With new beginnings on the horizon, we might have come across new year resolutions and promises doing the rounds. While the world is adapting to “leaving the old and embracing the new” attitude, it is that time of the year in a marketer’s life where a lot of content around “upcoming trends” circulates.
One can’t help the situation as the marketing world is a transient one, and trends change to keep up with the dynamic nature of this world. Strategies that worked the best and creative posts and designs that performed better may have become outdated. Following such outdated tactics will not only affect your brand’s performance, but it will also risk the credibility of your digital marketing agency.
To prevent such mishaps from happening, we are here to help you out. However, instead of bombarding you with upcoming marketing trends, we will warn you of bad digital marketing tactics and habits.
1. FAILING TO UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS
The cumulation of your entire marketing efforts is to take your product/service to your target customers at the right time through the right medium.
Success in marketing means brand recognition and customer satisfaction.
Your customers determine the longevity of your brand in the market. Hence knowing your customers alone will not be enough. You have to go a step further to understand their needs and expectations. Failing to understand your customers will result in
- Damaging your reputation
- Reduction in profit
- Loss of good work-force
- Poor performance in Lead Generation
What to do instead?
At this age, thanks to the proliferation of gadgets, customers know more, and they expect more. Hence to get a better voice from your customers, you should invest in enhancing the customer experience your brand provides. Good customer experience fosters better customer loyalty.
STEPS TO ENSURE BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Here are some steps you can take to ensure a better customer experience:
- Feedback from your customers has a treasure trove of marketing insights. They have the right map that can help you navigate all your customer-centric issues. Ensure that your feedback channels are active. Strategize your future marketing efforts based on insights derived from your customer feedback.
- Never ignore customer communication. Whether it is through social media, Google reviews, or personal mail, ensure that you respond to your customers. Invest in ORM to ensure that you do not ignore your customer’s reviews (including negative reviews). Never forget that you have to pay a huge price for an ignored customer.
- Personalize your Customer Communication.When customers approach your brand, it is their way of telling you that in spite of numerous brands available in the market, they are choosing you. Hence it becomes your responsibility to reflect the same level of commitment towards your customers. You can make your customers feel special about their choice by curating personalized content. Personalized content has the added advantage of creating deeper connections by adding sentimental value to the content you share.
- Invest in smart customer engagement tactics:Engaging with customers in real-time is no longer a hassle thanks to smart social media tools like messenger, drift, etc. These tools not only provide you a medium of communication, but they also act as a means for collecting critical customer insights like purchase patterns, purchase feedback, etc. Investing in these tools will keep you a step ahead with your customers.
2. NOT INVESTING IN THE RIGHT MARKETING MIXTURE
Your brand might already have a collection of marketing strategies in place. You might/might not have selected your marketing mix based on ongoing trends, cost, popularity, skills available, etc.
But is that the right marketing mix for your business?
Does your marketing mix showcase your products/services under the spotlight it deserves? If not, then you are lagging critically in your overall marketing approach.
The right marketing mix not only promotes your product, but it also enhances your brand image and identity. The importance of the right marketing mix can never be overstated.
- The right marketing mix determines the success of your marketing efforts as well as your business goals.
- The right marketing mix determines which marketing strategy works for your organization.
- The right marketing mix has a direct impact on your brand positioning, audience targeting, and segmentation decisions.
Though it takes intense research to propose the marketing mix that aligns with your product, service, and business, not investing in the above step will cost you more than lousy ROI.
What to do instead?
Marketing mix differs from one business to the other as it depends on your products/service, customers, business goals, and brand image. While creating your marketing mix, ensure that the 5Ps of your business are covered- Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People.
3. NOT USING MOBILE APP
Today the entire world is just a touch away due to the rising influence of mobile devices. Customers prefer mobile devices over desktops. Since the year 2000, the number of mobile users have quintupled, almost 70% of the world population now uses mobile phones.
As a brand, it becomes your duty to connect with your customers through the medium they prefer. Even Google ranks your site better when you have a mobile presence.
In such a scenario, if you are not leveraging your business’s mobile application for your brand, you would be losing a big chunk of your customer base.
It’s a common misconception that a brand needs mobile application based on
- It’s popularity
- Brand image
- Product/Service’s feasibility
- Scope of its business
However, in reality, creating a mobile app for your brand is not a choice but a necessity.
Your mobile app serves nearly every aspect of your business strategy. A brand that does not leverage mobile app losses opportunities like
- Increasing your brand’s visibility
- Enhancing customer loyalty
- Improving brand recognition
- Increasing your profits
- Delivering better customer service.
4. FOCUSING ON SOCIAL PERFORMANCE RATHER THAN LEAD GENERATION
At this internet age, a brand’s performance in social media is validated through the number of likes and followers it has. But how many of these like and followers are your leads in your sales funnel?
The sad reality is not even one-fourth of your social followers are your leads or prospects. In such a case, is it profitable for your brand to focus only on your social performance?
Any marketer would love good figures on Advertising impressions, the number of retweets, twitter followers, website traffic, likes, comments, shares, engagement rates, subscribes, and page views.
Marketers get trapped in the measurability of their marketing efforts through the figures mentioned above. But how good would a marketing effort be, when their Facebook posts perform better but fail to generate leads? The number of retweets can never measure your business growth.
The harsh reality is: the brand that concentrates only on social numbers will never achieve business growth.
What to do instead?
Social media is a crucial way to reach your customers. However, instead of focusing on more likes, concentrate on the quality of the content you share. Through your social media posts ensure that
- You build a memorable and engaging brand across your social media platforms
- Invest in quality content that is informative, creative, and entertaining.
- Develop a social media plan that reflects your brand voice and message and aligns with your business goals.
- Enhance your sales funnel through posts that convert your followers into leads.
- Execute promotional campaigns for your products that foster lead generation.
- Reach your target audience through social content syndication platforms like Medium, Quora, Scoop it, etc. for better brand recognition.
5. BEING KEYWORD FRIENDLY RATHER THAN GOOGLE FRIENDLY
Every marketer wishes to be in the good graces of Google. In vain pursuit of such a goal, they end up creating sites that are keyword-friendly, hoping that Google will rank their website better.
Google now focuses on the quality of your content over the quantity of the keywords used. Thanks to numerous updates, Google now searches for parameters like:
- How informative is your site?
- How user-friendly is your site?
- The quality of the media files used
- The reviews your site has
- The markup language used in the site
- Does your website have any mobile apps listed?
… to rank your site better.
If your website doesn’t perform better in any of the parameters mentioned above, you can forget the “most sought after position” in the Google search results. Following the old SEO tactics will no longer work.
When it comes to SEO friendly site, you need to ensure that your website satisfies the following goals:
- Your website should clearly explain to Google crawlers and your visitors what your brand or business is about
- Your website should facilitate smart and intuitive navigation. Efficient site structure is a critical aspect of SEO
- Your website should provide rich and social proof content that answers the essential questions of your visitors.
- Keep your site updated with the latest Google updates.
Conclusion
Strong brands never have an easy journey. They fall, they learn, and they create history. To be the next happening brand in the market that creates an impact, you should experiment with new strategies and trends to find out what works for your brand.
However, sometimes prevention is better than cure. Preventing the above-mentioned bad digital marketing tactics and habits can be the catalyst that could take your marketing efforts to the success it deserves.