Marketing might seem simple at first glance. But in reality, there are many digital marketing mistakes to avoid if your campaign is to succeed in driving more leads for your business.
Last week, we broke down four big marketing mistakes to watch out for in planning your campaign. But even after the planning stage, there are still plenty of pitfalls that might hamper your marketing efforts after your campaign gets started. So without further ado, here are six digital marketing mistakes you’ll want to avoid during your next campaign.
1. Trying to do everything on the fly
While it might feel exciting to make changes to your marketing campaign based on instinct and intuition, in our experience, this isn’t often a recipe for success. The most successful marketing campaigns are typically plotted out from beginning to end.
Now of course, things change, and your plan doesn’t need to be 100% concrete. But there are many things during a marketing campaign that you need to plan for, whether it’s within a 5-day window, a month, or further out.
Even a simple layout or flowchart of the campaign, sales funnel, timelines, and other key components can be immensely helpful. Having that roadmap can make a world of difference when you need to make key decisions during your campaign. These tools help visualize the potential ripple effects of the changes made on the fly, and when debriefing after a campaign has concluded, they can help immensely in helping you retrace your steps.
2. Lack of A/B testing
In marketing, it can be tough to quantify what you’re getting for your money, especially when you’re looking at impressions and other things that don’t have a tangible value (compared to sales or purchases).
Data really is the be-all, end-all of quantifying the impact your efforts are having, and A/B testing can help to put numbers to your marketing plan before you truly start investing in it. At the end of the day, different things work better or worse for different audiences and platforms. Even variations in the length of your copy can have an impact—and while you shouldn’t spend your time testing every possible variation, you definitely shouldn’t skip the A/B testing phase, either.
3. Ignoring trends
If you want to be successful in a relatively short amount of time, you need to do some research to understand your market. This includes general research, as well as checking up on your competitors to see how they’ve been successful (or not!).
What this really comes down to is understanding your industry, your competition, and your niche. Whatever space you’re in, you need to know that space in order to be successful at marketing within it. Otherwise, you risk missing the mark with your advertising or content.
4. Not putting enough focus on conversion tracking
It may seem like a no-brainer, but the amount of businesses running campaigns without any kind of tracking can be frightening. To make decisions mid-campaign, they’re simply firing from the hip and hoping they’ve solved their issues. But without data, you lack much ability to identify where people are falling off along your pipeline.
All of this means that tracking is one of the first steps you should take before going live. As mentioned with A/B testing, data truly is king when it comes to making decisions. So if you aren’t putting yourself in the best position to collect data, you’re undercutting your marketing campaign, and you might not be able to turn it around if things go south.
5. Failing to adequately QA test
Another item that gets ignored distressingly often is QA testing. Before any part of your marketing campaign goes live, make sure your team has thoroughly reviewed and polished everything. Check spelling, design, and functionality. If there’s a link, make sure it works. If your content sends visitors to a contact form, make sure that form collects their information properly.
For example, imagine a customer who’s gone through your entire process and been added to your email list. Now imagine they get an email that says “Hi [First Name]” without the correct information. You’ve just lost that potential customer.
It’s true that you can edit social media and other pieces of content. But testing beforehand makes everything much less stressful in the moment—instead of leaving you scrambling to fix mistakes.
6. Not being prepared for conversions, leads, or traffic
So your campaign is going well, and you’re starting to see results. Maybe traffic is increasing to your website now. That’s great! But what’s not great is if your website isn’t prepared to handle more visitors—and crashes as a result.
This is one of the most important parts of executing your marketing campaign: ensuring that, if you succeed in your goal, your website can handle the additional traffic, or you’re ready to take more calls from interested customers.
Failing to adequately prepare for your own success is like fumbling the ball on the 1-yard line, airmailing a dunk, or missing first base after you hit a home run. Make sure you’re ready to follow through on that critical last step in the process. Because after all, if you’ve properly planned and executed your marketing campaign, it’s very likely to be a success!
Need help steering your marketing campaign?
Launching a marketing campaign is a lot like setting sail on a voyage. You need to carefully plan before you set out, and you also need to know how to direct your efforts to weather any storms or unexpected twists. If you’re looking to learn more about the biggest digital marketing mistakes to avoid, our team is happy to answer your questions!