When a lot of us approach digital marketing, we expect it to be deceptively simple. After all, if you’ve set up an appealing website, and offer genuinely useful products and services, you’re on track for online success right? Not necessarily. Unfortunately, a digital marketing strategy that truly drives results requires a well-balanced combination of inbound marketing strategies. The most successful digital marketing campaigns bring together brand management, market analysis, digital communications, PR and sales.
Perhaps you’re marketing across all these channels, but still not seeing the results you want. If you’re serious about growing your business online, there are some crucial digital marketing pitfalls that you must avoid.
If you steer clear of these errors, you’ll generate more traffic, more conversions and more revenue.
Why isn’t your digital marketing strategy working?
- You aren’t marketing to mobile users
One of the most fundamental marketing mistakes you can make is ignoring vast swathes of your potential audience. If your website isn’t accessible to mobile users, you’re doing just that. Everyone has a mobile in their pocket, and most of us use it to browse products and services we’re interested in. 50% users say that, even if they like a brand, they use them less often if their site isn’t mobile friendly.
The bottom line is, if your website isn’t optimised for mobile users, you’re significantly harming your chances for online success.
2. You aren’t making the most of your blog
Blogs are an oft-neglected digital marketing channel. All too often, marketing managers fail to demonstrate value when they divert internal resources to generating blogs. This is usually because, when a busy team produces in-house blogs, they aren’t necessarily optimised for SEO or UX. Failing to update your blog consistently is a critical error, so it is worth outsourcing blog management to an agency.
3. You aren’t making the most of social media
Simply put, blogs increase traffic. Business with blogs have 97% more inbound links and, as a result, more traffic. Blogs are also effective way for you to address common user questions, create engaging content and position yourself as a thought leader in your field. Encourage users to comment on your blog and create a dialogue directly with your customers. You can also integrate your blog posts with social media, by sharing excerpts across your social channels. This is a sure-fire way to boost your engagement and click-through rate.
Social media is an effective and inexpensive way to interact with your customers. There is no good reason for your business to be absent from social media. Using social media effectively is the best way to engage your audience, increase brand exposure and position your brand within a relevant online community. When used properly, paid social is also likely to deliver a very positive ROI.
4. You’re overusing promotions and discounts
It may seem counter-intuitive, but overusing promotions can make your brand less appealing to users. If you place your products or services on sale too often, it devalues them. Using promotions too frequently can disincentivise users from ever paying full price for your offerings.
Ultimately, customer satisfaction with discounted products and services is also lower. This is likely due to customers considering the low price they paid and questioning the product as a result. The way to avoid this is to only hold a sale when there is a very good reason to do so e.g. Black Friday.
5. You aren’t using email marketing
Many marketing managers make the mistake of assuming that email marketing is dead. But the truth is, email marketing has always delivered a high average ROI compared to other methods.
If your previous email marketing efforts have been unsuccessful, you need to examine your methods or outsource the channel to an email marketing expert. Get in touch with a team of experts to find out how to make the most of your digital marketing channels.