Good marketing is a crucial element for every business’s survival and success. A well-planned marketing strategy can do wonders for your small business. Not only will it attract a considerable number of potential customers, but it will also give your business an immense opportunity for growth.
Online marketing is rapidly taking the lead among all other forms of marketing. While traditional marketing channels like TV commercials and billboard advertisements are still widely employed, their effect is no longer dominant in the digital era. With social media and e-commerce websites taking over the world by storm, marketers are making a paradigm shift towards digital marketing.
However, digital marketing is still an evolving concept. Hence, many businesses face issues when trying to market their product through an online platform. These marketing mistakes can create plenty of problems, and might even cost you your business. Therefore, identifying and avoiding them is essential. Below, we have pointed out a few online marketing mistakes small businesses often tend to make.
1. Not having a pre-planned strategy
Like any other business strategy, online marketing also needs a tremendous amount of planning. Without a well-thought-out marketing strategy, your marketing goals will lack structure and direction. You will be unable to reach your established objective, and your competitors might put you at a disadvantage.
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To develop a marketing strategy, start by identifying your audience, and set a long-term vision and goals for your business. Most importantly, decide the online platform(s) you want to use for marketing purposes. You can implore the different techniques used for market research to devise a conclusive strategy for your business.
On the other hand, hiring a digital marketing agency can make your job easier. You can get assistance from qualified professionals and build an efficient and effective strategy for your business.
2. No social media presence
In this day and age, where social media is the “king” of marketing channels, not having a social media presence can put your business at a considerable disadvantage.
A social media page can help popularize your business and attract more potential customers. Social media is also an excellent avenue for you to interact with your customers and build long-lasting relationships. You can improve your services and quality by getting their feedback. You can also get an insight into consumers’ consumption patterns and develop a marketing plan tailored to specific groups.
Social media handles like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram also allow you to run advertisements for your business. While everything else is free-of-cost, these advertisements are not. However, these costs are scalable depending on your objectives. They are a great way to attract traffic to your page and increase your followers.
3. Entirely depending on paid advertisements
While paid advertisements can be immensely beneficial for your business, you should avoid solely relying on them. One reason for this is that these advertisements may not necessarily yield any long-term benefits. Also, back-to-back paid advertisements tend to have diminishing returns and can burn a hole in your business wallet.
Consider investing your time, money, and energy in other long-term and effective strategies like inbound marketing. Inbound marketing includes social media, SEO, and email. Inbound marketing promises long-term benefits and improves ROI.
4. Neglecting your social media account
It’s one thing not to have social media presence at all (we talked about that above), and entirely another to have one and neglect it. And believe it or not, small business owners are more likely to make the second mistake.
Some common mistakes marketing teams make are inconsistency with posting and replying late to queries. If you don’t post regularly, you might start losing followers, eventually dipping your engagement and traffic figures. Delayed responses to queries and an inactive social media account reflect poorly on the business’s ability to address customer concerns and create a bad reputation.
5. Not using videos
Studies report that 85% of the audience prefers watching videos over engaging with text and image-based content. Facebook and YouTube saw a massive increase in video content last year. Fun, humorous, and engaging videos attract a lot of customers. Video content is more memorable than text. It can drive immense traffic and is slowly becoming the preferred medium of many marketers.
6. Not marketing your website
If your business is new, then remember to market your website well. If you don’t invest in marketing your website, you will fail to attract even the smallest amount of traffic, leading to a tremendous loss in ROI. Think about it, many people don’t know about you, and you do not even market your website. Then, how do you expect visitors to your site? It’s a no-brainer!
It’s a very competitive digital world that we are talking about here. There are millions of websites up on the web. The chances of a person reaching your website are little to none if you don’t market it properly, which brings us to the next mistake.
7. Not investing in SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your ratings on different search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. SEO makes it possible for customers to easily find your business and the products/services you offer while surfing the internet.
The problem here is that most business owners do not realize the full potential of SEO. They consider it to be useless and time-consuming. However, it is one of the most effective marketing tactics. If you can learn certain tricks of the trade like keyword research, keyword optimization, URL creation, you will realize the true potential that SEO carries. Yes, it is time-consuming, but the long-term results are worth the wait.
8. Spamming your customers
Being bombarded with an odd number of emails, texts, and messages is something none of us like. Customers hate spam! Spamming your customers can annoy them to the point that they might block you. The last thing you want is to lose your customers for good!
Try and make your emails and messages relevant. Irrelevant and unnecessary spam emails can worsen the case. The best way to go about it is to communicate with your customers and only send them as few emails as they wish to receive.
9. Marketing exclusively
Marketers often make the mistake of focusing on quantity over quality, i.e., they assume the higher the ad frequency, the higher the website’s traffic. However, it would be best to remember that your goal is to attract the right traffic and not all the traffic. Visitors who are genuinely interested in your business should be your primary focus. Others might waste your time and money, and will eventually leave. Define your target audience and focus on marketing to a niche rather than everyone.
Conclusion
Your marketing tactics will be of no use if you are not able to reach your goal. Small businesses often make the mistake of marketing their businesses without putting any thought into it first. Careful marketing is vital. It can make or break your business. Investing time, energy, and money in digital marketing is a valuable and valuable idea, but correctly investing those three resources is the key to success.
If you are a new business owner, make sure to surf through the above-given points to not make any marketing mistakes in the future.
