Digital marketing is an important tool for small businesses and it can be tricky to get it right. Small businesses may not have the budget to hire an in-house digital marketer, so often the duties are assigned to someone without the right digital marketing experience.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at the five most common digital marketing mistakes small businesses make. And show you how to avoid them.
Prioritizing quantity over quality
Focusing on quantity is an easy trap to fall into. You end up putting out a lot of content, but rarely do you first ask if the content is relevant to your target audience, if it’s engaging, or even if it’s giving you the results you want.
Put in this situation, many companies are tempted to write blog posts simply with the intent of publishing their content on social media platforms. This is done for the sake of gaining attention by satisfying the immediate need for likes and shares. However, in reality, their content is not doing them any favors.
Good content can be hard to create in a fast-paced environment. Creating too much content too quickly means that you aren’t spending enough time on researching the content, creating it, and learning from the results of publishing it.
Poor website design
Every small business wants its website to look professional, but many of them do not know what makes a website good. A good website design should be fast, mobile-friendly, and a combination of a user-centered design with optimizations for search engines. Creating a well-designed website can take time.
In the end, it’s up to you whether you want to go through the effort of learning how to create or hire a web development company to help you build your site. Either way, make sure that your website is mobile-friendly and easy to use.
Not investing in SEO
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an effective way for small businesses to gain online visibility. SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website on search engines like Google. It can help your business rank higher when people are searching for concepts related to your business.
Even with the rise of social media, search engines remain the primary way people find new businesses online. Search engines are the most important source of traffic for small businesses and SEO is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic to your website.
Because SEO is so important, it’s essential to find someone who knows how to do it properly. Poor optimization can lead to penalties or your site being dropped entirely from search results.
Not measuring results
Many small businesses invest a lot of time and money into their digital marketing but never pay attention to the results. It’s crucial to take a step back and measure how your efforts are paying off.
The most common way marketers measure results is by tracking conversions. This means that you want to know whether or not people who visited your website from a particular traffic source took the action that you wanted them to take.
For example, if someone clicks on an ad for a free trial, did they sign up for it? Or if someone visits your store from Facebook, did they make a purchase?
With this data in hand, you can work to improve your digital marketing campaigns. You can tweak campaigns that aren’t working and double down on the ones that are yielding good results.
Focusing too much on social media
Social media is a great way to connect to your target audience, but too many small business owners rely on it as their primary marketing tactic.
There’s a lot of noise to cut through, and since you likely use social media in your day-to-day life, it seems easier than other methods of digital marketing. You already know how Facebook works, so might as well use it for your business, right?
The problem with going this route is that social media is business posts are increasingly reaching fewer folks. It’s no longer possible to simply make a post and expect most of your fans to see it–your average post on Facebook will only reach about 5% of your followers. If you want your posts seen by more people, you need to pay up and run ads.
Plus, for many types of businesses, social media doesn’t make sense. The last time you needed a plumber, you probably searched Google for a plumber in your city rather than searching for one on Facebook.
Final thoughts
The digital marketing mistakes that small businesses often make are poor website design, not investing in SEO, and focusing too much on social media. To avoid these common pitfalls when it comes to your business’s online presence, invest the time and energy into creating a well-designed site with good SEO practices. Don’t forget about measuring results so you can learn from what is working or what isn’t – this will help you improve your strategy for future campaigns.
The most important thing to remember when it comes to digital marketing is that you don’t have to do every single thing on your own. There are plenty of affordable tools and professionals that can help you get the results you want.