In today’s world of technology, digital marketing has become a go-to strategy for a variety of businesses, no matter the industry. The modern consumer spends lots of time online searching the web, checking emails, engaging on social media, and using mobile apps. That’s why digital marketing is so effective in generating brand awareness, building trust, and driving sales. In fact, 83% of businesses think their digital marketing efforts are effective in helping them achieve their goal.

Although marketing online is a great method of getting your brand noticed, it can be easy to make mistakes, especially if you’re a beginner. Certain digital marketing mistakes could be hindering your success and keeping you from achieving the results (i.e. traffic generation, lead conversions, sales, etc.) you desire.

5 DIGITAL MARKETING MISTAKES TO AVOID IN 2019

Here are 5 common digital marketing mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.

1. NOT TARGETING THE RIGHT AUDIENCE

Identifying your target audience is the first step to establishing a digital marketing plan. You should know their interests, pain points, and preferred solutions. If you don’t know these important things about your target audience, it will be highly difficult to attract them because you won’t be able to center your marketing message around their needs and wants.

A great way to learn about your target customer is to create buyer personas. You can do this by gathering data about your existing customers such as age, location, income, buying behavior., interests and activities, etc. You can also get information from customer records, surveys, or even customer interviews.

Checking your website and social analytics can be helpful for getting information about people who are interacting with your brand, even if they’re not existing customers. Also, you can see what your competitors are doing and see who’s interacting with them. Determine if they’re reaching the same target audience as you or if they’re reaching groups you haven’t yet targeted but should.

2. NOT CLEARLY DEFINING YOUR GOALS

Setting clear, measurable goals will guide your strategy and help you measure your digital marketing success. Not doing so? Well, you won’t be able to measure anything without a clear plan. Not having goals in place can lead you in all types of directions, which isn’t necessarily good for your marketing strategy.

To avoid this mistake, set specific goals for your company and set a deadline for completion. For example, maybe you want to increase sign-ups to your email newsletter by this time next year. Or you could get even more specific and say that you want to increase sales on your e-commerce website by 20% and you want to achieve this goal by October 2020.

The more specific your goals are, the easier it is to measure the completion of the goals and the more clear your results will be. Once you’ve clearly defined your goals, you can then determine the specific marketing tactics that will best help achieve them. So if your goal is to drive more traffic to your company website, you might choose to start a pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign to get more clicks and traffic.

3. NOT IMPLEMENTING A SMART SEO STRATEGY

Many business owners live in the past when it comes to SEO. They target exact match search queries, stuff keywords into their posts, and create duplicate content. But these are bad SEO practices and Google can and will penalize you for them. You want your website’s rankings to go up, not down. Google can’t satisfy search intent if content creators are only writing for the search engines and to achieve rankings. That’s why Google’s algorithms are constantly changing – to help searchers find the best answers in the most accessible way. 

Here are some SEO best practices to follow in 2019:

• Optimize for voice search. With the popularity of voice search technology such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant, people are using the functionality more and more. 41% of adults (and 55% of teens) use voice search daily. That number will only increase for years to come. To optimize your content for voice search, use long-tail keywords and write your content in a more conversational tone. You can also create Q&A content to rank high in voice searches.

• Value quality over quantity. You’ve probably heard that the longer the content, the more valuable it is to the consumer. Long-form content (1,000 words or longer) signals Google that because you go in-depth about a topic, you’re more likely to satisfy searcher intent. But search engines are smarter now. Well-written, readable content is the best option for searchers over content that is hard to read and badly written, even if it is longer.

• Create a great user experience (UX). UX is becoming a crucial factor in search engine rankings. Google is prioritizing mobile-friendly sites over ones that aren’t. The search engine also values site speed, easy-to-read content, and clear navigation.

4. NOT REMARKETING

Have you ever had a visitor click onto your website, go on one of your product pages, add an item to their cart, only to abandon it? If you’re not tracking this behavior and setting up a remarketing campaign to re-engage these leads, you’re making a huge mistake. You can track user behavior through Facebook, Google, or whatever ad platform you’re using. From there, you can target these users through ads tailored just for them.

5. NOT MEASURING YOUR RESULTS

How can you know how well your marketing campaign is doing if you’re not measuring the results? You simply can’t. So to avoid making the mistake of not measuring results, put together a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll be using to track your success. And measure the KPIs that matter, not vanity metrics like impressions, social media followers, page views, etc.

Look at things like conversions or referral source. By looking at your conversion rate, you can see how well you’ve met your goal or if you’ve even met it at all. Your referral sources can help you determine what channels are referring the most traffic, which can help indicate where you should shift your focus to.

HELP US HELP YOU

At Vigor Seorchers, we help companies market their services through various online channels. From thorough SEO to awesome social media marketing, we can get your brand recognized in no time. We’ll also help you define your marketing goals and come up with an actionable plan to meet them. Interested in learning more? Get in touch with us today to see if we’re a good match for your company.