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When done properly, your marketing strategy connects your business to the right customer at the right time. Instead of spending time worrying about whether or not your ads are being shown to the right people, you’ll be optimizing performance and reaping the rewards of your well-researched plan. Oh, how sweet it can be!
Conversely, if you don’t put the time and effort into building a marketing plan, you’ll be flushing money down the toilet. At our professional marketing agency, we constantly see businesses making the same mistakes, even the simple stuff. That’s why we’ve put together five of the most common marketing mistakes and how to fix them, with the hope that you’ll take these tips and incorporate them into your current strategy.
Looking for additional marketing services? Need some expert help? Contact our marketing agency for a free consultation.
1. Your Website Is Too Slow
Nobody likes a slow website and if you’re a business, your slow site is costing you sales. Loading time is a major factor in site abandonment. If your site takes longer than two seconds to load, users start to bounce and you miss those opportunities to turn consumers into customers. It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is if people get frustrated from your slow website.
Our marketing agency uses a variety of tools, including Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze and fix slow sites. Some of the most common issues that slow down a website are:
- Images are too large
- Using too many third party resources (YouTube videos/Google Maps)
- Browser caching not set up
- Refining website code to minimize file size
We can help streamline your website, or build you a new one, optimizing your page speed.
2. Not Focusing On Mobile Users
Google rankings are determined by a bunch of different factors, one of which is the mobile experience. More and more people are accessing websites on their phones, so your website needs to be responsive and fast on smaller screens. Fail to do so, and Google may push you down the rankings into the graveyard of the second page.
A straightforward mobile experience leads to higher conversions. How frustrating is it when you check out a mobile website and the buttons are so small that you can’t hit the right one? That’s not a well-designed mobile site. And remember, page speed is still important on your mobile device. You’ve got to keep it under two seconds.
Designing a responsive website will give it an enjoyable user experience (UX) while keeping it fast. Check out this responsive eCommerce website design project we did for Westcoast Naturals.
3. Never Updating Your Blog
Your website needs a blog and it needs to be frequently updated. Benefits of having a blog include:
- Increasing site traffic
- Boosting SEO
- Creating a connection with your customers
- Nurturing leads
- Generating sales
- Solving customer pain points
You also get to add some personality to your brand with your writing style. Do you have a light and fun brand personality? Show it off! Are your customers looking for in-depth knowledge and technical expertise? Do it!
Blog writing is a mix of art and science. They need to be written for both search engines and people. Our marketing agency writes blogs every month for different industries – from retail to B2B. We put effort into researching your industry, products, and target audience to write blogs that convert.
4. Your Customer Targeting Is Too Broad
You can’t be everything to everyone. This is a recipe for a marketing disaster.
There is so much data out there that you should be able to get a very clear idea of your core audience.
How old are they? Where do they live? What platforms do they use? What are their aspirations? Answering these questions is a start to putting together your ideal buyer persona. Once you have a clear idea of who your customer is, you can create highly targeted campaigns that convert.
Bonus Tip* What problems do your ideal customers have, and how can you solve them? These are also great ideas for your blog. Try checking out some Amazon reviews to piece together people’s frustrations and think about how your business can solve those issues.
Check out our blog to learn more about how to use review mining as a part of your empathetic marketing strategy.
5. Not Using Retargeting
A comprehensive digital marketing strategy should include retargeting. Let’s say that someone has visited your website, read a blog or two, added items to their cart, and then bounces before making their purchase. You should be retargeting them through online ads to get them back on your site so they can complete their purchase.
It’s much easier to get someone who knows about your business, and already has some items in their cart to make a purchase versus someone that has never heard of your company. Retargeting customers is great for conversions.
You can also retarget your past customers. Give them basket suggestions, “Hey, you bought this thing. Awesome! You know what goes really good with that thing? This other thing!”
You can also give your customers some added delight by writing blogs that target people who have made purchases. Give them a tutorial, show them other ways to use the product, tell them how to take care and maintain whatever they just bought. This builds customer loyalty. You can also ask them if they have any creative uses for their product, and add that to a future marketing campaign.
Are making any critical marketing errors? Do you not have time to build a proper marketing strategy? Our full-service digital marketing agency can help. Give us a call at 604.559.7509 or stop by our office located at 240, 515 West Pender St. in beautiful Vancouver, BC.
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