Billions are spent on digital marketing each year. Many companies spend a lot of money on digital marketing because it works. Digital marketing has high returns when done right.
But as many businesses are reaping great returns from investment in digital marketing, many other companies/businesses are yielding little or no results in digital marketing. This is because these businesses repetitively make the same mistakes which negatively affect their traffic and lead generation conversion rates and return on investments.
In this article, you will get to know the common digital marketing mistakes many businesses make and how to avoid them.
What are the Top Ten Digital Marketing Mistakes that Most Businesses make?
These mistakes fall into two categories:
• Digital marketing strategy-related mistakes
• Digital marketing content-related mistakes

Digital Marketing Strategy Mistakes and How to avoid them

1. Not clearly defining your target audience.

The generalization of a customer base has led many businesses to fail. Most businesses, especially new businesses, provide more services to capture a wider market. The fact is that you can’t serve everybody.
Most businesses are niche-specific. Only a target audience or specific group of people brings in most of a business’s revenue. Generalization of your audience limits you from researching and learning more about your real audiences’ likes, preferences, pain points and behavioural patterns.
Knowing and understanding your actual customers is the basis of having an effective digital marketing strategy. So, clearly define your target audience and research them to understand them.
You can create different buyer personas for all the customer types you identify. Doing this will shape your marketing strategies and help you find the most appropriate channels and tactics to invest in for the highest returns.

To define your target audience:
Define buyer personas: Separate your market into different customer types. You can segment them by their location (demographically), expectations, pain points, and possible objections to your offering.
Employ the services of expert market researchers: Experts give you a more accurate understanding of your target market and its changing expectations and habits.
Engage with your prospects: Talk with your target audience. Direct engagement helps you learn about your market directly from the source. You can do this through surveys, interviews, polls, and comments on social media.

2. Not addressing your target audience’s pain points.

Your prospects will pay attention to your advert and buy your products if you are solving their pain points and problems.
So, if you focus on your product features instead of explaining to your target market how well your products or services can solve their problem or improve their lives, you will lose your customers. The success of your marketing strategy depends on how you clearly articulate a customer’s desired outcome.
To know your target audience’s pain points:
• Analyze your target audiences’ present situation. You can do this through customer surveys and interviews.
• Communicate directly with your sales and support teams and other stakeholders familiar with your customers’ requests.
• Get third-party industry research about your target audiences’ shared pain points.
Doing this will help you decide on your approach to addressing their pain points.

3. Not using SEO to optimize your content.

The only way to gain search engine visibility, rank high in google searches and attract high organic traffic is by optimizing your content for search engines. Otherwise, your adverts and content will never appear before millions of internet users.
To optimize your content, follow these SEO strategies:
Use the right keywords: For effective keyword use, use keywords you want to rank for and those that your target audiences use to search for what they want.
Create quality and relevant content: High-quality content is relevant, well researched, engaging, and long-form. It also incorporates visual elements such as photos, video, graphics, and other multimedia elements.
Optimize your image name: Your image files names, alt text, and description should contain the right keyword.
Backlinks: Quality backlinks improve your page and domain authority. Quality backlinks are external links from high-ranking pages and domains.
Have a mobile-friendly website: Most internet traffic is from mobile phones. So optimizing your site for all devices will increase its SEO, improving its visibility.
Optimize your URLs: Your URLs should be short and precise and have a primary keyword. They should also summarize what the page is about (the page’s topic). Doing this increases your SEO signal.

4. Investing and campaigning without a strategy.

Before you execute a campaign, always have a digital marketing strategy. A lack of a strategy or well-thought-out plan will lead to the failure of your campaigns. You will find that your efforts are incoherent; the campaign is difficult to manage, measure and scale.
To make a digital marketing strategy:
• Define your right audience
• Set SMART goals
• Define your marketing tools, tactics, and channels.
• Monitor your progress and readjust your strategy based on your performance

5. Spending recklessly on paid ads

Although the pay-per-click ads effectively increase your reach, leads, traffic, engagement, and conversions, they can be very costly if used without a good strategy.
So, before you use paid ads on Google and Facebook, ensure that you:
* Exhaustively research your target market/audience and divide them into different groups. For example, by location, age, income level, education level, etc.
* Run several tryout ad campaigns in different formats in different audience subgroups and see which will produce the best results. That is the one you will use.
* Define the budget for your paid ads and run the ads.
* Monitor the ads and adjust the PPC of each ad as you go to get the best results.

6. Expecting results overnight.

It will take some time for the fruits of your ads to manifest. So, don’t get demotivated when your digital marketing efforts don’t immediately yield fruit.
The results of your new SEO practices will take three or more months to show, and Facebook ads will take a week. Don’t make a hasty decision and pull out your ads prematurely. It takes time for people to notice your advert, for your advert to attract attention, engage and convert them. Stay consistent and try different tactics until you get the results you want.

7. Posting on social media without a plan.

Social media (marketing) is an effective way to build new relationships, expand reach, engage customers, and acquire traffic to your shop or website.
But people will only pay attention to ads that are relevant to them and that are timely.
To leverage social media adverts:
• Set your social media SMART goals.
• Get the right social platforms.
• Get a social media accounts manager.
• Post relevant content consistently.
• Work with influencers to market your brand or product.
• Grow your following
• Regularly engage with your followers.

8. Not using testimonials.

Your final step in converting your target audience is to give them proof that your product or service works (solves a problem).
Examples of social proof include reviews, testimonials, and case studies.
If you are a B2B, case studies are the most convincing content marketing tactic for lead generation. This is because case studies help your prospective leads picture the benefits of your product or services, and increases their confidence in your ability to provide results. Case studies also increase organic traffic, brand credibility, and lead conversion.
If you are a B2C, testimonials and positive reviews win prospective buyers over.

9. Blogging without offering value.

Blogging is a great asset in marketing if done right. Marketers who blog can generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. Also, among the marketers that blog, it is those marketers who prioritize blogging who are more likely to get better returns on their investments.
Prioritizing blogging means you write content to provide value, not follow trends. You create and publish high-quality, well-researched, well-explained, and relevant content to your audience or niche.
Blogging for the sake of it will have reverse effects on your marketing efforts. Poor quality content damages a brand’s credibility and reputation.

10. Mass production of poor quality content.

Many businesses put their efforts into producing a lot of content and pay less attention to delivering rich, evergreen, and relevant content. And what happens is that although they invest so much in content production, they don’t get results.
Your poor-quality content or ads will consistently rank lower than competing high-quality ads or content.
To get positive results, cut down on the volume and focus on the quality of your content. For example, instead of creating 5 blogs a week, create one great blog article. Use relevant, well-researched data, case studies, images, or visuals. Make it relevant, in-depth, and engaging. Doing this will raise its value and increase the possibility of people sharing it.
Digital marketing strategies that get you the best results
These digital marketing tactics will give you the best return on your investment:
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• SEO
• Pay Per Click
Conclusion
Ready to grow your business? You can avoid digital marketing mistakes and enjoy high ROI for your digital marketing efforts by hiring the services of an expert digital marketer.