It’s no more hidden, that the finest business practices always progress within the field of digital marketing. The media-savvy professional marketers take pleasure in industry updates, keeping their customers alongside new tactics. If you’re a digital marketing agency, you need to stay well-educated to be successful. Digital agencies need to be more attentive and purposeful in their digital marketing strategies. This is the only way to generate real gains in growth and uplift the reputation of a website.
If you’re a digital marketing agency and thinking of implementing digital marketing strategies for your client’s business, then you need to be more critical in knowing which marketing strategies to avoid that can cost you big time. Here are the 15 biggest digital marketing blunders to avoid:
What should you not do in digital marketing?
- Assuming SEO is dead
SEO is and forever will be one of the most crucial tactics digital marketing agencies should have if they want to profess an online presence. Some agencies assume SEO is dead because they fail to get results for their so-called SEO efforts which are largely concentrated towards increasing the number of links. But, SEO has advanced from a process of just driving search rankings to strategies of driving traffic, building relations, networking, and driving sales. Long gone are the days of overloading key phrases, backlinks, and hidden text for websites. Google and other SERP spiders crawl sites to figure out many things. One of the essential components they determine is whether a site is what it claims to be and are informative, knowledgeable, and have good content. Being a digital agency you can’t afford the mistake of underestimating SEO.
- Ignoring conversion optimization.
There was a time in digital marketing when it was okay not to do conversion optimization. But this is 2020. Failure to conduct regular and attentive split trials is a blueprint for the decline. Don’t be afraid of it. Yes, it requires some technicality and an eye for analytics, but most conversion rate software (CRS) eliminates the need for in-depth knowledge. The goal is to maximize revenue by either increasing the conversion or increasing the average order value which even all your clients would demand.
- Buy followers
While most agencies fall in the pressure to use short term strategies for quick-but-short-lasting results, be that one agency that understands the importance of the long term, principle-based strategies. If you buy followers you may increase the number but then the number is not everything. A real person is what brings sales! These days there are a number of ways to find out fake followers. This can lead to loss of reputation and integrity. People who actually want to be your clients will lose their trust once you get caught.
- Expecting huge results rapidly
Digital marketing takes time and cannot give overnight success. Though you’ll notice some measurable results in a relatively short time. However, stay practical, clear-sighted, and realistic about the time it takes to achieve goals. Don’t rush. You are a digital agency, only if you understand this, you can explain to your clients.
- Not investing in UI/UX
If you believe SEO is the make or break tactic for your agency to have any sort of web presence, then employing user interface (UI) or user experience (UX) best practices is important for increasing conversions. It doesn’t matter what your agency defines as a conversion. What is most important is making sure your site, your ads, and all of your strategies highlight UX best practices. Many conversion rate optimization professionals agree that having a strong UX component is guaranteed to bring lifts in your conversions. You being a digital marketing agency need to have UI\UX experts when building websites, designing ads, or creating marketing collateral.
- Not Using A.I. or Any Form of Automation
The future for Digital agencies has arrived. If you are not a new agency, chances are you’ve heard about the importance of Artificial intelligence (AI). Google, Bing and so many other sites use AI for programmatic advertising; it’s how they operate. Also, it doesn’t stop with paid search and display, ‘chatbots’ are taking over many roles as well. The majority of users interact with chatbots and, for a good reason. Not only are chatbots more precise with details, but they’re available 24/7.
- Irrelevant content
If you plan to get into the digital marketing field, do it with the right approach and give it your 100%. If you fail to spend time developing relevant and quality content, it’s an expensive mistake. If you’re not attentive and accurate, your content be it writing or video editing could end up worthless to you. Writing the same old unwanted common content found on every other site would never get you rankings on Google. With the search engine’s updated algorithms, it’s now vital to be unique and distinguishing with your content development approach. There are agencies that often have an approach “no publicity is bad publicity” which is totally a wrong approach and a big myth. For instance, ask the executives at Pepsi. Empowering Kendall Jenner to solve America’s political and social issues with a can of cola left a bad taste in viewers’ mouths (worse than Aspartame). It also took PepsiCo over a year to recoup their financial loss. In fact, it was the cola giant’s worst financial performance in nearly a decade. Using content strategically, and expertly can take your marketing where you want it to go.
- Not engaging on social media
In this digital world, if your agency still doesn’t have social media presence or engagement, it would probably be considered a shame. Bear in mind that social media marketing is crucial to your digital marketing strategy and helps you in interacting and engaging with your target audience. By commenting, liking, and sharing, you connect to your audience on a more interactive level. This way, you become a part of their lives and can feel assured to receive business from them.
