Digital Marketing Mistakes That Cost You Conversions

In an ever-evolving technology era, it’s unrealistic to think that you aren’t going to make a few digital marketing mistakes along the way. But if you are continually making the same mistakes – it can be costly in more ways than one. Sometimes, mistakes aren’t just one big blunder. Instead, they’re a series of little choices that lead to a negative outcome.

We want to ensure you don’t run into these problems so we have compiled a list of the most common digital marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

Not Setting SMART Goals

Everyone would like to achieve high CTRs (click-through rate), low CPCs (cost per click), and a substantial number of impressions. However, it’s not realistic to achieve great performance for every KPI with only one campaign or medium. If your business is looking to generate awareness then it’s important to set SMART goals that reflect that initiative. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Therefore, a SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving that goal.

Minimal Target Audience Research

This is possibly one the most important steps in creating a digital marketing strategy because if you aren’t showing your content to the right people at the right time – you’re wasting your money. Top-of-funnel marketing efforts must be accompanied by a defined and precisely-targeted audience. When this audience is too broad, companies gather a lot of irrelevant leads who don’t find the content engaging enough. You may also attract people who are engaged in the content but not in the product or service that is associated with it. If you’re running a Facebook campaign take advantage of audience segments such as a custom audience based on time spent on site instead of just site traffic. This will eliminate people that accidentally clicked on the link or aren’t interested in your company. 

Not Measuring ROI

You may be running a traffic campaign and receiving a great CTR or CPC, but if you aren’t actively measuring ROI then you could be blindly throwing money out the window. Just because some KPIs are performing well does not correlate to a good ROI – you need to be mindful of this when making optimizations to your campaigns. Stick to what’s working and either abandon or modify what’s not. 

Ignoring Personalization and Customization

In an Infosys study, 31% of respondents expressed a desire for a more personalized shopping experience. In another study by Deloitte, 36% of respondents expressed a desire for personalized products (going beyond personalized communication). Brands who offer a generic, run-of-the-mill customer experience are not meeting these customers’ needs. To give your audience a more customized experience you need to understand your target market. Give your customers social currency and make them feel like insiders through personalization – the more people care the more they get involved. 

Not Having a Mobile Marketing Strategy

In a dream world, every person who clicked on our ad would immediately buy our product – however, this is not the case. Understanding how people move across devices through the consumer journey is essential to determining which ads are really driving conversions. Platforms, like Facebook and Google, are implementing tools to help Marketers connect these dots. 

More than half the population has a smartphone, meaning you need a proper mobile marketing strategy to keep up with the trend.  50% of people said they would use a company less often if they did not have a site that’s mobile friendly even if they liked the brand. Designing a mobile-responsive website is one of the basics you need to cover when formulating a successful digital marketing strategy.

Ignoring Your Competitors Campaigns

Learning from others is the best way to successfully market your own business. If you keep an eye on your competitors’ social marketing campaigns, you’ll be able to see how online customers respond to their brand. Keyword research is the foundation upon which all good search marketing campaigns are built. If your business is in a crowded space, you’ll want to gain a crucial advantage over others in your industry through a competitive keyword analysis. Try out these sites for the best competitor research tools:

1. Facebook Ad Library
2. BuzzSumo
3. SEM Rush
4. SpyFu
5. Adwords Auction Insights
6. Wordstream’s Free Keyword Tool

Conclusion

The biggest digital marketing mistake you can make is thinking you know everything and not testing new ways to improve performance. Get your teams involved and ask them for their input, even if you already think you have an answer, it’s great to have confirmation. Best said by Socrates, “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”