Over the past decade digital marketing has moved on at a rapid pace, and 2018 was no exception. However, many firms fail to keep pace with these trends and end up making common marketing mistakes.
Analysing your strategy and highlighting these mistakes will help to ensure you get 2019 off to a solid footing, by crafting a plan to rectify them or make sure you avoid them altogether.
Top Marketing Mistakes from 2018
These are some of the most common marketing mistakes that we worked with our clients to fix through the course of 2018
1. Not publishing content regularly – It is easy enough to include a blog page on your site but nothing looks worse than a blog that is clearly neglected, with no recent content.
2. Leaving social media to your intern – Some businesses are still not taking social media seriously and leave it as a side project for someone to pick up. All too often this leads to embarrassing mistakes.
3. Failing to track your marketing impact – Without looking at your statistics it is virtually impossible to figure out whether your marketing is having the desired effect. You need to collect data and analyse regularly to make sure you’re getting the ROI you need.
4. Looking at marketing in isolation – Marketing isn’t something that should happen in a silo, you should look at a holistic business development strategy to drive your business forward.
5. Using old SEO tactics – Search engine optimisation is now well known but don’t be fooled into thinking you can trick the search engines anymore with old keyword stuffing tactics or packing posts with irrelevant links. As search engines get smarter they increasingly favour high quality, naturally written content.
6. Failing to identify your target audience – Don’t make assumptions about your audience, make sure you get out and talk to customers regularly and build customer profiles that will help you understand exactly who you are marketing to.
7. Ignoring new platforms and techniques – What worked last year won’t necessarily work this year, you need to keep an eye out for whether your audience is using new social media platforms, and shift your approach appropriately.
8. Not getting up to speed on GDPR – GDPR regulation came into effect in 2018, and harshly punishes companies that misuse customer data. If you haven’t already done so, ensuring GDPR compliance should be one of the first things you look at this year.
9. Not updating your website – Many companies assume that simply having a website is good enough, but to ensure that you’re making a great impression on your clients you need to periodically update the site to take advantage of the latest technologies and styles.
10. Overlooking personalisation – Personalisation was a big trend for 2018, using data to give your customers more targeted marketing messages. This is something you could start to factor into your plans for 2019, or risk being left behind by the competition.
With digital marketing evolving so quickly, it is little wonder that businesses continue to make these marketing mistakes. In 2019, make it your resolution to get ahead of the pack, by partnering with expert digital marketers like AsOne who can help craft a marketing strategy that will have maximum impact.
For information on how to get started, don’t hesitate to get in touch and speak to one of the team.
