8 Common Online Marketing Mistakes Businesses Make

Think of some of the biggest online marketing mistakes, and chances are that your company has made a few of them. Most may sound trivial, but they can have a huge impact on your digital marketing strategies.

They are likely the reasons you cannot attract the right target audience, retain existing customers, and reach your digital marketing goals like generating organic traffic, converting relevant leads, or keeping your entire marketing budget low.

What are these biggest digital marketing mistakes? Check the list below:

1. Your Digital Marketing Strategy Doesn't Include Discounts or Promotions

online marketing discounts

Using discounted sales is a great way to increase organic traffic to your website and even social media. In fact, 91% of people said they would return to shop once they have used the coupon.

Discounts are an ideal way to acquire new leads and retain your existing customers since they can help you to establish good relationships with them.

Promotion generally helps increase sales and promote brand loyalty too. According to the survey, more than 50% of respondents said that their favorite brand will switch after the promotion ends. Another half mentioned they changed their brands for coupons.

But not offering these promos is not the only digital marketing mistake that you're going to make. Your execution matters too. How do you ensure that your offers will generate returns?

Here are a few ideas you can incorporate into your marketing efforts:

  • Advertise your sales clearly and offer discounts and promotions to encourage shopping and get people to your doors and website.
  • Link your promos to your social media marketing. Give exclusive coupons to your followers, for example. You can also run Facebook ads to advertise your offers.
  • Don't just focus on prices. Not offering free shipping, for instance, is actually one of the growing online marketing mistakes many businesses make these days.
  • Don't miss out on big events like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other national holidays.
  • Offer special discounts to new customers to inspire them to make their first purchase.

2. Your Business Doesn't Have a Plan

business plan

A good online marketing plan is necessary for getting your business on top of the web marketing market. Without having one, you would be rolling your wheels to the point where there were no resources available and no movement.

A comprehensive plan for your digital marketing campaign will help lead your day activities, guiding and managing your approach, and measuring your successes and failures. The best digital marketing plans also combine long-term planning such as growth and short-term execution like paid ads, which will then support your decision making, and prevent setting unrealistic expectations.

To help you make a plan, consider these questions:

  • What are my online marketing goals? Am I trying to attract new leads or looking for sales? Am I just trying to inform a broader audience?
  • How much marketing budget do I need, especially for paid advertisements, customer service team, SEO specialists, etc.?
  • What web analytics or metrics are important to me?
  • What tools do I need to execute my digital marketing strategies?
  • What could be the challenges and opportunities in my industry?

3. One of the Biggest Online Marketing Mistakes Is Focusing on Content's Quantity Instead of Quality

writing great content

The Internet no longer needs another website, podcast, and YouTube video. What your target audience needs is creating content that's high quality, but what does this even mean?

A content, which can range from an image to a video and text, is quality when it helps support your digital marketing efforts because Internet users consider them as valuable and relevant content. It may have:

  • Helped your target market get to know and understand your brand
  • Encouraged them to buy or even refer their friends and family, which drives web traffic
  • Inspired them to make the right buying decision
  • Promoted customer satisfaction and better brand loyalty

4. Your Business Doesn't Focus on Search Engine Optimization

focus on seo

First, what is search engine optimization (SEO)? It is the process of optimizing websites, so they can appear on search results and reach the right audience.

Although that sounds easy, the actual methods aren't. SEO is complicated because the rules can change over time. The supposed time-tested SEO techniques that you know may no longer be applicable.

The way your market behaves online may also change. That can affect keyword research, including the primary keyword you have to target for your SEO strategy.

One of the biggest online marketing mistakes businesses make isn't just not doing SEO. Instead, it is not focusing on it.

5. The Marketing Tactics Do Not Include a Blog

missing blog

One of the common digital marketing mistakes to avoid is not having and maintaining a blog. Based on the data compiled by Hubspot, nearly 60% of digital marketers consider blogging as a valuable tool.

This digital marketing strategy can even help support SEO. Blog posts can potentially increase the number of indexed pages by at least 430% and indexed links by 97%.

Businesses that pursue blogging efforts may increase their website visitors by 55%. In 2019, digital marketers who prioritized blogging were able to boost their return on investment (ROI) by 13 times compared to those who didn't.

A good way to maximize your blog is to combine it with your social media strategy. This is because about 80% of Internet users interact with a brand in both. Here are a few ideas you can try:

  • Share links to your blog post with your social media followers online.
  • Let folks post comments on your blog and then leave a reply.
  • Share your blog on social media platforms.
  • Stay active and use your blog to develop relationships with customers. You can use tools like Buffer to schedule your social media posts.
  • Update your blogs regularly with diverse quality content. These may include infographics, videos, how-tos, comprehensive guides, and case studies.

6. Your Online Marketing Techniques Rely Solely on Paid Advertising

marketing strategy communication

Paid advertising is very efficient and usually gets results. It can also be the most efficient way to drive traffic to your website, and it is easy to track the ROI since you can also use tools like Google Analytics.

As appealing as paid advertising might sound for your business, it also has a few significant drawbacks. It can be costly and put a dent in the marketing budget. If your paid marketing campaign doesn't work, that's a lot of money down the drain.

One of the common digital marketing mistakes is spending all digital marketing efforts on paid advertisements. What should you do instead? These ads are great if you want quicker results, but you need to support this with long-term digital marketing approaches that can generate or attract organic traffic. These include SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, and link building.

7. Your Business Is Ditching Old Methods for the New Digital Marketing Strategies

digital marketing strategy

If your marketing channel is working perfectly for you, then changing to the latest channel could be counterproductive unless you have evidence to show that the new method works.

For example, a digital marketer may have turned off SMS marketing in favor of digital marketing like email marketing even when their customers are not avid Internet users. These new methods may, therefore, not be appropriate to your business, and you may need more help to stick to older ones.

Remember, it's not easy to go back from one strategy to another. It can take a while before you see results, and by then, you may already be failing a lot in lead generation. Always consider the implications of such a switch before pulling the plug on one of the best marketing channels.

8. Your Digital Marketing Campaign Is Setting Unrealistic Goals

unrealistic goals

One of the common digital marketing mistakes to avoid these days is setting unrealistic expectations, but why does a business still commit this? Sometimes these expectations look subtle or even achievable in the beginning.

Take, for example, planning to convert 5% of your target audience into customers. At first glance, it looks like a small percentage--something you can do quickly. However, whether you can achieve this objective relies on many factors. A key factor can include the effectiveness of your SEO, paid ads, and social media marketing strategies. There's also the question if you've targeted the wrong audience.

How do you avoid this problem?

  • Create a digital marketing plan and update it regularly.
  • Perform website analytics to help keep track of the progress of your digital marketing campaign.
  • Work closely with your team members, such as your social media manager and finance. All departments need to be cohesive to help generate usable data and ensure that online marketing efforts are performed properly.
  • Calculate ROI to know if your digital marketing strategies are working well.
  • Be careful with vanity metrics.

Committing these common digital marketing mistakes can hurt your business in many ways from draining your funds to even losing customers. While you cannot prevent making errors, correcting them as soon as possible will help your business thrive despite the presence of other companies in the industry.

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