It’s not easy creating a digital marketing strategy for your business. If it was, everyone would be doing it. To create a successful digital marketing strategy means you have to learn a range of skills, including search engine optimisation, paid advertising, and content marketing, to name just a few. It’s easy to leave a few steps out and even make a few mistakes along the way.
Read on to find out how to avoid the most common mistakes so you can create a digital marketing strategy that will achieve all your business goals.
Mistake #1 Setting Unrealistic Goals and Not Tracking Goals
Goals giving you something to aim for, but it’s important to keep them realistic.
Measuring your progress towards your goals will help you understand how well your campaign is doing and what you need to do next. Plus, you also need a way to track your progress; otherwise, you have no way to know if your business is gaining traction or if it’s losing ground.
There’s no point spending hundreds of dollars on a paid advertising campaign if you have no idea what your conversion rate is, can’t track the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer, and have no clue about your return on investment (ROI).
Setting goals too high can also be disappointing and could set you up for failure.
What You Need to Do
- Set specific and measurable goals – Be precise in your goals. Instead of setting a goal like “I want more customers,” make a goal to get your website on the first page of Google for a specific search phrase, increase your engagement on Facebook, or add 100 followers to your Twitter account.
- Be Realistic and set achievable goals – Lofty goals you can’t hope to achieve can be a drain on your resources and morale. Make sure you have the resources to achieve your goals and check in regularly to monitor your progress.
Mistake #2 Poor Website Design
Websites have become integral to doing business in the digital era. Quite often, your website will be a prospect’s first contact with your organization, and first impressions count.
Your website needs to be fast and look good on every platform, including smartphone screens, desktop PCs, Android tablets, and iPads.
Most people are researching a new business on mobile devices first, so your website must provide a great user experience on whatever handheld device they are using. If it doesn’t, they will head back to the search results.
What You Need to Do
To provide the best website experience possible, ensure your website is:
- Mobile friendly
- Intuitive to navigate
- Fast loading
Aim for a site that loads in less than 3 seconds. Conversion rates for every extra second your site takes to load drop dramatically. Sites that load in 4 seconds or more typically achieve a conversion rate of less than 1%.
Mistake #3 Marketing to the Wrong Demographic
A key strategy for improving any marketing campaign is to know your audience. You are unlikely to sell many tractors if your ads are getting in front of retirees.
Another mistake small businesses make is to go too broad. Yes, you want to attract as many leads as possible, but it’s not profitable for your sales team to be talking to people who are unlikely to convert.
Fortunately, when you know your audience, it is a lot easier to get your digital marketing content in front of them.
What You Need to Do
Learn who your ideal customer is. Where do they hang out online? Do they prefer Twitter or Facebook? Are they middle-aged and married, or young and single?
A marketing persona is a fictional representation of your perfect customer. So making them as realistic as possible will give you a lot of insight into how best to get your business in front of them. In general, a marketing persona will contain information on:
- Their spending habits
- Their hobbies
- Their favourite social media platforms
- Their age, gender, marital status, employment
Mistake #4 Ignoring Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
If your goal is to get highly qualified leads into your sales funnel, you must absolutely get your SEO on point.
A person searching on Google for a product or service is a lead that is most likely in the buying frame of mind. And a small business that ignores SEO is sending a lot of valuable leads to its competitors.
Implementing sound SEO practices on your website will make Google love you and reward your site with higher rankings.
Many businesses ignore their website once it’s up and running and consider it job done.
However, in the vast ocean of the internet, it’s easy for a website to get lost in the waves. Without good SEO, Google likely won’t even know your website is there.
What You Need to Do
SEO is a long game, so it’s critical you keep working on your site while you wait for the results. A profitable SEO strategy will mean you are:
- Finding relevant keywords to rank in Google.
- Regularly publishing content that focuses on the keywords you find while ensuring it adds value for your visitors.
If you are new to SEO, you will want to fast-track your skills development by learning from professionals. Visit NZIE and check out their SEO Strategy Micro-Credential Course, where you will learn how to implement SEO into your digital marketing campaign using the latest techniques and best practices.
Mistake #5 Ignoring Social Media
For whatever reason, too many businesses ignore the incredible marketing potential offered by social media.
A small business’s social media presence isn’t always about selling. What it does provides is a way to engage with your audience in a more meaningful way.
Connecting with your audience can deliver huge gains in understanding what your prospects want and need. A presence on your social media also increases your brand exposure, builds trust, and helps develop your reputation.
Social media is also a popular platform where companies can provide support and aftersales service. And it’s become so integral that many people will not do business with a company that doesn’t have a social media presence.
What You Need to Do
The first trick to making the most of social media is to find out which platforms your target audience prefers. You won’t get much traction by putting all your effort into building a Facebook presence if most of your demographic are on Instagram.
Once you know where your audience socializes online, you should start building up your presence on their platform of choice. Keep your posts relevant, helpful, and informative.
Avoid going for the hard sell. People on social media are there to be entertained and keep up with friends. They don’t appreciate companies invading their news feed with salesy content. Value-adding posts that solve problems will receive the most engagement and get you more shares.
It can be difficult to gain momentum on social media for small businesses since all the platforms adopted paid advertising. If you don’t have a sizeable audience yet, then a paid social media campaign will help you get the results you need.
Why study at NZIE?
You can learn a lot by doing with social media advertising, but you will also blow most of your marketing budget. Rather than learning everything yourself, take a shortcut to discover the most effective social media marketing strategies with NZIE’s Social Media Marketing Strategy Course. In just 7 short weeks, you will have all the skills you need to create a profitable marketing campaign.
