Digital marketing is a $436 billion industry (Wordstream), which is also a lucrative investment for most brands. That’s why it’s essential to get it right and determine if you follow digital marketing best practices.
However, it’s so easy to fall back into bad habits that keep you from succeeding. It can all add up to a disappointing return on investment, from over-optimizing your content to not setting the right marketing goals or even taking on too much and getting overwhelmed.
But don’t worry! We’ll help get your digital marketing strategy back in shape by identifying the most common digital marketing mistakes to avoid. We’ll also share marketing tips to overcome them
Here’s an overview of all the digital marketing mistakes to avoid:
1. Failing To Develop an Online Marketing Strategy
2. Pumping Out Low-Quality, Generic Content
3. Not Owning a Website
4. Neglecting Feedback and Reviews
5. No Social Media Accounts
6. Overlooking SEO Opportunities
7. Ignoring Data and Analytics
8. Not Leveraging Automation Tools
9. Borderline Spammy Advertising Tactics
1. Failing To Develop an Online Marketing Strategy
According to a study, around 45% of companies do digital marketing without a plan. That’s obviously a mistake because it leaves you directionless. Without an online marketing strategy, you won’t be able to focus on meaningful objectives and measure your success.
Image from Smart Insights
What You Can Do
You can start by developing your goals and objectives. The SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) framework is the best way to set objectives for your business.
For instance, you might set a goal to increase your website traffic by 10% within the next three months.
Let’s break this goal down.
• Specific: Increase website traffic
• Measurable: 10%
• Attainable? Yes
• Realistic? Yes
• Time-bound: 3 months
Once you have set your objectives, you can then work on creating strategies to achieve them. You’ll then craft a digital marketing strategy involving key performance indicators (KPIs) worth tracking, which channels you should use and what content is best for your objectives.
2. Pumping Out Low-Quality, Generic Content
Content creation is a massive part of digital marketing. But like most brands, you might be tempted to scale fast to beat the competition and risk becoming them: same voice, same content and even the same visuals.
These content marketing mistakes shouldn’t plague your brand. According to Forrester, 77% of consumers are likelier to choose, recommend or pay more for a brand with a personalized experience.
Screenshot from Slideshare
What You Can Do
Your digital marketing strategy should pivot towards personalized experiences that respect a customer’s privacy. That means leveraging zero-party and first-party data, considered the most ethical ways to collect customer data.
You can then use your ethically sourced data to create high-quality, tailored digital marketing ideas. Of course, the level of quality is also determined by other aspects, such as:
• Visuals: Creating stunning visuals that capture the attention of your customers.
• Content: Crafting unique and informative content with a distinct voice.
• Segmentation: Breaking up your customer base into smaller, targeted groups of people based on their interests.
These best practices for digital marketing allow you to maximize your reach and engagement with your audience and provide valuable insights into customer behavior.
3. Not Owning a Website
In a study by Zippia, 81% of shoppers research a business. About 47% of those users look for a business website. Not owning a website is up there as one of the most common digital marketing mistakes to avoid.
If people can’t find your website, they’ll have difficulty getting to know your brand and seeing what you offer.
Websites also serve as lead-generation tools if used correctly.
You can build a blog, display contact forms and call to action. You’ll miss out on these lead-generation opportunities if you don’t own a website to house these tools.
What You Can Do
Start creating a custom website using platforms like WordPress and Squarespace. If you’re an eCommerce brand, you can use Shopify or WooCommerce. If unsure, look into the platform’s features and decide which works best for you.
Here are the three most important digital marketing best practices for web design and development:
• Ease of navigation: Ensure your website has a clear and concise menu navigation and search bar.
• Responsiveness: Design for mobile devices as well as desktops.
• Security: ensure that the website is secure with an SSL certificate.
This energy savings company is the perfect example of a great website:
Image from case study
You can clearly see the website’s different sections through their top-level and bottom menus, secured by an SSL certificate and viewed on desktop and mobile devices.
The colors used on their website also align with their corporate branding guidelines with social proof and clear calls to action.
4. Neglecting Feedback and Reviews
If you hyperfocus on content creation and reaching new audiences, it’s easy to forget customer reviews. Worse, some brands even delete and or ignore them!
These activities are easily some of the most crucial small business marketing mistakes, especially if you’re a brand heavily relying on word-of-mouth. According to a survey, 46% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations made by a friend or family.
Image from the Local Consumer Review Survey 2023
Ignoring or deleting reviews are mistakes in marketing brands committed to maintaining a sterling online reputation. Being unresponsive (to anything, in fact) hurts your digital marketing strategy in the long run. Businesses that don’t respond to reviews have a 15% higher customer churn.
Your audience would think that you’re not listening and that you don’t care whether they are satisfied with your brand.
What You Can Do
Leverage online reputation management tools, such as review monitoring, review response and even reputation repair tools. This way, you stay on top of your reputation and keep it intact despite getting negative feedback. Monitoring feedback also allows you to collect digital marketing ideas to improve your campaigns.
Here’s some valuable marketing advice: You can also use great customer reviews as social proof.
You can use customer reviews and testimonials on the following:
• Your website and blog
• Social media accounts
• Email marketing campaigns
• Advertising campaigns
Here’s how an online marketing agency uses reviews to provide social proof right from its homepage:
Screenshot from a full-service online marketing agency
People instantly see that the agency brings results for their clients while delivering exceptional customer service and experiences.
Here’s another case of effectively using social proof right from the website homepage of an online reputation management company:
Screenshot from online reputation management company
Its website features two of its best client reviews while having hyperlinked text that leads to more reviews. On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a clickable review widget following you as you scroll through their website, making it easier for customers to check your reviews if they feel like it.
Both of these websites use best practices for digital marketing when it comes to reviews and testimonials and effectively leveraging them for their digital marketing strategy.
