We all make mistakes and if you happen to be a beginner, you may need to stand above all the mistakes to achieve the goals you desire in the first place. However, by looking at the mistakes of other marketers you eliminate such common errors to a great extent.
Here are the top 8 internet marketing mistakes that you are making right now and how to fix them efficiently.
1. Not Having your Target Audience
I’m sure you have heard everywhere that targeting your audience is the key to getting the right customers or readers on your blog. But how many of us actually spend the time and energy to actually study your “ideal” audience and target them?
In fact, many business leaders, especially the ones who operate on a smaller scale, believe that expanding your horizons and having a net wide variety of markets means reaching more customers. If this is you, allow me to explain how wrong you are.
The thing with marketing is, among the hundreds of people you reach out to, only half of them would respond and a handful of them might end up buying a few products or services.
This means going for a net wide audience will lose your chances of creating personalized offers that are specifically meant to target a few of those “handful” people who are actually interested in your business.
This approach also helps you get a better understanding of your audience and find out which method is working best for you. Experienced marketers recommend you give characters to a few customer groups and strive to satisfy people of those particular personalities.
2. Not Offering Promotions or Giveaways
The key to getting people to listen to you is to give them something in return. Yup, that’s the harsh truth. Among the thousands of flashing titles and services, you need to offer something to your audience to have them only listen to you, let alone purchase.
Here, offering frequent discounts and giveaways may not be a long-term solution to getting more sales but it can initially grab the attention of your potential audience and increase traffic in your store or blog.
Offering discounts doesn’t mean you will never be able to list items at full price, but it actually means that you managed to catch the attention of a customer, gained their email address, and opened the opportunity to get them back to buy another item at full price.
With every purchase, you can also offer rewards and coupons with certain spending thresholds. Reward your customers.
3. Setting up Unrealistic Goals with SEO
As a general rule of thumb, what SEO can do for your website, no other paid ads will ever be able to do that regardless of what you spend. However, SEO isn’t a quick fix for all your website problems. Sure, it takes care of exposure, but it takes a considerable amount of time, anywhere from one to two years to show prominent results in your ranking.
Now, what does SEO include, I hear you ask?
SEO helps to make your website/blog stand out from the two billion posts that get published each day. You can do this by optimizing:
- Keywords
- Meta description
- Titles
- ALT Texts
- On-Page SEO
- Quality, plagiarism-free content
- Structured content
Here, SEO, better customer/reader experience, and other Internet marketing techniques can go hand in hand to speed up the process of getting the desired ranking.
4. Using Clickbait
Clickbaits are like a mousetrap. They are one of the most common reasons why many blogs or web stores fail today. It not just ruins your brand’s reputation but makes it difficult for the customer to believe someone else too.
Clickbait is content that is presented with spined or exaggerated words to deliver the whole idea without providing the promised information. For example, a YouTube thumbnail says “7 Hidden Truths about Marketing that No One Knows,” while the video talks about everything you can read off the first few searches on Google.
Sure, with this you can lure your audience into watching the video or reading the article but it won’t leave them satisfied. They will never return and there goes your chance of making a valuable regular customer or reader.
5. Working with Outdated Skills
The digital world is always evolving; if you fail to keep up with it, the world nudges you off the field. Therefore, keep yourself informed of the latest trends and information that can boost up your knowledge and help give a competitive edge to your brand. To do this, you can count on online courses that you can avail yourself of for as low as $9.99 on Udemy, Skillshare, and whatnot.
6. Believing What Others are Saying
Market research and doing your independent study on Internet Marketing can surely be a big help to help you find out what’s out there and how your competitors managed to be where they are right now. However, while they work best for them, they may not be the right choice for you.
The internet is packed with millions of tools that can help you do the same thing. Take, for example, SMS marketing. It can be a great way to market e-commerce products but can absolutely be a waste of time for people in the services industry. Where some people swear by Facebook ads, many people believe Google Adwords does a better job at showing actual results.
Therefore, try not to spend a bunch while you are trying out different marketing methods. Once you have found the one, it’s time you strategically pan ways of improvement and expand your budget accordingly.
7. Posting On Social Media Without A Strategy
Whether it is your organic efforts or ads, poorly managed social media accounts will get destroyed in a matter of hours. Social Media is one of the best ways you can boost engagement and have unprecedented sales coming through in no time.
Here, consistency and timing play a vital role in determining how much engagement and traffic you get with each post.
Other than that, you also need to find out which platform works best for the goal that you are aiming for. For instance, if you are looking to build better industrial relationships, building a solid profile on LinkedIn can be your best. Blog? Pinterest is your way to go. Increase sales? Facebook and Instagram masters at enticing people into making impulsive purchases.
So figure out your goal and build yourself from there.
8. Not Commenting on Blogs
If you didn’t know this already, commenting could greatly impact your ranking on Search engines. If done properly, it has the potential to increase your SEO score and build better relationships with your readers. Every time you get a comment on your blog, make sure to reply in a professional and friendly manner to generate two-way interactive communication and give a good impression of your brand.
However, make sure to avoid common commenting mistakes like using the wrong spelling of their names, uptight responses, and using fake emails. This way you ensure you don’t make repeated mistakes and start with a prepared mind.
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