Avoid These 5 Marketing Mistakes:

Top 5 Marketing Mistakes & How to Avoid Them:

A lot of what we talk about on this blog involves tips and tricks for your marketing strategy, and things you should be doing. But what about some marketing Don’ts? In this post, I wanted to take a look at 5 things you should avoid doing when it comes to your marketing strategy…

Marketing Mistakes #1 - Don’t Target a Broad Audience:

Knowing your customer is the key to success in marketing. But we’ll admit, it can feel a little daunting to cut out large portions of the population when you’re defining your customer profile.

Rather than thinking of it as “cutting out” potential customers, focus more on pouring greater investment into the right ones. Your conversion rate will thank you!

The “ideal customer” for your product or service might convert at, say, 20% - where the general public may only convert at 1%. Do you really want to spend all your time and money driving anyone and everyone to your site – or would you rather do some research and attract only the high converters? Particularly when you are paying per click, focusing on a narrow audience that converts well can be a huge cost saver for your business! So, don’t target a broad audience and throw spaghetti at the ceiling to see what sticks - but really take some time to find out who your ideal customer is.

Marketing Mistakes #2 -Don’t Ignore Your Data:

This relates to knowing your audience, but know that your audience may change over time as new competition creeps into the market, or as you add new products. Keeping track of your data will be the key to ensuring your success long-term.

The more data that you have, the easier it’ll be to produce actionable insights from it. Ever run an ad campaign to find that it just flops, even though you thought it was going to be a real winner? Well, maybe it was the wrong time of day to share the content, or perhaps the wrong platform. Without tracking this data your guess will be as good as mine.

There are so many tools out there to help you make sense of it – and of course, our very own Cloud Campaign reports can come in handy here!

Marketing Mistakes #3 -Don’t Re-Invent What’s Working:

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And we mean that when it comes to marketing! If you’ve established who your ideal customer is, and know how to reach them when they are most active, you’ve won yourself a marketing golden ticket. Experimenting with components of a perfect ad campaign can really throw off your conversion rate.

Better than re-inventing the wheel? Track your metrics to ensure that you are doing well over time. You may need to make seasonal adjustments, or account for changes in consumer behavior, but there should always be a reason behind why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you’re changing something for the mere sake of changing it, it may not be a great idea!

Marketing Mistakes #4 -Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket:

Going viral on a particular platform and struggling on another may make you want to put all your eggs in one basket. However, understanding how social media platforms connect to one another, and how each has a unique purpose may make you second guess jumping ship.

Before throwing in the towel and focusing on one particular platform, try auditing your content and ask yourself if the content is right for that particular platform. Video, for instance, may do much better on Instagram than it does on Facebook. And infographics may work best on Pinterest. If you’re putting all the same content out to all the different platforms, it may not be the platform’s fault that your success is not equal across the board…

Marketing Mistakes #5 -Don’t Ignore Your Current Customers:

Happy wife customer, happy life! Not only are your current customers your greatest champions when it comes to word-of-mouth approvals, but they are also a fantastic opportunity for you to upsell, upsell, UPSELL!

When you think about brands that you recommend to friends across the dinner table, you likely have had an extraordinarily positive experience with the brand. Sure, maybe the product was the best you’d ever received, but often there’s more to it than that. The brand, the customer service, the retail experience – something made it memorable. Ignoring your customers can mean a lost opportunity for wowing your biggest future advocates. Let them know you appreciate their business, and it’ll likely pay dividends later on!

What are some other Don’ts that you’ve encountered in your experience? Are there any that we should add to our list here? Leave a comment or reach out to us on social media – we’d love to hear about it!