7 Mistakes To Avoid When Creating Digital Campaigns
Digital Marketing gets more complex every year. There are so many options - text ads, social media, SEO, display ads, programmatic campaigns, etc. Businesses are spending more on digital campaigns to remain competitive and maintain brand awareness. In a crowded digital landscape, being efficient with messaging, targeting and spend is critical. The following is a list of common mistakes in creating digital campaigns. Avoidance of these common errors will save time, money and help you to build a strong online brand for your business.
1. Mobile Is No Big Deal
It has been a trend to minimize mobile site performance and advertising for many businesses. I often hear that “mobile traffic is low for my business”. I have yet to see a client that has not seen additional mobile traffic from an improvement of mobile website performance. Mobile search use is increasing quickly.
2. Cutting Edge Is Better
Cutting Edge Is Better. Digital Marketers often feel that if a new platform presents itself, it must be utilized to keep up with the competition and be cutting edge. I advise most clients to be a bit behind the curve on new platforms to evaluate performance and market results. The exception would be a platform that would reach a segment of the target market that is not currently being served by existing campaigns or if an existing campaign is fizzling out and needs a viable replacement.
3. No Targeting Common Sense
No Targeting Common Sense. Keyword Research has become sophisticated enough to show traffic, competition, and effectiveness for keywords. What often is lacking is the common marketing sense of pursuing keywords that will attract the types of customers that you want to your website. Another common mistake is to neglect to emphasize the most profitable, scalable, or competitive products that your business offers. Do not be afraid to plan to find the customers you want most for the products you most want to sell.
4. Brand Consistency - Whatever
It is crowded out there now. There are so many sources of information available to your customer base that if you do not have a recognizable brand that is reflected consistently across all of your advertising campaigns, you will not be able to capture that recognition that you seek in your target audience.
5. Email Is Obsolete
Email is still a strong sales tool for most products. Use it wisely, and it is still very relevant in your marketing mix. Be careful of frequency, and do not be afraid to use an email program that helps you to be more frequent with email users who wish to engage with you more frequently, while saving the remainder of your email list for BIG announcements like significant sales, new products, new locations, etc.
6. SEO Does Not Matter Anymore
SEO Does Not Matter Anymore. Yes, search placement is still valuable, especially for local businesses serving a defined local market. For those seeking a national or regional digital presence, emphasize your key products and benefits. An SEO strategy will be diluted by chasing keywords that are both competitive and ambiguous. An example is a regional SEO client who specializes in renting construction storage containers to contractors. The keyword stream “construction container rental” is key to their business, but the keyword “storage container” is more competitive and does not deliver relevant clients to their website, despite the fact that the search numbers are much higher. Our campaign focuses on being in the top 3 results for relevant keywords that bring target clients to the website.
7. Metrics, Any Old Metrics
Metrics, Any Old Metrics. If you have researched your keywords and correctly targeted your digital campaign, you know what you wish your website visitors to do. Tracking the REAL results of your campaigns can involve using call tracking numbers as well as website analytics to better understand the volume and quality of interactions that come as a result of your digital marketing efforts. I have a client that originally set their site analytics to track non-bounce, time spent on site above 1 minute 30 seconds instead of pricing inquiries on the site. Once we made the change to attract clients who were interested enough to seek a price quote, we were able to focus on platforms and keywords that produced the desired results: namely, new business opportunities.
Conclusion:
The biggest big-picture mistake for Digital Marketers is to keep doing the same thing without constantly seeking new opportunities, new approaches, new platforms and new messaging. The only thing that is consistent in successful Digital Marketing is change. The online landscape is constantly morphing, and not using tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs.com to evaluate the online landscape and your place in it is the single largest mistake that you can make. Eric Van Cleave is CEO and Digital Marketing Director for tiv branding, A Santa Rosa, California Branding Agency and Digital Marketing Firm.
Eric Van Cleave is the Co-CEO and Digital Marketing Director for TIV Branding
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TIV Branding is a boutique branding firm in Sonoma County, California. We specialize in building brands by using traditional, social and digital channels in unison. If you would like to discuss a project or find out more about how we do what we do, please email us at info@TIVbranding.com.