How Not To Do Digital Marketing

When done correctly, digital marketing can help boost sales, increase your customer base, and deliver a high ROI. In spite of its many benefits, businesses can still get it wrong when it comes to digital marketing. Here are a few actions to avoid.

• Not Identifying Your Target Audience
  The family that’s purchased a Kia probably isn’t going to buy a Porsche as its next vehicle, and an octogenarian might not be looking to film footage for the next GoPro ad. Companies want to ensure that their marketing is reaching those that are likely to buy their products and services, and determining a target audience is an effective way to do so. Using demographic factors such as age, location and gender, or psychological factors such as values and behavior, you can start to define you target audience and more effectively invest your time and money into marketing toward that audience.
• Not Having a Strategy
  In order to be successful in any large project, you need to plan and strategize before you start delving into tactics. A party planner doesn’t want to send out invitations before a venue has been established, and a student preparing for a test doesn’t want to review English Literature if the test is on Calculus. Digital marketing is no different. In addition to determining how it defines success, your company needs to decide how it’s going to achieve that success. This “how” is your digital marketing strategy: a thoughtful plan of action that you’ll deploy in order to reach your objectives.
• Using Every Available Social Media Platform
  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and YouTube are just some of the existing social platforms that are out there, and each one of these platforms has its own distinct advantages, challenges, features, and learning curves. Before you try and manage every social media platform you come across—which will probably produce subpar results—think about which platforms will best reach your target audience and give you more bang for your buck. A company that manufactures yarn probably won’t get much traction on Vine, but is likely to reach a lot of interested audience members on Pinterest. Specifying strategic social media platforms for your company will also ensure that each of those platforms is continually up-to-date, which helps maintain brand consistency.
• Not Listening or Engaging with Your Audience
  One great aspect of digital media is that it allows companies and customers to engage in conversation. However, many firms still use digital media to broadcast one-sided messages and don’t engage with their audience. Using the right tools to listen and engage with your audience will allow you to learn where their interests lie and what their needs are, which will help you more effectively market to that audience.

Even if you have made the mistakes listed above in the past, it’s not too late to correct them and overcome your digital marketing woes. And when done well and without these missteps, digital marketing can be a huge asset for your company.