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You’ve landed yourself a new career in digital marketing, and have probably been thrown in the deep end. If you’re lucky enough to get some level of autonomy, you’ll also get the higher chance of making mistakes to go along with it. Check out the list below so that you can prevent these digital marketing mistakes from turning into bad habits.
1. Overlapping audiences in ads
When handling multiple advertising campaigns, you will most probably come across overlapping ad sets. This means targeting the same audience across your campaigns. If this happens, your campaigns will probably be competing with themselves, so make sure to keep an eye out for this.
To make sure this doesn’t happen, you can either:
- Combine campaigns that target the same audience into one streamlined ad set.
- Laser-focus your audience targeting, by adding more criteria. Make use of interests and behaviors!
2. Spending too much in the beginning
This mistake is especially important to entrepreneurs. As tempting as it may seem to go big on your first promotional campaigns, try to take things slow. Don’t put out tons of high-budget ads right out the gate if you want to preserve ad spend. The trick is to start with your minimum budget, then slowly increase the budget for high-performing campaigns.
3. Sending emails to the wrong audience list
This can be a costly mistake that plagues even the best of digital marketers. Sometimes, the emailing platforms themselves can be confusing. So before you send out your emails, make sure you’ve properly selected your audience!
It wouldn’t be that bad if you accidentally sent a discount coupon to your entire list. But imagine sending a newsletter titled ‘The best gifts for your children’ to your under-21 group. That would be awkward.
One more mistake that branches out of this point is not segregating your lists in the first place. Always try to separate the lists whenever you have the opportunity. This will allow you to send highly-tailored messages, such as promoting specific products to either gender.
4. Poor campaign-naming conventions
If you haven’t devised your own naming conventions, now’s a good time to do so. It’s natural to name your campaigns based on what they are, especially when you’re first starting out. There is an art to naming campaigns, and it might seem troublesome at first, but you’ll discover its purpose when you start handling hundreds of campaigns.
After all, there are only so many campaigns you can name ‘Special Offer For April’ before it all becomes confusing. There is a learning curve to using proper naming conventions, but once you get a hang of it, it’ll be much easier to get all the info you need through one quick glance.
One example of a naming convention would be:
[CAMPAIGN PURPOSE] – [PRODUCT] – [MOBILE OR DESKTOP] – [DESCRIPTION] – [TARGET AUDIENCE] – [COUNTRY]If we filled that up, it would look something like this: [CONVERSION] – [FS-BOOTCAMP] – [MOBILE] – [SCHOOL-HOLIDAYS] – [21-29 Y.O] – [CODING INTERESTS] – [MY]
Looks much more organized than ‘School holiday ad campaign 2018’, doesn’t it?
This is just one example. There are various naming conventions you can get online, and you can tailor them to your needs. Choose the one that best suits you and stick to it!
5. Forgetting web responsiveness
This one will affect you more if you’re responsible for your company’s website. But don’t let that stop you from checking your pages for web responsiveness, even if you’re not a developer!
To do this, simply click Ctrl+Shift+C for Windows, or Cmd+Shift+C for Mac. Then, press Ctrl+Shift+M or Cmd+Shift+M to view the page in mobile mode. If your page looks wonky here, then you definitely need to look into web responsiveness.p.s.:
Our Front-End Web Development course can show you how to build websites from scratch, and also ensure that you create responsive pages as well!
6. Tracking the wrong metrics
There is just so much information available online, and the amount of data you can track is just mind boggling. It’s easy to get carried away looking at the time a user spends on your blog post, when it might not be the most meaningful metric. Only looking at vanity metrics will only skew your perception of your actual performance.
Important metrics vary from company to company, so make sure you’re clear on your company’s mission.
Next, find out what really matters when it comes to determining that performance. Are return customers important for you? Track that. Do you want to ensure a great browsing experience? Check your bounce rate. Of course, these are just surface metrics. You’ll track more and deeper as you ascertain what’s important.
7. Trying to be everywhere on social media
While there are tools that can help you schedule your posts across multiple platforms, it’s hard to stay active on all of them. If you find yourself constantly not being able to engage with your fans, you may be spreading yourself too thin.
Different platforms offer different advantages, and it’d seem wasteful not to tap into all of them. But not engaging frequently enough will make your account seem inactive, which in turn, will affect the impression you give to your customers.
To work around this, simply choose 2 or 3 main platforms that give you the highest number of your target audience. Also, choose platforms that give you the best engagement opportunities. This is because social media isn’t just used to announce your products, but to connect with your customers as well.
8. Forgetting to switch off campaigns
There’s no reason to keep low-performing ads running other than to drain your budget. This requires you to constantly check your campaigns to ensure that they’re headed in the direction you want. You have to make decisions based on data, and be relentless when it comes to culling any under-performing assets.
If you have other marketing tasks to prioritize, then consider scheduling fixed advertising periods. Another way to automate this is by setting ad conditions. So if a metric such as relevance score reaches the bottomline, you can have Facebook turn off the campaign automatically.
9. Spelling and grammar errors
Everybody makes mistakes, and it’s hard to be on top of every typo, especially if you’re the only copywriter in your company. The thing is, typos can be costly. According to Global Lingo’s 2013 survey, 59% would not use a company that had obvious spelling mistakes on its marketing material.
Besides, with the wealth of spelling and grammar checkers available online today, you have less of an excuse to produce work that’s laden with errors. So make sure to triple check all your copy, even if you think no one’s going to read them!
Getting over digital marketing mistakes
While it’s good to avoid errors, don’t fall into the trap of being paralyzed by fear. After all, making these digital marketing mistakes is the best way to learn. So keep these points in mind, but go out there and take over the world with your awesome marketing assets! If you’d like to gain this important tech skill, look no further.
