13 Alarming Digital Marketing Mistakes Sabotaging Your Online Presence

It’s 2021. Whether you design funky jewelry or work as a plumber, having an online presence is critical for your business. It’s no secret that the online world is rapidly replacing traditional media. If you want your brand to get noticed by your target audience, you can’t afford to miss out on capitalizing on what the internet has to offer.

From seasoned marketers or newbies, everyone is susceptible to making mistakes when it comes to digital marketing. After all, the digital space evolves quickly. In this post, we’re summarizing some common digital marketing mistakes limiting your brand’s online presence. Let’s dive in.

Poorly-Designed Website

A website is one of the core pillars of your online presence. It’s likely one of the first things a prospective customer will go through before making a purchasing decision. So you can imagine the impact of a poorly designed website! Despite offering high-quality products, a bad website can undermine your entire brand. From the loading speed to content, every aspect of your website should be optimized to deliver an excellent user experience.

Overlooking Mobile Users

More and more people are browsing the internet on their mobile devices. In fact, mobile users are steadily surpassing desktop users. That’s why overlooking mobile users can prove to be a costly mistake. 

Your website will create a frustrating user experience if it’s not mobile responsive. Therefore, make sure your website works well on screens of all sizes. Visitors should not have to excessively zoom, scroll or pan to navigate your website on mobile devices.

Not Identifying Your Target Audience

Your digital marketing strategies will be all over the place without identifying the target audience. Take a look at your customer data and research to determine your target audience. Specifying your key demographic plays an important role in creating relevant content, choosing the right platforms and advertising channels.

Not Having a Blog

Don’t have a blog on your website? An on-site blog boosts traffic and helps establish credibility. You should create well-researched blogs that offer value to your customer. We also encourage interacting with your readers by allowing them to comment on posts. Blog content can also be repurposed for social media platforms.

Sticking to One Content Format

There is no doubt that written words are effective in grabbing customers’ attention. But what about other content formats? Don’t overlook the power of videos. Visual content on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and so on are attention-grabbing and help gain valuable publicity for your business. 

Underestimating Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool for capturing the attention of your target audience. Every brand needs to identify which social media platforms attract the most number of their target audience. You need to set pages on these platforms, create high-quality content, and post regularly.

Not Tracking & Measuring Strategies

Are you implementing digital marketing strategies and hope they will work? Instead of wondering, you can determine their effectiveness by measuring and tracking various strategies. Digital marketing strategies not delivering promised results should be promptly abandoned. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting time and money on something that’s simply not working.

Spamming

This goes without saying, but spamming doesn’t help anyone. And you may be spamming your subscribers unknowingly. Every email you send out should be relevant, interesting, and helpful to the recipients. The most reliable way to ensure this is by segmenting your email list based on various metrics such as age, gender, purchase history, etc.

Not Addressing Abandoned Shopping Carts

Picture this. Your digital marketing strategies were successful in enticing customers to click on your website, browse your products, and even add a few to their carts. But they end up abandoning carts instead of completing the purchase. This is a serious issue that should be immediately addressed.

From high shipping costs to a complicated checkout process, there are a number of reasons discouraging users from making a purchase. It’s imperative to identify and fix such issues. 

Ignoring SEO

Did you know that 75% of users stick to the first page of search results? Therefore you’re missing out on a number of customers if you’re ranking beyond the first page. 

The higher your website ranks on search engine result pages (SERPs), the better are the chances of prospects visiting your website. And securing a top rank won’t be possible without search engine optimization (SEO). 

Every marketer should undertake on-page, off-page, and technical SEO to improve web rankings. Local SEO is also necessary to make your brand visible in local search results.

Dismissing Email Marketing

With so many platforms and tactics frequently popping up, you may think that email marketing is no longer relevant. But that’s not true! Email marketing is a reliable way to keep your brand fresh in customers’ minds and nurture long-lasting relationships. 

We suggest adding a sign-up sheet on your website to grow your emailing list. You can also include a sign-up link on your social media pages. It’s important to start sending out emails as soon as possible instead of waiting until you hit a certain number of subscribers. Segmenting your target audience is another crucial factor to ensure you’re sharing relevant and useful content.

Not Involving Professionals

It’s not that difficult to get started with digital marketing. But certain areas are best left to professionals. Moreover, digital marketing can be quite demanding and take up too much of your time. Whether you lack the expertise or time, your online presence would be better off in the hands of a digital marketing specialist.

Neglecting Customer Retention

Just attracting customers is not enough. Your digital marketing efforts should also be focused on customer retention. In addition to acquiring customers, you need to invest in finding ways to keep existing customers happy and engaged. It’s cheaper to retain customers than attract and convert new ones.

The Bottom Line

You may be making some or many of the aforementioned errors, but don’t let that discourage you. The good news is that these mistakes are not difficult to rectify. If a particular digital marketing strategy is not showing promised results, it would be best to adjust or abandon it.