6 Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

In today's social media realm, businesses are trying their best to stay in front of their audience. This is a good thing! But if you're struggling to reach your goals, you may want to reevaluate your current digital marketing strategy.

Digital marketing is critical for business success and too many brands are making common errors when it comes to marketing themselves online; therefore, leaving their brand stagnant. Here are just a few of the common mistakes brands are making and how you can avoid them (or fix if you find yourself making them right now!).

1. Using Poor Content

You should never want to go into social media marketing with the mindset of quantity over quality. Yes, it's good for a business to be present on social media and post regularly but don't just put out posts just to put out posts and call it a day. That's not going to bring attention to your brand. Your content should be well-written, relevant, creative and something you think your audience would be interested in seeing.

People are constantly on social media swiping and scrolling through the feed, so you want your content to be eye-catching. You want to grasp their attention. So how do you do it? We suggest taking some time to research and get to know your audience online. Another tip would be to scope out your competitors and see what's working for them to get ideas. Here are some tips to create visual, compelling content for your brand!

2. Not Investing In A Good Website

Another mistake some businesses make is thinking their website isn't an important asset for their business. This is untrue. With most of the population online nowadays, it's important to invest in a good website. People aren't going to find your business or learn about the services or products you offer if you don't have a website in place.

Now, maybe you do have a website. Can you answer these 3 questions honestly?

⁃ Do you feel like your website represents your business well?

⁃ Does it tell your story and showcase your values in a unique way that makes your brand stand out?

⁃ Are you happy with the way your current website looks?

If your answer is anything other than a "yes" to all three of these questions you might want to think about investing in a better website or upgrading it. A website is often the first impression you give your audience about your business. Try and put yourself in your audience's shoes. If you were to come across your website searching for your product/service, would you be intrigued? Or would you be bored and leave?

Just some questions to think about. If you're interested in hearing how you can revamp your current website for as low as $469 a month, schedule a consultation with us here.

3. Over Promoting Yourself

When it comes to creating content for your brand online, you want to hype up your brand, explain who you are and what you do - makes sense. But you don't want all your content to be centered on selling the service(s) or product(s) you offer. Instead, position your content on how your service or product is meeting a customers' needs. You should showcase the benefits it will provide the consumer. The key is to get the customer to see that they not only want it, but they need it.

Social media users are also intrigued by how a business represents itself online aside from just business. They like to see the personality behind the brand. Other post ideas that do well on social would include:

- Behind the scenes (business culture, employees, holidays, etc)

- Testimonials

- Community Involvement

- Polls & Surveys

- User-Generated Content

- Giveaways

And these are just to name a few…

4. Not Engaging With Your Audience Online

Another major mistake would be choosing to ignore comments and DMs on your social platforms. This sends the wrong message. This could potentially give your audience the impression that you don't care what they have to say.

A big advantage to engaging with people on your platform is that it helps to build brand awareness and presents proof that people trust your brand. It can also give you a little insight into your audience by learning how they feel about your brand.

Next time you receive some engagement on social be sure to engage back in a timely manner as well. Even if it's just a simple comment giving your business praise, still choose to respond. Regularly communicating with your audience will help you work on building those relationships and make your audience feel important and valued.

If it's negative engagement on a post, kindly comment and suggest moving the conversation away from the public eye to a private message.

5. Little To No Planning

Coming up with content on the spot can be difficult. As a business owner, you've got a busy schedule and you probably don't have time to stop what you're doing every day to figure out what you're going to post. Having a consistent schedule laid out ahead of time will help keep things organized and save you time.

Planning your content ahead of time can help you carry across a consistent tone and brand voice on social media. It also allows you the time to research and create good content that will resonate better with your audience by taking the time to look into key trends and figuring out what your audience responds to on social. By looking at past content, you'll be able to plan future content based on what has done well in the past or shift gears if you notice that people are not resonating with it.

6. Failing To Measure Analytics

This is probably the worst digital marketing mistake you can make. When you set up a digital marketing strategy, you layout your goals and determine how you plan to reach them. Well, how are you supposed to see if your marketing efforts are paying off if you aren't measuring the analytics? You can't.

Analytics is very telling. By looking at certain measurements like engagement rate, bounce rate, impressions, reaches, shares, etc… you'll see the areas your business has done well in and where there needs to be improvement. Make it a plan to examine your analytics within a set time period and adjust your marketing strategy where you see fit, so you can get your business closer to reaching your goals.

In Conclusion…

Being on social media is crucial for small businesses but only if you're utilizing it in the right ways. These are just a few of the common mistakes business owners make but they are simple fixes. Our best advice would be that if you're not happy with your current digital marketing efforts and don't have the time to fix them, consider working with us! We help small businesses turn their social into sales by creating a marketing strategy that will work toward their own goals. Feel free to schedule a consultation with us to hear more on how we can help you with your digital marketing efforts, so you can start turning your social into sales.