful relations with your audience.

So, realize the significance of content marketing in building brand awareness and achieving your goals. Connect with your audience at a personal level and show that you care about helping them meet their goals.

Create and publish free content to attract prospects. Come up with an effective content marketing strategy and use it to reach your audience and generate more sales.

Become the go-to person for specific content related to your industry. This is how highly successful bloggers and organizations attract a bigger audience, boost engagement, and remain at the top.

So, incorporate content marketing into your strategy.

Produce content that helps your audience solve common problems and meet challenges. The kind that makes their work easier and adds some sort of value to their lives.

Launch a blog or create a YouTube channel and use it to connect with your audience. Share valuable information to boost interaction, attract more followers, and retain them.

Share content that’s related to your line of business and offer advice on how to solve common problems to build industry authority and prove credibility.

When people know you are the go-to person for certain information, they will easily engage in business with you because they value your opinion and trust you know what you are doing.

Teach your followers a new skill or share how-to guides, reference guides, listicles, and the latest industry trends to keep them interested in your content.

The goal is to connect with them and build meaningful relations instead of over promoting your product.

3) NOT HAVING A WEBSITE

Countless business owners don’t have a website because they think they don’t need one. They suspect having social media profiles for their businesses is enough. Nonetheless, that isn’t true.

More than 90 percent of consumers search online for services and products before making the final purchasing decision. Therefore, you need a website to help potential customers understand your product, communicate your brand message effectively, and present your business right.

People want to know who they are engaging in business with before deciding whether or not your product is the right fit for them and the first thing that they search for is the company website.

They know that they are going to learn more about your organization, who you are, what you do, what you stand for, as well as how long you’ve been in business all in one place.

A website makes it easier for them to make purchasing decisions and decide whether or not your product is the perfect fit.

So, make sure your company has one and make it easy for prospects to understand your offer and get into business with you.

Design an eye-catching landing page to command attention and reach a bigger audience. Include all the important details such as your main services or product features, discounts, giveaways, and other interesting offers.

Use high-res images to grab attention and keep site visitors on your pages longer.

Focus on the ‘About Us’ page and include all the relevant details to help users understand you better. Add your mission, goal, and vision. Briefly talk about your organization. For example, who you are, what you do, what you have accomplished, as well as companies you’ve worked with.

Add your working hours, external links, business location, and any other important information on your site.

Come up with an attractive but simple and easy-to-navigate design to guide users along and keep them on your pages.

Hire a web designer on freelancing sites like Upwork or Fiverr.

4) HAVING A WEAK ONLINE PRESENCE

The main reason why most businesses don’t see the desired results from their marketing efforts is that they don’t have an online presence. They assume once you launch your business and design business cards or posters you are done. However, that’s not how it works.

You must build an online presence and invest your time and efforts into the process to succeed.

In addition to building a company website, you must create business profiles for social proof. So, open a GMB or Google My Business account and create social media pages for your business.

Make sure your company has at least two social media profiles. Such as a Facebook page, Twitter account, or Instagram account.

Social media makes it easy for prospects to engage with your brand and understand it better. It is also key to connecting with your target audience, forming meaningful relations, and increasing traffic to your site.

So, use it to understand your audience, identify customer needs, boost engagement, build brand awareness, and increase web traffic.

Connect with your followers and respond to every inquiry you get. Send timely responses and notify your audience about recent changes or updates. For example, if there are service interruptions, post about it on your Facebook page and keep your audience in the loop. Say the issue is being resolved, mention when you’ll be available, and apologize for the inconvenience caused. The goal is to show that you care about your customers and have their best interests at heart.

Come up with an effective social media marketing strategy to boost engagement and meet your goals. Identify ideal times to share your content and post during those hours.

Use professional images and videos to grab attention and boost interaction. Add CTAs on your images and posts to increase traffic to your site.

Identify your top-performing posts and use them to promote upcoming offers across different channels.

Constantly improve and monitor your marketing strategy. Ask for feedback from your followers and use it to improve your strategy. Ask them to leave their opinion on your recent 30-minute video or a how-to guide on your blog.

Ask if there is a specific topic that they would like you to cover in your next video and keep them interested in your content.

5) IGNORING SEO

Ignoring the need for search engine optimization is one of the top mistakes that brands make. Most companies assume that as long as they have a website and a social media presence, they are good to go but that is not the case.

You want to ensure your content, website, and other relevant pages appear on searches because there is no use in having great content that no one engages with.

So, realize the importance of optimizing your pages for SEO and use the best SEO techniques to increase traffic, build an audience, and boost sales.

Identify and implement the best practices. Use meta titles and meta descriptions throughout your content and posts. Identify common words or phrases that users type when searching for certain information. Incorporate them into your content strategy.

Add relevant keywords to your headlines, descriptions, and content.

