Strong marketing strategies that make customers feel heard and perform well on the web can help build trust in your brand, boost revenue, and retain loyal customers. Marketing mistakes have the potential to do the opposite – they can drive away customers, taint your reputation, and decrease your profits. While marketing always involves trial and error, there are some errors that you should prevent yourself from making. Here’s a guide to some common marketing mistakes to avoid.
Not focusing on customers’ needs
Neglecting to advertise in a way that speaks to your customers’ needs will ensure that you don’t get any customers. After all, why would anyone look into, let alone buy, a product or service they don’t feel a need for? Knowing what your audience needs, likes, and dislikes is crucial to tailoring your marketing to them. Do market research and pay attention to feedback from previous customers. Find out what your customers want and convince them that you’ll be the one to deliver. If you don’t focus on your audience, you won’t be able to attract customers, no matter how creative your ads may be.
Ignoring SEO
Neglecting to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can seriously impact your business. You can’t attract customers without knowing what keywords and searches are popular in your industry. If you end up on the second or third page of Google search results, potential customers are unlikely to find you. Furthermore, if you don’t utilize SEO according to Google’s standards, their algorithms are likely to reduce your rankings. Organic search is the primary source of traffic for most websites. Having a strong SEO strategy is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. If you want your content to be seen, learn how to search for and use keywords. Tools like Ahrefs and SpyFu are incredibly helpful.
Not paying attention to your content’s performance
Continuing to post content without paying attention to its performance will lead to disaster. If visitors to your social media pages and website don’t like what they’re seeing, you’re likely to see a decrease in views, likes, shares, and comments. Conversely, if they like your content, engagement rates will go up. Think of engagement as feedback on your content. Use it to understand what kind of content your audience wants. Create more of what they like and stop posting the kind of content that gets little engagement. If you have a small marketing budget, you can try manually monitoring the performance of your posts by looking at the number of views, likes, and comments. However, for more robust insights, it’s best to use a social media reporting tool. They can help you understand when the best time to post is, your audience’s demographics, and how your competitors are doing. If you’re interested in learning more about social media reporting tools, check out our article “Social Media Reporting Tools”.
Posting on social media too frequently
Annoying potential customers by spamming your social media with posts will lead people to unfollow you and turn away from your business. It’s best to stick to a regular posting schedule that reminds customers about your brand without overwhelming them. 1-2 posts and 1-5 story updates a day is best. Make sure the information you’re conveying is new, exciting, and relevant to customers. Furthermore, it’s important not to post too much about work or your business on your personal social media pages. Your friends and family want to know what’s going on in your personal life. You don’t want them to think of you as obsessed with promoting your business. Similarly, the occasional personal content on your business social media doesn’t hurt. People like to see the human side to companies.
Ignoring repeat customers
Make sure you show appreciation for your loyal customers. If you don’t, they might start going to your competitors.You can make sure you’re meeting your repeat customers’ expectations by paying attention to their spending habits and asking them for feedback. You can also create special rewards and discounts for loyal customers. Whatever you do, make it clear that you appreciate their business. Small things like remembering a repeat customer’s name or writing a personalized thank you note can go a long way. You can also show appreciation for customers via social media. Share photos your customers post that feature your business and reply to their comments.
Not having a user-friendly website
Having a website that’s difficult to use will turn away customers who look you up online. Company websites that are difficult to use tell customers that you don’t care about your web presence. Make sure your website looks good on both desktop or mobile. Test it out on various devices. Fix and unresponsive buttons or dead links. Additionally, it’s good to leave customers with the impression that you keep your website up to date. Consider adding a news and events page to keep them current on what’s happening with your business. You might also want to think about starting a blog on your business’s website.
Running insensitive Ads
While most bad advertisements are simply boring, cheesy, or annoying, some are offensive. Looking back at vintage ads, we see how many of them were sexist, racist, or otherwise inappropriate. While it might be less common than in the 1960s, some businesses still make the mistake of running offensive ads. In 2017, Dove created a before and after campaign for their soap that showed a black woman as “before” and a white woman as “after”. Whatever Dove’s intentions were, many viewers saw the ad as racist and expressed outrage. It’s important to be careful not to run offensive ads as they can seriously taint your brand’s reputation. If you’re worried that your ad may offend someone, ask a few people to look over it before putting it up online. Be particularly careful when creating ads that include sexually suggestive material. It can be hard to know where the line is, and you may end up making something that goes a bit too far.
