Avoid These Five Common Digital Marketing Mistakes | HuffPost

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There may be numerous reasons to explain why you may not be seeing an increase in leads, sales, or other targets on advertising spend. As an example, your ads are sending traffic to your site's homepage instead of to a landing page, designed specifically to convert visitors into leads or sales.

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Many businesses employ digital marketing strategies to attract new online visitors, leads and customers. Depending on the objectives and budget of the business, your company can leverage a large number of strategies such as pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), social media, content or email marketing solutions. However, making mistakes can be very costly, as it can deplete your marketing budget before achieving any results that contribute to the bottom line.

There may be numerous reasons to explain why you may not be seeing an increase in leads, sales, or other targets on advertising spend. As an example, your ads are sending traffic to your site's homepage instead of to a landing page, designed specifically to convert visitors into leads or sales.

The good news is that your business can start seeing results by identifying and correcting these five common digital marketing mistakes:

1.Not having clearly defined goals

Answer the key question - what do you want it to achieve? Specify whether your goals are to increase leads, sales, website traffic, engagement, or some other objective. Then create a plan to reach this goal that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART), as this will help provide direction to your campaigns. Take the time to understand your business' current growth, so you can set achievable goals and not set yourself up for failure. And sometimes, it takes experimenting before you find the right traction. For example, determining whether it's best to measure goals every week or every quarter, or deciding which strategy has the biggest impact on the bottom line.

2.Not creating relevant content

Social media expert and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk states, "Great marketing is all about telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling." Compelling content is about contextual storytelling. Potential customers want to read information that is relevant to their needs or problems. Provide solutions, include timely news and/or offer unique and original ideas. While there are no hard rules or formulas for curating content other than being interesting, make sure it relates to your business and is valuable enough to get noticed in a sea of information.

3.Not diversifying your marketing efforts

Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising are some of the most common digital marketing platforms used today. Sometimes using only a few platforms works for a business; however, it is also very risky to place all your marketing eggs in one basket. Each channel has different strengths, targeting features and audience types that will offer your business different opportunities and ways to reach customers. Pick channels that will work well together to increase your online presence, drive conversions and grow your business.

4.Not performing tests

Conducting experiments and tests are a great way to enable businesses to see how they can best impact their bottom lines. Will potential clients prefer ad A or ad B to drive leads? Do more prospects convert when offered free delivery or when offered free gift-wrapping? Businesses that best understand these 'client preferences' can mold better solutions than their competitors, which will maximize their sales, and profitability. Experiments and tests permit businesses to gain these types of insights.

A/B and multivariate testing are two such techniques for running experiments. A/B tests permit a business to compare and test only two versions (e.g. ad A vs ad B) at a time, where multivariate testing involves testing more than two options at the same time (e.g. ad A vs ad B vs ad C vs ad D...). The tradeoff in using multivariate testing is that it takes much longer to get definitive findings than when using A/B testing.

5.Not using landing pages

A landing page is specifically designed to get a site visitor to convert (into a download, lead or sale, generally). It does so by removing all non-essential information from the page, which may distract someone from converting, and painting a very clear path to direct page visitors to take the desired actions. Unfortunately, many businesses using paid search, email, and most other tools, direct traffic to their home pages, and not to product/service specific landing pages.

Take a moment to check your campaigns, and ensure that traffic from your paid marketing efforts is landing on a page that is simple to use, contains product/service content, and has a clear call to action.

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Mavis Mendonca Smith(01 of11)

An incident of a six-year-old raped at an Indian private school in Bengaluru last year shocked the country. In retaliation, Mavis Mendonca Smith who has lived in the city all her life, started Win Bangalore Back (on Facebook) with a few friends. The group aimed at bringing vital issues to the forefront, and ensure necessary action was being taken to keep the city and its residents safe particularly women. In just a few days, the group gained 20,000 members (it stands today at over 25,000 members). Smith along with other co-founders went on to organise a demonstration – Red Brigade – where 2000 people showed up to fight for women’s rights against violence. The group has established a strong relationship with Bengaluru’s police commissioner’s office, and works as a platform where women can (and do) report harassment incidents. (credit:Uday Shanker)

Masih Alinejad(02 of11)

An Iranian journalist, Masih Alinejad started the My Stealthy Freedom campaign in 2014, in an attempt to free Iranian women forcibly being made to wear a head covering, and instead leave the decision up to them. Alinejad, who grew up in Iran was coerced into wearing a hijab at the age of seven. She even revealed that a few years ago, she was almost attacked while reporting from the Parliament, because of a few spare strands of hair that escaped her cover. The New York-based journalist posted a photo of herself without her hijab, and asked other women to share their own “moments of stealthy freedom”. Hundreds of photos of women with uncovered hair poured in from Iran and across the world, Alinejad created a Facebook page dedicated to these women who had risked their lives and reputations. The page currently boasts 777,759 likes. Alinejad is currently reporting on Iranian politics and is an avid supporter on women’s rights and equality. This year, her efforts were inaugurated with The Women’s Rights Award at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. (credit:Amy Lombard)