5. No Social Media Accounts
In Sprout Social’s 2022 State of Social Media Report, 43% of consumers use social media to find new brands. Additionally, 63% of customers expect brands to use social media as a primary channel to reach out to them.
That means, without social media, you’re less likely to be discovered and fail communication expectations. In fact, social media platforms like Facebook (now Meta) and TikTok function as pseudo-search engines, and Instagram is home to many brands that use it as a digital storefront.
If you’re still not on social media, you’re sorely missing out on tremendous organic and paid traffic potential.
What You Can Do
Create a business profile on today’s largest social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And then, create organic posts and paid advertising campaigns to help people find you
For organic posts, you can share top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel content that generates leads and engagement, such as:
• Marketing advice
• How-tos
• Press releases
For paid ads, you can opt into various targeting options such as:
• Audience
• Location
• Device
A STEM education provider aimed to increase course purchases through social media marketing. Within two weeks, they set up lookalikes, conversion tracking and Adobe Experience Manager.
This resulted in a $19,000 purchase conversion value and a 150% increase in conversion rate. Here are other positive results that the company yielded just because of a better social media presence:
Image from case study
Social media is connected to all your other digital assets, like emails, websites and eCommerce stores, so it’s crucial to include it in your strategy.
6. Overlooking SEO Opportunities
If you’ve used your phone or computer more than once today, then it’s likely that you’ve used a search engine to look for something.
According to Statista, around 5.9 million Google Searches are conducted every minute. However, only 0.63% of users clicked something on the second page of search results. Imagine if you’re at the third and fourth page or even farther.
Image from Backlinko showing a steep drop in clicks for items beyond the top 10 results
If your website and content aren’t search engine-friendly, you risk missing out on your slice of the millions of searches happening every minute. While several small business marketing mistakes exist, a no SEO strategy sounds like a digital disaster for any brand.
What You Can Do
Search engine optimization (SEO) combines content optimization and web design strategies. The best way to optimize your website is to audit your website and your existing digital assets thoroughly.
• Is it fast enough?
• Are you using enough user-intent keywords?
• Is your content specific and relevant to the query?
• Are you using internal linking techniques?
Once you’ve identified any issues, you can then prioritize and implement corrective measures.
A construction company used SEO to increase brand awareness and generate more quality leads. To achieve these goals, they wrote high-quality content, optimized their technical SEO and ensured that their website was built with user experience in mind.
Here’s how it turned out:
Screenshot from case study
Implementing search-friendly best practices for digital marketing allows you to reach your target audience as they search for something, such as marketing tips, tutorials, your offerings and more.
Also, having an SEO strategy can help you generate digital marketing ideas for blogs, campaigns and social media posts. This way, you can create content your target audience will be interested in.
7. Ignoring Data and Analytics
Guesswork and assumptions are two of the worst mistakes in marketing. And in digital marketing, this is inexcusable. After all, your campaigns have measurable data and analytics you can rely on.
And if you notice, most of what you see throughout this blog post is reinforced by some kind of statistic. This data informs us what to do next and if we’re still on the right track.
What You Can Do
This list of the most common digital marketing mistakes to avoid can be remedied with data. You can implement data-driven strategies across your campaigns by using tools and techniques such as:
• A/B split testing
• Market research
• Heat maps
• Analytics dashboards
These tools help you gain a better understanding of the customer journey, your audience and ultimately, how to improve your marketing tactics.
8. Not Leveraging Automation Tools
According to Oracle, marketing automation reduces marketing overhead by as much as 12.2%. Since digital marketing is an activity conducted over several channels and platforms, it’s easy to commit mistakes in marketing and incur additional costs.
If you want to scale and succeed online, then automating tasks prevents you from committing content marketing mistakes.
What You Can Do
Some digital marketing best practices for automation include:
• Setting up drip campaigns
• Automating lead nurturing
• Scheduling blogs and social media posts
Take a look at this 3D image reel production company. As part of their digital marketing strategy, they used automated workflows to generate more revenue via email marketing. This helped them deliver over 100,000 emails, with over 55,000 getting opened.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of their analytics before and after email automation:
They also redesigned their emails to be more appealing, load faster and be mobile-friendly:
Images from case study
It’s crucial to remember that automation itself does not solve conversion woes. By leveraging great design and other digital marketing best practices, you can create delightful customer experiences that drive them closer to purchasing.
9. Borderline Spammy Advertising Tactics
The last marketing advice for brands is never to be too aggressive just to make a sale. Pushy sales tactics drive people away from you. After all, no one wants to be with a brand that just wants to make money off of you.
Here are some digital marketing mistakes to avoid:
Spamming emails to potential customers.
Overusing certain words such as “free,” “limited time offer,” or “buy now.” These kinds of phrases can lead to your content being flagged as spam.
Using too many pop-up windows that interfere with a customer’s browsing experience.
What You Can Do
You have to wear the customer’s shoes and think about how they would feel if you used certain tactics in your marketing efforts. This will help you avoid making digital marketing mistakes that damage your brand’s reputation.
Create content that adds value, solves issues and positions your brand as a trustworthy resource or tool for your audience. While conversions take long, a more customer-centric strategy is always the safest, ethical and most sustainable approach to sales.
Digital Marketing Done Right With Thrive
So, there you have it: everything you shouldn’t be doing in digital marketing and what to do instead. Getting the right blend of strategies in digital marketing is a tall order, so keep these marketing tips in mind if you want to get closer to perfection.
And if you need expert advice and services, you can’t go wrong with Thrive Internet Marketing Agency. We’re a full-service digital marketing team with multi-industry experience.
If you need an agency with the right digital marketing mix, contact us. We’ll help you set yourself up for success the Thrive way!
