5 Common Internet Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

If you’re not having the results you anticipated from your digital marketing strategy, any of the marketing mistakes listed below could be the reason. Web marketing strategies can be very productive when applied in the right way, but there is a reasonable percentage of error. Any of these common mistakes can harm your online marketing rather than improve the bottom line of your small business.

To verify that your marketing initiatives are supporting your business, and not impeding its success, here are five common problems that many businesses have with online marketing. I’ve also included a few suggestions that are likely to return your digital marketing strategies into being productive.

A Lack Of Website Optimization Prevents You From Leading In The Search Results

Solution: Implement website SEO to improve your Search Results ranking.

Market research indicates that being listed on the first page of Google’s search results is critical to selling products and/or services because 95 percent of all potential customers only read the first page of search results. In other words, if your website isn’t on the first page, potential customers don’t know that you exist.

Using search engine optimization (SEO for short) is the way to improve a website’s results. SEO involves adding keywords, links, and articles to your website along with a social media strategy. If you don’t know much about local SEO, there are SEO specialists who can assist you in optimizing your site for the search engines. They can help it become more visible with Google as well as other web search engines.

Your Website Isn’t Getting Good Results On Mobile Phones, Tablets And Other Devices

Solution: Create a responsive website that has a better viewing and a user interaction experience on a mobile device

You can lose customers if your website doesn’t provide a good experience for mobile users. This result isn’t good: lower website revenues that negatively impact your bottomline. The mobile user experience has become very important because 80% of users get on the Web via a smartphone, according to conclusions drawn by the Global Web Index. If so many people are using their smartphones to search the Web for products and services to buy, it only makes sense for a website operator to provide its users a superb mobile Web experience.

Users are less likely to go to your website if it’s hard to navigate or use with their mobile phone. According to Google’s Mobile Playbook, 40% of mobile customers who have had a poor mobile user experience decided to go to a different website to buy a product or service.

While improving the user experience of your website’s potential customers is important, it isn’t the only reason to have a very responsive design. The other reason is that if your website works well with a mobile device it is preferred by Google and other search engines. Therefore, a website that isn’t mobile friendly will not have the best organic search rankings.

Redesigning your under-performing website and making it responsive and mobile friendly can be a very important online marketing strategy for you. Navigation, type, and viewing regions are automatically adjusted on responsive websites, giving them a great experience on any device.

It is very important that you have your website coded correctly so it displays the required information in a mobile friendly design in order to prevent Google or other search engines from decreasing your rankings.

When you have redesigned your website with a responsive design, you will give your users an excellent experience that is not device-dependent. As a result, it will be unlikely that they search for competing websites to do business.

Utilizing Too Many Social Media Sites Simultaneously

Solution: To start, use only three to four social media channels

Of course you are eager for your business to be a success. So it can be tempting to be on every social media outlet that your potential customers use regularly.

One of the challenges of this approach is that there are indisputably hundreds of social media marketing sites operating on the World Wide Web. Attempting to engage users on numerous websites will probably not help you win more business. If you try, you will more than likely produce weak content or post articles irregularly due to a lack of time.

A better approach is to slow down your social media marketing plans and utilize only three or four websites that are known to be the most preferred with your users. Using this approach, you are sure to discover that your social marketing initiatives are more compelling when you make the time to publish engaging posts regularly.

Using A General-Purpose Email Marketing Plan

Solution: Divide your subscriber database and offer individualized deals

Your customers are not identical. So, it’s unlikely the same kind of email newsletter will create an across-the-board favorable response, right?

Your customers have specific needs and are at a different points in the sales cycle. Plus, they are seeking unique kinds of products and services. Therefore, it’s not sound marketing strategy to post a generic email to the entire list of subscribers. The fact is that a generic marketing email will not be appealing to everyone.

Dividing your list of subscribers can transform disappointing email marketing into highly productive Web marketing. Divide your subscribers into three or four sections based on their activities, market segments or other marketing stats.

Publish attractively targeted email newsletters with individualized discounts or deals constructed to attract each segment. Individualized deals will result in a better click-through rate. A MailChimp survey found over a 50% increase in the click-through rate with targeted lists than non-targeted lists.

You Are Unsure Which Marketing Strategy Is Obtaining The Best Results

Solution: Employ analytics to adjust your marketing strategies.

If you don’t know which of your marketing strategies are obtaining for you the best results, you may be spinning your wheels and throw away important time and resources that won’t help your business financially succeed.

Every action your users have with your web marketing approaches creates information that you can utilize to determine how well each particular strategy is benefiting your business.

Google has a few, no cost, website analytic tools that can assist you in data-mining this valuable information. You can refer to them to find out which posts and/or blogs drive the most click-throughs and obtain the greatest number of actionable sales leads. You can even use these tools to determine which strategies do not appeal to your customers.

Once you analyze the detailed information the analytics tool gives you on your users’ actions, you can tweak your web marketing strategies so they provide better results.

You can leverage this new understanding to improve your marketing strategies. You can eliminate strategies that are not successful so you can focus on the strategies that obtain the best results for you. In the end, you will bring about an improved ROI for your web marketing strategies.

Conclusion

When utilized properly, online marketing strategies can be extremely effective. If you focus on what appeals to your users while watching how your strategies perform, you will have executed a web marketing strategy that gets you better results than at any previous time.