Kalki Subramaniam(03 of11)

The first transgender woman to star in a major film in 2011, Tamilian actress, writer, filmmaker Kalki Subramaniam has established a strong transgender rights community with a global reach.In spite of being a common target for bullies in school, Subramaniam went on to earn two master's degrees, and encourages transgender students to stay in school through her organisation, Sahodari Foundation, that supports transgender education. She also employs Facebook to find employment opportunities for educated and qualified transgender people, and helps create workplaces where transgender employees feel safe and accepted. (credit:Deva)

Annie Clark and Andrea Pino(04 of11)

In 2009 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Annie Clark started a blind reporting box system for rape survivors after being assaulted. Three years later, Andrea Pino used the same system to report her own attack. The duo connected on Facebook, and realised that rape in universities were more common than perceived. After filing a federal complaint against the university, they used Facebook to provide support and resources to several other women in colleges, and eventually founded End Rape On Campus as an organised online forum that operates out of California. (credit:Annie Clark)

Gioia Gottini(05 of11)

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Her Voice(06 of11)

When a woman in Nairobi, Kenya was stripped in public for wearing a skirt on the grounds that she was indecently dressed, a group of women started a campaign called #MyDressMyChoice. Their work (a peaceful protest, and a petition) helped change the law to register stripping as an illegal sexual offence. Following this success, eight of the founders registered Her Voice, an organisation that dedicates its efforts to fighting gender-based violence and providing support to victims via Facebook.The NGO helps victims in taking legal action against assaulters as well as relocation. It also visits courtrooms to advocate for justice in cases of gender violence, and seeks to promote more positive attitudes toward women by bringing male role models to speak to boys in Nairobi schools. (credit:Michael Khateli)

Shoana Solomon(07 of11)

Last year, after observing how Ebola-induced panic was leading to a bias against Africans in the US, Shoana Solomon started a movement to fight the discrimination. A student teased the Liberian-American entrepreneur’s nine-year-old daughter on her first day of school (Solomon’s family had recently relocated from Monrovia, Liberia to Delaware), saying she was carrying a disease. Solomon realised that this was only a small example of judgments that others were facing. After viewing a Facebook post that talked about doing something to disperse such opinions, Solomon along with three Liberian women started a campaign #IAmALiberianNotAVirus. What started simply as a photo with a signboard quickly became one of the top 15 campaigns in 2014. Eventually a Facebook page was formed to share the campaign’s impact that not only helped disperse some of the stereotypes, but also brought a community together during a hard time. (credit:Shoana Solomon)

Samantha Cristoforetti(08 of11)

For those women looking to enter the largely male-dominated profession of astronauts, Samantha Cristoforetti’s Facebook page is well worth a visit: this Italian flight engineer – the first Italian woman in space, she orbits around the Earth every 92 minutes! And she shares her experiences on Facebook to motivate more women to join the field. In 2009, Cristoforetti was one of the six people chosen out of 8,000 applicants to join the European Space Agency as an astronaut, after which she spent five rigorous years training across the world to finally launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Cristoforetti, who is aboard the International Space Station till May, this year aims to make her experience more relatable to women across the world by telling them how ‘normal’ it can be. She is conducting science and technology research in weightlessness as part of her mission, which she calls 'Futura' to honour the pursuit of building a future in space for human beings. (credit:European Space Agency )

Mayumi Taniguchi(09 of11)

An associate professor at Osaka International University for international law on women’s rights and gender law, Mayumi Taniguchi is also the founder of All Japan Obachan Party, a group advocating for more women in Japanese government and other gender equality causes. Two years ago, Taniguchi wrote a Facebook post about ‘old men’ dominating Japanese politics, and received an incredible response. Frustrated by the lack of women in major political positions in the country, and spurred by the likes, she created a Facebook group for her unofficial political party, the All Japan Obachan Party. The word ‘obachan’ is used to refer to middle-aged or elderly women in a derogatory way, and Taniguchi decided to spin a twist to it to empower women’s voices in Japanese politics. Though her campaign was not taken seriously at the start, today it has developed into a full-fledged initiative for women to share their political opinions (something Japanese women are not generally encouraged to do) with close to 5,000 members. Local meetings are held to check women’s representation across districts and candidates are questioned on key women’s issues. Taniguchi will also participate in the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York, and plans to organise an international conference to be held next year with other members from her group. (credit:Koichi Miyase)

Carol Rossetti(10 of11)

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Sukki Singapora(11 of11)

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