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7 cardinal sins of online marketing

Online marketing sins are easy to commit. Why? Because often they promise a high reward for little money or time invested. It sounds good on paper and might even make you feel good in the short term. But if you plan on having any long term success as a marketing company, it’s a lousy operating […]

Seven Digital_Marketing Sins

Online marketing sins are easy to commit.

Why?

Because often they promise a high reward for little money or time invested.

It sounds good on paper and might even make you feel good in the short term. But if you plan on having any long term success as a marketing company, it’s a lousy operating system.

There are many sins in marketing, but here are seven cardinal sins to get you thinking about repentance.

Not marketing your website

Here’s a lesson from Internet 101 – the launch of your site doesn’t mean you’re going to get any traffic.

If you don’t market your website no one is going to see it for a long, long time.

Today, there are over a billion websites on the internet with more being started every day. What are the actual chances of someone stumbling upon your website?

Without strong marketing pushing your website in front of potential customers, it’s going to sink to the bottom of the digital ocean.

It doesn’t matter what the goal of your website is, marketing is the key to its success.

Setting Unrealistic Expectations

It’s all too common to see website marketing plans that have entirely unrealistic expectations.

You want to impress people with your plan, you want to be number one.

It’s easy to get overexcited.

But setting unrealistic expectations is a surefire path to disappointment and disillusionment.

Expecting online initiatives to produce impressive results quickly is one problem. Or overestimating user engagement.

These things take time.

Of course, there are always success stories. Companies that break the mould and somehow grow exponentially.

But odds are you’re probably not that kind of company.

Successful marketing requires a substantial investment of money, time, and, above all, hard work.

There are no shortcuts or tricks. Which brings us to…

Engaging in shady practices

You may have heard of ‘black hat’ marketing? This is when SEO firms “trick” the search engine into giving your website a better position for certain keywords.

It might work in the short term but Google pours millions into combatting this kind of cheating and they punish those caught cheating hard.

If you get penalized or banned from Google you will have irreversible damage done to your marketing company and reputation.

Avoid practices of these kinds at all costs.

“White hat” marketing, the inverse of black hat marketing, takes more time and expense but produces lasting, long-term results.

Targeting Everyone and Anyone

Who did your last marketing campaign target?

People with smartphones? Anyone with WiFi access?

These answers aren’t good enough.

To run a successful campaign you need to narrow your target market.

Don’t make assumptions about your chosen customer demographic either. Take the time to research and be prepared to be surprised by the results.

Once you narrow and refine your targeted audience you will have more success with your digital campaigns.

Forgetting Mobile Users

It’s 2020 and everyone has a phone in their pocket. Everyone.

And they use it for more than just making phone calls, by the way.

Having a website to promote your product or store isn’t enough. You need to make it optimized for mobile devices.

Why?

Because a bad mobile experience can turn potential customers away from your business entirely. In fact, in a survey it was found that 50% of people would use a brand or company far less if their site wasn’t optimized for mobile phones.

Don’t lose half your customers before you even start: Make your site mobile friendly.

Not Measuring ROI

Question – How can you know if something is working without measuring results?

Answer – You can’t.

Executing marketing strategies blindly without knowing how it works in the bigger picture, if at all, is a terrible way to spend your money.

You need to be in control of your company’s growth and that means measurements.

Beware of Vanity Metrics

Don’t rely on “vanity metrics” such as traffic or overall leads or sales without an in-depth look at how individual campaigns contribute to those numbers.

Not having a marketing plan

This is probably the biggest sin of all – not having a marketing plan.

Probably one of the most essential steps in any marketing campaign and yet so many companies think they can just wing it.

Without a plan, you’re going to waste a lot of time and money and spend too long spinning your wheels. Spending your money in a ‘here and there’ approach is not going to do you or your investors any favours. Plus you’ll have no clue if what you’re doing is producing the results you want.

Before investing a single cent in the marketing of a website, make sure you establish at least a basic marketing plan.

A comprehensive marketing plan will dictate your day-to-day activities, guide your approach, and help you make good decisions towards both long term and short term goals.

And there you have it, seven cardinal sins of online marketing.

But there are others, of course, some lesser and some equally as damning.

If you want to learn more sins of online marketing, contact us today!

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