Digital marketing is the next frontier in advertising. An online presence is now one of the requirements for a successful business. Without significant effort into managing your online presence and digital marketing, you might end up underutilizing an important marketing resource.
The internet is a tricky and treacherous place, but there are a few tried and tested methodologies in online advertising. Knowing what not to do can be a great help for your next campaign, so here are a few of the most common mistakes you’ll want to avoid committing:
1. Ignoring the data
If you have a website, then you’d know that it often comes with tools that record the data of every purchase and visitor. You can then use this data to understand your target market a lot better. Among which age ranges is your site most popular? Where do they live? What is common to them? How can you make your website more appealing to them?
In addition to that, you can also start to mathematically determine the amount of stock you need, if your business deals in physical products. This can help with budgeting and prevent overspending.
2. Not understanding your target market
An important question everyone needs to ask in any marketing campaign is: who is your target market? It is easy enough to commit the mistake of trying to cast aa wide a net as possible when hoping for customers and buyers, but this is more likely to result in lacklustre sales than a more targeted approach.
Use the data you have and do the research so you can design a marketing campaign that exploits the biases of your target market.
3. Setting unrealistic goals
While the majority of the world is now linked up with access to the internet, it does not mean that digital marketing is inherently easier than other types of marketing. Make sure your goals are realistic so that you can create better, more grounded, and more effective strategies.
For example, expecting your business to serve 200,000 customers in its first year might be considered unrealistic, depending on the circumstances. It is also important to remember that not every site visitor will convert to a sale.
The effectiveness of a campaign is determined over time, and as such, the goals should acknowledge the more realistic constraints of the business. This is done by observing the data and studying what made other campaigns successful.
4. Not engaging with your customers
Nothing matters to a customer more than special attention. Special attention is what can turn a first-time customer into a repeat client. Small gestures, such as sending emails on your customer’s birthdays, can take your business to another level.
Satisfied customers who feel special are also likely to promote your business to other prospective customers, and so on and so forth.
Make sure to respond to every comment and email, especially those offering feedback or asking about services. An ignored comment or email almost always results in a lost customer, even if they’ve already bought from you before.
We even recommend designating a person to just answering emails when the volume reaches a certain point.
Conclusion
Embarking on an internet marketing campaign can be scary and difficult, but that can be said of any worthwhile endeavor. More often than not, it’s less about throwing money at the problem than strategizing creatively and intelligently.
To help ensure that you’re making the most well-informed decisions, you can partner with experts who have plenty of experience with digital marketing initiatives. They’ll give you access to the newest tools and keep you up-to-date with the latest best practices.
If you’re interested in digital marketing to take your business in Canada or in the USA into the future, partner with us at Analytics & Beyond. You can book your free analysis evaluation right from our website!