Before any feat, there is a right and wrong path to take. The same goes before you experience true digital marketing success. Worthwhile as it is, it doesn’t mean you should approach digital marketing mindlessly, churning tons of content and running simultaneous campaigns without much consideration.
Digital marketing is an investment — a highly lucrative one if you know what mistakes to evade in marketing.
Quick list of common digital marketing mistakes to avoid:
1. Lacking specific digital marketing goals
2. Not having an omnichannel digital marketing strategy
3. Overlooking the competition
4. Not leveraging blogs for lead generation strategies
5. Targeting only popular keywords
6. Ignoring search intent optimization in marketing
7. Not investing in paid advertising
8. Avoiding social media
9. Misusing call-to-action buttons on websites
10. Not embracing artificial intelligence and automation
11. Failing to outsource digital marketing solutions
Common Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid + Digital Marketing Tips
You don’t have to make the same mistakes twice until you get it right, so we added digital marketing tips on each point.
1. Lacking Specific Digital Marketing Goals
First up on our list of mistakes in marketing is not having clear objectives or goals behind your digital marketing strategy. As with anything, having a purpose is vital to keep you in the right direction. So, without digital marketing goals, your campaigns will be futile, having no focus. You won’t know if you’ve already achieved your desired results or need to switch gears.
Pro tip: Explore a purpose-driven digital marketing strategy to help you get started with goals.
Read: Is purpose marketing right for your business?
2. Not Having an Omnichannel Digital Marketing Strategy
Omnichannel marketing is also referred to as customer-centric marketing.
Many fail to embrace omnichannel marketing as one of the most crucial digital marketing best practices. As consumers use multiple channels in their customer journey, providing a seamless customer experience is essential if you don’t want to lose them before they reach the end of your sales funnel.
Pro tip: Have unified messaging with cohesive visuals throughout your online and offline channels.
Read: Why omnichannel marketing is the secret to a customer-centric strategy
3. Overlooking the Competition
Another marketing failure many businesses fall prey to is not conducting regular competitive analysis. With competitive analysis, you examine your competitors and how their products and services are performing compared to yours. You’ll discover rivals’ strengths and weaknesses, so the value of a competitive analysis comes with what you do with the data you gather.
Pro tip: Prioritize analyzing businesses the same size as yours and located in your locale.
4. Not Leveraging Blogs for Lead Generation Strategies
Despite being one of the top best practices for digital marketing, many businesses still don’t have a blog page today. Blogging, when done right, brings in not only site traffic but valuable leads. When the content you produce meets Google’s quality content standard for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, the search results pages are yours to dominate.
Pro tip: Offer exclusive, gated, high-caliber content to amplify your lead generation strategies.
Read: How to perform a content quality analysis and why it’s important
5. Targeting Only Popular Keywords
Popular keywords are often short and have a high search volume potential. But when you target only popular keywords or search terms in your web content, such as blogs, you end up with increased site traffic that you can’t convert. A marketing failure tied to this is keyword stuffing, which weakens your content, sinks your rankings, or even gets your website penalized.
Pro tip: Identify and target long-tail keywords highly relevant to your offerings.
Read: Long-tail keywords: What are they and how to find them
6. Ignoring Search Intent Optimization in Marketing
As we talk about content and keyword mistakes in marketing, let’s touch on search intent. User search intent, as the name implies, is the user’s purpose or for the query they input on search engines; it can be informational, navigational, transactional or commercial. When you specifically fulfill user intent in your content, you attract high-intent users or users ready to convert right then and there.
Pro tip: Explore different content types, such as ‘how-to’ or listicle blogs, to facilitate optimization in marketing.
Read: Understanding your audience search intent*
7. Not Investing in Paid Advertising
Search engine optimization (SEO) is worthwhile to future-proof your business with a steady flow of site traffic, but it’s a long game. Entrepreneurs and marketers who wait to eat its fruit can invest in paid advertising to gain their desired results fast. Optimizing for search and running paid ads at the same time are best practices for digital marketing.
Pro tip: Consult with a pay-per-click (PPC) specialist to see possible returns on investment.
8. Avoiding Social Media
Next on our list of mistakes in marketing is avoiding social media. While you can be selective on which platforms your business should be on, you should be at least on one or a couple of social channels to reach and engage your audience. If you have a blog, sharing your blogs on social media is one of the most effective digital marketing best practices to widen your reach.
Pro tip: Have your key business personnel, such as sales officers or recruiters, maintain a LinkedIn profile.
Read: What is content amplification and why it’s so important for your business
9. Misusing Call-to-Action Buttons on Websites
Call-to-action (CTA) buttons serve as doors to converting site visitors; you want it to be inviting and stand out from all the web elements. Many, however, overdo CTA buttons by having too many CTAs on their pages. Marketing failures pertaining to CTA buttons misusage can also be using weak language or prompts, unstrategic placement and lousy design.
Pro tip: Perform A/B tests for different versions of your website, focus on CTA button placements and see which performs best.
10. Not Embracing Artificial Intelligence and Automation
Artificial intelligence (AI) nowadays is almost synonymous with ChatGPT. But even before the rise of AI chatbots, AI and automation have long been accessible through tools for business owners and marketers. And this year, OpenAI launched GPT-4, spelling tremendous opportunity for those willing to embrace its content production capabilities.
Pro tip: Identify business processes you can automate, such as content management, email marketing and campaign scheduling.
Read: GPT-4’s impact on content creation*
11. Failing To Outsource Digital Marketing Solutions
Consider this analogy: when you’re ill, you go to the experts, a.k.a. doctors. When you need help in marketing, you go to the experts; in this case, they are your local digital marketing services provider. Understandably so, some business owners find it hard to partner with a third-party provider. The fact remains smart outsourcing allows you to skip the learning curve, driving the results you want faster.
Pro tip: Look for social proof, such as client reviews, to help you hire the right local digital marketing services agency.
Don’t Make the Same Mistakes Twice
Now that you know the top common digital marketing mistakes to avoid this year, let Thrive help you recover and entirely evade them.
Thrive is a team of digital marketing experts catering to brands of all sizes. We’re proud to offer a wide range of services, including web design and development, content writing, social media marketing, SEO and PPC. If you have any specific need or a crazy marketing idea, we’re all ears.
Call us at 866-908-4748 or send us a message for a free proposal.