Use KWFinder or UberSuggest to search for relevant keywords or popular keywords in your niche.

Avoid keyword-stuffing or loading your content with too many keywords to gain an unfair advantage and rank high on searches to ensure your page doesn’t get demoted in rankings and avoid getting penalized by Google.

Use your keywords appropriately and make sure your targeted keyword fits in with your content.

A lot of people prefer using their phones to browse the internet and make purchases so, optimize your website for mobile devices to give them a great experience and keep them on your site.

Use Browserstack to check for site responsiveness.

Use webpagetest to check for website performance and speed. You will be notified if your pages take too long to load and get recommendations on how to fix the related issues.

6) OVERPROMOTING

Most companies complain of not seeing a return on investment from their marketing efforts because they focus more on advertising their product and less on understanding the customer.

Overpromoting is one of the reasons why businesses find it difficult to generate leads, retain their customers, attract a bigger audience, and grow.

If you only focus on selling your product and post about it every single day, you will not get the results you are looking for.

The most effective way to get people to favor your business above the competition is to avoid too much promotional material and share relevant content that has nothing to do with getting them to buy your product.

7) NOT OFFERING DISCOUNTS

Part of the reason why businesses don’t see results for their marketing efforts is that they don’t have interesting promotions that grab attention and encourage people to engage with their brand.

For instance, when was the last time you incorporated discounts, giveaways, or coupons into your marketing strategy? If it’s been a while, you need to consider it.

People love freebies and are always thinking “What’s in it for me?” when reading your ads or going through your business pages. So, use that to your advantage. Run interesting promotions at least once a month. Offer massive discounts, giveaways, and coupons.

Running monthly or weekly promotions is a great way to turn first-time customers into recurring clients. It is the most effective way to raise brand awareness and build brand loyalty. So, incorporate it into your strategy.

Use discounts and freebies to attract prospects, get them to visit your website, interact with the rest of your content, and make a purchase.

Create a sense of urgency and offer freebies as well as discounts for a limited period to pique interest and influence action.

8) FORGETTING EMAIL MARKETING

Ignoring email marketing is another big marketing mistake that companies make. This is because email marketing is one of the most effective marketing techniques that always lead to higher conversions and more sales when done right. So, this is one mistake you don’t want to make.

Incorporate email marketing into your strategy to reach your target audience and convert them to customers.

Build a mailing list and constantly monitor and grow it with time. Collect emails from happy clients and ask your followers to subscribe.

Write short persuasive emails that sell to make sure subscribers read them and take action. Get straight to the point and highlight the purpose of the email in your introductory text.

Add calls to action to inspire action and guide subscribers to external pages.

Your emails don’t have to always contain promotional material. They mustn’t because that’s how you lose subscribers. So, pay attention to the kind of content you share with your readers. Add value to their lives and give them the information that they want.

Share the latest news, helpful resources, giveaways, and upcoming promotions.

Once you build your mailing list, you can start promoting your business.

The goal is to get your subscribers to open your emails and take action because they are benefiting from them.

Another great way to collect emails is by adding a form on your website and asking visitors to subscribe. Mention what they’ll benefit from joining your mailing list to convince them to subscribe.

9) NOT USING IMAGES AND VIDEOS

This is one of the most common mistakes to avoid because people prefer and interact best with images and videos.

Add them to your content and incorporate them into your marketing strategy to command attention and boost engagement.

Add professional images to your posts and record at least one video for your marketing campaign.

Go live on Facebook or YouTube and connect with your audience.

Use Instagram stories to pique interest and boost interaction.

Add CTAs to your pictures and video descriptions to inspire action. Add your site URL to increase traffic to your site.

Go to unsplash.com for high-res images.

10) IGNORING THE COMPETITION

Ignoring the competition is one of the worst marketing mistakes businesses make.

Knowing your competitor and paying attention to their marketing tactics is the best way to learn more about your target audience and improve your strategy.

This doesn’t mean you have to copy the competition. It simply means you have to know who you are up against and learn from them.

Identify their marketing strengths and weaknesses. Learn from the areas they thrive in and incorporate some of their methods into your strategy. Identify areas that need improvement or the mistakes they make and capitalize on them.

For example, identify your top 3 competitors and concentrate on how they advertise their product or service. Pay attention to their pricing strategy and improve yours.

Identify listed services that they charge for and offer them for free to gain a marketing edge but make sure you can afford to because you don’t want to incur losses or put too much strain on your budget.

If you are a web design agency, for instance, you can offer free web hosting, email hosting, or domain name registration for a year to customers. If you run a manufacturing business offer free delivery to pique interest and convert first-time customers into long-term clients.

Aim to bring additional value to your customers’ lives and remain one step ahead of the competition.

BONUS:

Avoid marketing mistakes and measure ROI by constantly monitoring your strategy. Use the best marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Hubspot.

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