In 2021, digital marketing is more important than ever. In this post, we’ll discuss 10 digital marketing mistakes to avoid, so that you get it right the first time.
What is Digital Marketing?
Also known as ‘online marketing’, digital marketing refers to advertising using websites, social media, search engines, email, and other digital channels.
Why is Digital Marketing So Important?
According to Mailchimp.com, 89% of Americans use their phones to go online at least once daily, and 31% are nearly constantly online.
As people use the Internet more often, it is becoming increasingly necessary to reach them where they are. In addition, digital marketing offers a variety of benefits to businesses, including access to a larger audience, reduced advertising costs, and the ability to communicate with customers in real time.
Below are 10 digital marketing mistakes you should avoid, in order to benefit from all digital marketing has to offer.
Digital Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
1. Not creating a buyer persona
In marketing, it is important to know the persons who are most likely to engage with your company and ultimately purchase what you sell. This is referred to as your target audience.
However, knowing your target audience isn’t enough. You must also create a buyer persona to represent your target audience.
Also known as a ‘customer persona’, this is simply a detailed description of a fictional customer, complete with a name, interests, buying patterns and more, all based on research of your current or desired customer base.
Knowing your buyer persona is crucial, because it allows you to alter your marketing strategy to effectively reach the right audience. When you fail to create a buyer persona, your marketing strategy loses focus and you risk wasting time and money targeting an uninterested audience.
2. Not having a blog
Wordstream.com states that approximately 3.5 billion searches are made everyday on Google alone. These numbers are made up of people looking for information, answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
Having a blog that provides searchers with the solutions they need, allows your business to increase its visibility, resulting in increased engagement and revenue.
In addition, a high-quality blog drives traffic to your business that would be more difficult to get by other means. For instance, your business may have to rely on gaining traffic solely through paid advertising or word of mouth which can be expensive and unreliable, particularly for small or new businesses.
3. Giving up after the first try
We’ve established that knowing your buyer persona allows you to tailor your marketing strategy to effectively reach your ideal customer. However, even when you’re targeting the right audience, they won’t always become customers the first time they see your content.
There’s only one reason this should worry you — if you don’t have any method for retargeting your audience.
As the name suggests, retargeting is a strategy used to re-target those who previously saw your ads and content but didn’t complete a conversion (e.g. make a purchase or download a file).
Retargeting customers via ads is an extremely popular and effective strategy.
According to Google Ads: “Every time that your online window shoppers see your ad, they begin to recognise your brand and your products, making them more likely to return and make a purchase.”
Without some method for retargeting your audience, you lose out on an opportunity to gain a new customer.
4. Undermining Your Competitor
When business is going well and you’re confident in what you offer, it can be easy to undermine your competitors and their impact in your niche. However, this is a digital marketing no-no.
A competitor with a strong marketing strategy can easily capture most of your audience despite how small or lame you think their business is.
This is why it’s so important to know and understand your competitors. By observing your rivals, you to gather valuable data about their successes and failures, which then allows you to adjust your own strategy and learn from their mistakes.
Furthermore, it is only through observing your rivals can you truly know what you are competing with. Competitors should be observed, not disregarded.
5. Ignoring Social Media Platforms
Social media is one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing. It is inexpensive, yet effective. In addition, it allows you to reach a large audience, increase your brand awareness and build invaluable relationships with customers.
While it takes time to create content and to establish a suitable strategy for each social media platform, the resulting benefits are definitely worth it. To ignore social media is to miss out on all the advantages it has to offer.
6. Not Using Analytics
One of the advantages of digital marketing is the ability to assess the performance of your strategies. However, this can’t be done solely by observing.
Google Analytics and similar tools collect data such as the number visits you get to your business blog, your most popular website pages, the ads that had the highest conversions and the social media posts with the most shares.
Such data is invaluable to a business. It allows you to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
Analytics also help you evaluate your ROI for ads and influencer marketing and to select the best keywords to use on your website or social media posts, which can help improve your search rankings and ultimately increase traffic.
Analytics tools are great because they provide accurate and reliable data. With them, there is no need to guess.
7. Disregarding the Power of Video Marketing
Video marketing is a very effective way to capture the attention of your audience online. In a survey carried out by Lemonlight, 99% of respondents said that they enjoy watching video content from brands and 94% stated that watching a video helped them make a purchase decision at least once.
Based on these statistics alone, every digital marketing strategy should include some form of video marketing in 2021. A captivating video of just a few seconds may just be enough to turn a viewer into a customer.
8. Failing to Utilize Email Marketing
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is not dead! When done right, email marketing is a very effective strategy for retaining your audience — even more than social media.
For instance, according to statistics published by Snov.io, 37% of respondents named email as the most effective strategy for customer loyalty and retention while only 11% gave social media that title.
Not only is email effective for engagement, it is also cost effective, increasing its potential for a high return on ROI (approximately 4200%).
These are just a few statistics that prove email marketing is a must-have in 2021.
9. Having an Inconsistent Brand Identity
Another detrimental digital marketing mistake is allowing your business to go through an identity crisis. This occurs when your business does not have a clear and consistent brand identity.
In simple terms, your business’ brand identity is the image it portrays to its customers. It consists of various creative elements including your logo, website, packaging and colors.
Your brand identity makes your business more recognizable, which then increases brand awareness. As a result, this builds customer loyalty and trust, and ultimately increases revenue.
However, this only happens when your brand identity is consistent across all platforms.
When your brand identity is inconsistent, it reduces the trustworthiness of your business. This can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts, resulting in reduced revenue.
10. Expecting Results Overnight
The final digital marketing mistake is expecting dramatic overnight results.
Everyone wants quick results — and for some businesses, it happens. A single social media post can go viral and business can change overnight. However, this isn’t common. Even a really good digital marketing strategy can take weeks to months to really kick-in and show results.
In fact, this article says you can expect to wait approximately 6 to 12 months before you see any meaningful results.
Expecting results overnight sets an unrealistic goal that can cause you to give up way too soon. Instead, focus on creating a strong digital marketing strategy and you can be sure to reap the results in due time.
Conclusion
Digital marketing should not be ignored by any business in 2021. By avoiding these 10 mistakes, you can take advantage of the numerous benefits digital marketing has to offer.
Need help marketing your business? We can help.
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