Digital marketing mistakes are easy to make. We all know that digital marketing moves fast, and because of that, there’s a tendency to always look towards the next best thing and focus less on the lessons of the past. But developing an awareness and understanding of past mistakes is one of the best ways to pave a path to future success.
When we look at how brands have run their digital marketing campaigns in the past, we’ve noticed many of the same issues coming up time and time again. Being aware of the most common digital marketing mistakes can help ensure your brand avoids them in the future, so with that in mind, here are some of the biggest missteps brands routinely make.
1 – Failing to set goals
Before you jump into executing your digital marketing campaigns, you need to establish what your objectives are and outline a set of measurable goals that support each objective. Without goals, you’ll never be able to measure your success or identify areas where your campaigns need additional support or require a shift in strategy. It will also be difficult to justify future digital marketing investment if you can’t demonstrate progress against a set of goals.
2 – Not paying attention to your analytics
When it comes to digital marketing, there’s no such thing as “set it and forget it”. Campaigns require constant maintenance and oversight, and that means checking in regularly to measure performance. That’s not to say you need to sweat every single day-to-day change in your website visitor metrics, but you should be paying attention to macro trends. It’s important to focus on the whole picture when it comes to campaign and channel performance. For example, the channel that provides the highest volume of traffic may provide the lowest quality of leads, so looking just at referring traffic won’t give you a holistic understanding of performance.
3 – Failing to test
Many of us leap to conclusions about why something is or isn’t performing without doing the proper legwork to find out for sure. Leaping to conclusions about what works and what doesn’t is a mistake that can have serious ramifications for the success of campaigns. Making testing a priority is the best way to ensure marketing spends are put to good use and campaigns are given the best chance to thrive.
4 – Jumping on every hot new trend
In digital marketing, there’s always a delicate balance between staying current and jumping on the bandwagon. Staying on top of the trends and changes in the industry is an absolute necessity if you want to be successful in digital marketing.
That said, one mistake many brands make is to assume that just because a certain platform or technology is trendy, they should automatically add it to their marketing mix. The truth is that it’s a bad idea to blindly follow the latest trends without first gaining an understanding of how implementing a new idea or technology will benefit your brand. Be aware of the latest news in digital marketing, but don’t jump on a trend before you get a sense of how it will impact your strategy.
5 – Targeting the wrong audience
You have to spend time getting to know the audience you’re speaking to. What are their pain points? What types of language appeals to them? What words do they use to describe what they’re looking for? Knowing the answers to these questions is key to designing campaigns that will appeal to the people you’re trying to reach.
Click here to view the full article via Forbes.com! — Article originally published on Forbes.com by Gabriel Shaoolian
