Mistakes happen all the time and that’s ok. As a freelance digital marketing consultant, I am guilty of making mistakes too. However, it’s important to assess and learn from them and prevent them from happening again.
I have listed below a few fundamental errors I have found business owners make again and again – costing them time and money.
Watch out for these 6 most common digital marketing mistakes.
1. You are looking at the wrong metrics
Impressions, clicks and CTRs might look great on a digital marketing report, but you can’t take them to the bank.
Generally, if you want to advertise profitably in digital channels, the most important metrics for you to understand are:
- Cost per lead (CPL): How much does it cost you to get a lead?
- Cost per acquisition (CPA): How much does it costs you to convert that lead into a customer?
- Customer Lifetime Value: (LTV): The total amount of money a customer is expected to spend in your business, or on your products, during the time they are your customer.
If your digital marketing agency is showing you reports of impressions, clicks or any metrics that don’t have anything to do with returns, it may be wise to look elsewhere.
2. Your targeting is too general
One of the first things to consider in your digital marketing strategy is your target audience.
Now, this might sound like stating the obvious, but if you are targeting everyone, you are essentially targeting nobody. You really have to intensely get to know your customer, and it’s important that you dig deeper than generalities such as gender, age and ‘being a business owner’.
Find your target audience and adjust the message to be relevant to their:
- Problems and needs
- Hopes, desires and fears
- Pain points and anxieties
Knowing your target audience can be a game changer. It will make your marketing much more effective. Uncovering what they think but don’t say is how you can really persuade them to buy from you.
3. Not advertising enough
One of the most common digital marketing mistakes is to not advertise enough. This is common in businesses where marketing is seen as a cost and not investment.
As Henry Ford once said, “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”
4. You are trying to do too many things at the same time
One of the common digital marketing mistakes is about not focusing on one thing at the time.
You want to drive traffic to your website from multiple sources. However, if you are just starting out, don’t make the mistake of setting up all the channels at once. Start with one channel that’s within your budget and that you think works best for your business (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Linkedin etc.)
Master one channel first and scale to the next channel once you start seeing results.
5. Asking for a purchase too early
Approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy. Consequently, most of the online advertisements target that 4% of the people. The remaining 96% are still either unaware of the problem, or aware but still in research mode. When you ask for purchase too early you miss out on an opportunity to sell to these people later.
The reason your advertising might not be working at the moment is that the call to action is too direct (Enquire Now, Buy Now, Contact Us Now). It only works if they are ready to buy, but most of your clients are not ready to commit to a sales call quite yet.
Therefore, you need to create content that also targets potential clients who are still in the research phase, or unaware of their problem.
6. You are not tracking conversions
The final one in the list of digital marketing mistakes is conversion tracking.
If you are running ads on Google, Facebook, Linkedin, or all of these channels, and are not tracking conversions, you will never be able to find out how your campaigns are really performing.
If you want to remove the guesswork and start measuring tangible results, set up your conversion tracking on every single advertising channel you are using.
Bottom line
Don’t be discouraged if you went through this list and realised that you’re making some of these common digital marketing mistakes.
The first step is acknowledging what you’re doing wrong and take the steps to correct these errors.
Don’t be afraid of making these digital marketing mistakes either. Testing and learning is the only way to improve your marketing results.
