Digital marketing has the potential to generate enormous gains in growth and profit for businesses that know how to use it. For the average small business however, it can become a black hole of time and money, even when outsourced to a digital agency.
One of my clients spent more than $120,000 and countless hours over three years on digital marketing – and got no new business for her efforts. There are three common mistakes that will almost certainly leave you regretting your investment in digital, and they must be addressed before you can realise the benefits that are available.
1. Talking to too many people at once
When we are trying to include too many people in our online conversation, we can’t get specific enough about someone’s problem and how our product solves it better than anyone else in the market place. As a result no one gets sufficiently excited, and we don’t enjoy an optimal sales result.
Even when we know we need to have a clear target audience, and focus on a narrow niche, we still struggle to let go of the temptation to try and attract in one campaign ‘everyone’ who could use our product or service.
Our potential customers are busy people; they have lots of options for where they put their attention, and many other businesses are trying to attract them. If we are not addressing a very specific problem or burning issue with clear communication and imagery, and a unique and compelling offer that addresses a specific problem, they will keep moving.
2. Getting distracted by new digital tools
While some digital tools are perfect for your business, others will never be useful and every business and product has different needs. It’s a mistake to get distracted by the wiz bang of the technology and in doing so, overlook the importance of strategy, planning and understanding your customer and the customer journey.
With a strategic approach and a solid understanding of your customers’ needs and preferences for communication, only then can you select the correct digital tools to deliver the desired customer experience and the maximum number of sales. Thankfully there is no shortage of options.
3. Expecting Social Media to deliver sales
Many small businesses are misusing social media in their attempts to promote their business, resulting in a poor return on investment.
There is a great deal of interesting content available via social media that may be building goodwill for the businesses that submitted it, but the activity is not being converted into sales. Most content has not been created as part of a value process that moves qualified prospective customers through a buyer journey, building trust, qualifying the buyer, making an offer too good to pass up, and ultimately delivering the sale.
Depending on the customer and the product, there might also need to be a strong interaction with traditional and offline marketing activities in order to build that relationship. However, even if you’re working with a strictly online purchase, the marketer needs to have am effective strategy to move the potential new buyer from their social media platform to the checkout.
The good news is that the solution is not rocket science, and with a little expert guidance you can turn it around. If you are not strong in strategy and planning, ask for this service from your marketing vendor, as well as enquiring about their technical expertise. A 500% return on your investment is considered a good marketing result and you should keep looking for improvements until you reach that measure.