- Focusing Strictly on Single-Channel Marketing Tactics
Well-thought digital marketing approach requires an in-depth knowledge of marketing channels. Many new digital agencies have a minimal understanding of how marketing works. Affluent digital marketing is more than just setting up an Ads account–or boosting an event or an add on Facebook. The best tactic is finding out what works and what doesn’t. You need to have multiple channels to uplift your customer experience (CX). Single-channel tactics are marketing mistakes to avoid. Be it Facebook, Instagram, paid search, display campaign, you should use it all keeping your goals in mind. You need to share out your resources and develop a multichannel approach to digital marketing. You can’t find all your leads engaged with your ads at the same time or the same platform. So, being a digital agency market yourself in the best way. Utilize as many as channels possible. But, always be strategic about how you approach these tactics. You have to be completely sorted when you talk about your strategies and tactics.
- Not having goals or strategies
Digital marketing relies on solid “goals and strategies” but sadly most agencies think it relies on “tactics and techniques”. If you don’t have a goal or strategy laid out, it can be almost impossible for you to market your website and rank higher on Google. Having clear goals is very essential in figuring out how to reach your target audience beginning from your website to advertising campaigns, should follow your clearly defined goals. This way, your audience can see a common thread through everything you do. Before you ever pick a tactic to try, form a strategy to count on. All the agencies need to understand, an online marketing strategy will be your guiding light as you engage in the wide world of marketing.
- Forgetting about mobile
Mobilegeddon may have taken place in 2015, but we are still impacted by it. If you aren’t operating with a mobile-first strategy, you are distancing more than half of your prospective audience. Mobile optimization is the main factor for both conversions and content, so keep it on the frontline when creating your digital marketing strategy.
- Too Much Time Reporting, Not Enough Optimizing
Some agencies spend armful of time creating complicated reports, often to the prejudice of account performance. This issue is only aggravated as your clients grow their advertising efforts onto new channels, where KPI go together like spaghetti and meatball. This isn’t to say that reporting is inherently bad.
Solid reporting that clearly conveys speeding towards your clients’ goals is a basic component to present your impact on their businesses and, therefore, your value. But you can attain this through some automation measures without wasting most of your time twisting broken Excel formulas. By this, you can utilize your time and use this time in an efficient manner.
- Deliver Only the Positive Data
You can see numbers, charts, and graphs showing how your business is stepping up and growing, as well as which campaigns are most efficient and which are inefficient. But data can also be distorted or shaped to create a positive picture. Even the best companies have good and bad days and as well as campaigns that work and those that flop. The data your digital marketing agency presents should be clear, transparent, and reflect reality—not just what you want your client to think is happening or what they are expecting to happen. An agency that can take this positively, analyze what worked and what didn’t, and survive is the kind of agency that will flourish.
- Be the Yes-Man-agency
Your digital marketing agency should be an extension of your client’s team, which means they need to trust you as if you were in-house at their office drinking tea every day. An honest truthful agency will do everything in their power to help the client attain their goals and guide them on a path to success. But that doesn’t mean your agency has to be a yes-man agency. A trustworthy agency will give honest suggestions on ideas that are truly result-oriented and executing strategy but it’s your duty to give them a strategic, real-world take on how something that client thinks may not be right or harmful to their marketing strategy.
- Fake promises
To help your client build a strong paid search and social plan, brand awareness campaigns, and strategies for landing pages and campaigns that will generate a large number of qualified leads, don’t make fake promises. Clients need to be explained that there’s a reason behind slow but positive results of digital marketing. Time is necessary for creating brand awareness, loyalty, and social proof in order to pull in leads and turn them into customers.
This list could go on and on. In fact, just a simple tip before you click away! If you don’t have clear and easy processes for onboarding and managing the account, timelines for deliverables, interaction strategies, and other practicalities of basic project management, please be ready to lose an ample number of clients and also tarnish your brand value. There are many ways to approach digital marketing. You can choose your path to success, but the most important tactic is not to make any of the don’ts listed above. You should be organized, interactive, available, easy to work with, and all in on helping the client to achieve their goals.
For us, we treat every client like our first, last, and the only client, we’re the kind of white label digital marketing agency that invests in you, your goals, your aspirations, your dreams, your clients and your future; from the very first day, we work towards an arrangement between us to bring out the best. Contact us!
