Digital Marketing Fiascos to Avoid
Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all types of marketing involving digital technology and media. Just like all forms of marketing, it requires study, observation, monitoring, and evolution. Marketing, whether traditional or digital, is a huge challenge. There is no single set of strategies that works for all, and it is this difficulty that leads to failure when inappropriately managed.
No Audience
This is a disaster that results usually from lack of planning. Before you put your brand out there, you need to have a clear image of your audience in mind. The problem with many marketers is they don’t do their homework. They publicize their brand, thinking it will pick up customers just like that.
Things to do:
- Identify your audience.
- Study the demographics of your audience.
- Determine the buying behavior of your audience.
- Track their online behavior.
- Create a marketing plan based on these details.
No Engagement
Attracting people to go to your website or follow you on Facebook is one thing. Making them care about your content is another thing. Whether you like it or not, only a small fraction of your followers will like your posts. A tinier fraction will make comments and share your post. These are true if you are doing fine. The unfortunate mortals of the digital sphere suffer from lack of considerable engagement. Lack of engagement can be due to a number of reasons.
- You post on the wrong day and time.
- You flood people’s news feeds.
- You post rarely.
- Your content is boring.
- You have no call to action.
- You are talking to the wrong people.
- You don’t utilize media.
- You don’t respond to comments and messages.
Overt Advertising
We keep saying that marketing is an art. It’s a way of selling to people without selling to people. That sounds like a silly irony, right? Marketing in today’s social climate has to be done creatively because people are already blind and deaf towards traditional advertising. We have said that, and we will always say the same thing because that’s what we have observed. Sure, you want to sell your brand. Which entrepreneur doesn’t want to?
There are certain words that will put off potential customers (e.g. hurry, buy now, guaranteed, and “or your money back”). These words have been so overused that they have no weight anymore. People pass by these words, maybe even with their eyes rolling in dubiousness. Also, if your content is all about checking out a product or service, people click away fast.
SEO, SEO, SEO…
Search engine optimization has its place in online marketing. However, gone are the days when it used to be a pivotal aspect of inbound traffic generation. It still has its value, but smart marketers know SEO is not everything. It doesn’t take a huge slice of the pie. Google updates have forced marketers to resort to giving value to users. After all, we create content for humans, not for robots.
