The Worst 5 Mistakes in Online Marketing — Trend Of Business
One of the consequences of 2020 has been that companies have had to quickly digitize, both in working methods and in promotion and marketing.
In such cases, the most useful thing is to recognize the most common mistakes in online marketing and work on avoiding them.
From experience, the top 5 mistakes are:
Rowing without knowing direction is not going to take us to the place we want.
Many companies attempt to digitize their marketing, but they take isolated actions without a clear objective, instead of creating a well-integrated marketing system, which is a big mistake in online marketing.
The results are mediocre, online marketing becomes an “awkward guest” and is soon pushed aside because it doesn’t seem very beneficial.
Spontaneous action cannot be mistaken for effective action.
All online promotion actions must be framed within the general marketing strategy and contribute to achieving clear objectives.
But many companies do not even have those objectives set, so they do not even have the strategy (which is nothing more than clearly defining what will be done to achieve that objective).
This is the most common mistake in online marketing that quickly eats up your marketing budget, especially when using pay-per-click media, such as Facebook Ads or Google Ads.
And in many cases, this error stems from a company’s own failed positioning “strategy” by trying to be everything to everyone, which is the formula for disaster.
Thus, if we define our clients as “entrepreneurs” and target that generic keyword that encompasses so many things, very soon we would find our entire budget has gone to ads that have not reached our true target audience.
This solution to this mistake in online marketing, first involves well defining who our ideal client is and then specializing in a specific niche.
Today, being generic is a luxury that a small or medium-sized business cannot afford; neither in its marketing nor in its activity in general.
In those cases, specialized experts win the clients, and all our efforts would go to waste.
3- Wanting to be on all networks and use all media
Within the momentum of digitization, many companies attempted to be on all social networks and try all marketing means: email, PPC, SEO …
And the result, again, is that the effort is diluted to no avail.
Wanting to be in everything (as well as wanting everyone to be our client) is the big mistake in online marketing that leads to failure.
Choose 2 networks and 2 online marketing media and master them. Focus your effort and budget on learning the best practices on those few fronts.
Most companies already have resources that are too tight for marketing, stretching them in all directions will not bring any results. Having a specific target helps you avoid this mistake in online marketing.
Your website can be an excellent means of obtaining leads and interested parties, but many companies have neglected it. The website is often left without updating, without optimizing loading times, or filled with errors.
What’s more, I’ve often seen excellent online advertisements that do their job of attracting attention, but then they take you to a website with which you have a bad experience … and you never come back. This is considered the biggest mistake in online marketing because online marketing greatly depends on the company’s website.
Let’s remember that there is no second chance to make a good first impression. Our website is our home and our business card, the first thing a potential client will see and from which they will draw conclusions about our professionalism and method of working.
If we seem careless, we cannot blame the client for thinking that we are careless in other aspects as well.
Simple, at least in theory. It is essential to edit your page and ensure that it has a modern, attractive and professional design. That encourages the client to find out more. The design must be simple in which the visitor quickly finds the information they are looking for.
5- Not taking into account the return on investment
The concept of return on investment is the most important and powerful in marketing. Because as long as my returns on investment are good (that is, I get more out of one marketing medium than I put into it) I have, pretty much, the “free money formula.”
That is, I can invest more because I will continue to earn.
But the most common mistake in online marketing is that too much effort is spent on activities that have no return. For example, spending too much time on posts on social networks that hardly anyone reads later.
Similarly, many startups (or companies with no visibility yet) focus on inbound marketing and SEO, which is fine, but it’s not going to pay off in the short term. In those situations, it is much more profitable to use outbound marketing efforts, such as cold email or PPC ads.
The solution is in the general foundation for successful marketing: measuring everything we do.
Always take into account what we get from each action concerning what we invest (the Return or ROI), as well as percentages of clicks on the ads, visit numbers, conversion on the web …
If we set objectives and define a strategy (point 1 of this content), we have to constantly consider whether we are going in the right direction and how close we are to achieving our objectives.
In short, digitization and online marketing have become essential. 2020 brought a drastic acceleration of this process. To avoid crashing at full speed, the first thing to do is take into account these 5 common mistakes in online marketing and work on avoiding them.
Originally published at https://trendofbusiness.com on April 8, 2021.
