Am I Doing Digital Marketing Wrong?

 What’s digital is always evolving. In a lot of ways, it’s fairly easy to have your digital marketing underperform. Algorithms change. So does user behaviour. Even month-to-month, marketing campaigns considered highly effective can gradually lose their ability to generate profits and returns.

 There are a lot of ways to do digital marketing wrong. The campaign itself can be flawed. The sales funnel that takes a lead through to becoming a customer can have holes in it, either in acquiring the lead, in the web design of your website, or in the final stages of conversion. It can happen to any brand – and if you’re around long enough, eventually, you will encounter a campaign that doesn’t perform like you had hoped.

 Digital marketing that isn’t working shouldn’t keep you on the same path. When you see your campaign isn’t resonating with your target audience, cease what you’re doing and try an alternative approach.

 

Does Your Content Inspire You?

 Your content should represent you and be exciting to you. If it isn’t inspiring to you, it’s not necessarily going to be different for your target audience. Campaigns with dull content get dull results. Yours should be one-of-a-kind, meaningful, and in line with how you see your brand.

 Align every piece of content with your brand’s image and your personal tastes. Let it inspire you!

 

What Tone Is Your Content Marketing Taking?

 Tone is everything in marketing. A lot of start-ups and business-minded entrepreneurs can get it wrong. They create content that’s too ‘corporate’ and not ‘human’ enough. People connect with authentic brands. Talk like a human being. In your social media posts, emails, and on your website, being all business all the time can come across as very bland. Spice things up a bit!

 To do this, you may need to hire a content marketing writer or marketing company. It also is strongly recommended to research what tone your target audience is expecting as you don’t want to catch anyone off-guard.

 

Are You Offending People With Your Content Marketing?

 If there’s any question of whether something may offend someone in digital marketing, it’s probably best to nip it in the bud immediately. Brands trying to use humor, offering a simple opinion, or trying to capitalize on a celebrity or event can easily step into ‘faux-pas’ territory.

 Do your best to avoid posting any content or marketing that could be taken as tone-deaf, discriminatory, divisive, or offensive.

 

Are You Driving Your Digital Marketing By Feel Or Data?

 Let’s say, this is your first digital marketing campaign. You don’t have a lot of data to rely on although you may have some. To start, you’re relying more on feel to arrive at a campaign personalized to your target audience. The further you go though, data and analytics will supersede feel and become the primary factor.

 Always follow what the data. Analytics will tell you if a campaign’s working or not, allowing adjustments to be made.

 

Are You Using Social Media As A Customer Service Channel?

 More brands are seeing social media for what it is. Not as purely a marketing channel but a customer service one as well. Monitor the conversation online around your brand. Address complaints and negative-toned messages. Answer questions that are posed. Engage with customers or users that have left you communications.

 This goes into nurturing your leads. You can acquire over 1,000,000 leads but if none convert, you’ve wasted a ton of energy on something with no discernible value.

 

How Often Do You Blog As A Business?

 A marketing campaign needs an ongoing supply of content. Not having an active blog tells a user they’re on a neglected website. This is a surprisingly common digital marketing mistake. Have a schedule. Write blogs and post them on that schedule with no exception. Take that content and spread it across all your available channels within reason.

 To a user, a blog is free. They just click and read. This is value you can offer that gets people interested without being overly promotional.

 

Are You Maximizing Sales Opportunities With Annual Events And Holidays?

 Every business has slow and busy periods. Look at where yours are. Create marketing campaigns based around these days. They could be holidays like Christmas. They could be celebratory occasions like International Women’s Day. They could be a specific sales time of year, a la Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday. These are all opportunities to get messaging out there and in front of users that are ready to buy.

 An approach like this can help your bottom line in a big way and help make a campaign feel more organic.

 

Do You Know Who You’re Marketing To?

 Do you know your target audience – you should. You know have an idea of their age, education, jobs they may take, what their likes and dislikes are, what they’re looking for in life, and what’s important to them. You should have a grasp on how to use what you know to reach people like them. As you go along in your journey, your target audience may shift. It’s important to keep updated with what your users or customers are going through.

 The better you understand your target customer, the more of a chance you have at crafting something that’s in line with their interests.

 

Are You Retargeting In Digital Marketing?

 You generate leads every day on a healthy digital marketing campaign. They don’t always convert though. That said, some leads can be converted through retargeting. That is to target leads that have partially opted in but haven’t gone all the way yet. Sometimes, all a lead will need to complete the conversion process is a nudge. Give that to them with a promo code, checking in with an email, or a special campaign based around a holiday like Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Halloween.

 If you aren’t considering different ways to call back leads that have not fully converted or customers that could opt-in on another purchase, you could be missing out on a large portion of sales.

 

Do You Have Enough Information Online About Products And Services?

 Over 81% of consumers will research a product online before making a purchasing decision. Ensuring you have included enough information about your product or service is important to securing the business of this type of consumer. The measurements and specifications. Key information on what to expect using it. Answer frequently asked questions. All these are basic areas that content should focus on, especially if you are developing or have an eCommerce page.

 If you aren’t including this level of information, it could be where you’re losing leads. You’re qualifying interest but don’t have the goods to complete the conversion.

 

How Do You Know Your Website Doesn’t Suck?

 So you’ve launched your campaign. You see the numbers coming in. You’re getting 1,000s of clicks! The leads are coming in! …but your conversion rate is in the ditch. Your web design may have the answer. Campaigns fail every day because of poorly-designed websites that aren’t simple and straightforward in their navigation.

 Connect with a web design and digital marketing expert to have your website evaluated if numbers are showing a major drop-off somewhere between acquiring a lead and converting them.

 

Are You Using Different Content Types In Marketing?

 It’s not all text, images, or video. A strong marketing campaign uses multiple types of content intermixed. Infographics perform well. So does video marketing in certain contexts. There are many different types of people. Some prefer video and others a blog. It’s up to you to vary the posts you make and the content you put out to serve all these audiences.

 

If you are comfortable using a single type of content and don’t want to change, just try varying things up. You may be surprised by the nice difference in engagement you get. It will also grow your skills as a marketer.