Avoid These Common Digital Marketing Mistakes

In the race to advertise and market online, businesses and organisations around the world are falling into the same traps that are actually starting to affect their traffic and their lead generation, their sales, their conversion rates, and ultimately their return on investment. So is the extra pressure of today making that you’re now neglecting some of the most basics of marketing online? That’s what we’re going to have a look at today in the Marketing Mindset podcast.

How you going? My name is Jordan McFadyen, and this Marketing Mindset podcast is brought to you by donebynine.com. And the aim of this podcast is to help you become the smartest marketer in the room, where we talk about ways to move away from random acts of marketing and help you to build a more long-term strategy.

And today we’re going to take a real step back and have a look over some of the most common mistakes that I’m starting to see marketers and businesses make at the moment. And I’m going to take even more of a step back and say that this isn’t just what I’m seeing other businesses make. This is things that I’m doing wrong as well, in my own business and my own marketing strategy, and things that when I look back and I think, man, I so could have done that much better, or I can’t believe I haven’t fixed this sooner, or any of those things.

And I think this just comes with being a business owner and a founder and entrepreneur: you’re always having a look at ways that you can get better and adapt and change. And you look back at some of those early things and you think, man, I wish I would have changed it so much sooner. So today’s not just about what I see in the marketplace, but also things that I’ve seen in myself and with my business, Done By Nine, as well. So let’s go through some of these key mistakes. And the idea of this podcast is really just for you to go through, and challenge you to have a think about some of the areas in your business and your marketing, on your website, that maybe isn’t up to scratch, and maybe that you can be making a bit better as well.

So the first mistake that I want you to think about is not having that clear, defined audience. It’s key. And I talk about this so much on podcasts and in blogs, and pretty much every workshop that I’ve run talks around defining your audience. We can’t be everything to everyone. And that’s not what your clients want as well. They want to know that you are the person to be able to solve their problem, because you understand who they are, you understand their pain points, and you understand absolutely everything about them. So without having that clear, defined audience, all your marketing efforts just kind of disappear.

And I’m also saying here, and this is based on my experience as well, that your audience can change. It doesn’t always have to be set in stone like that. It can adapt. It can change. It can alter. You can trial different things. You can trial a different niche. You can kind of look in different ways as you’re searching and growing out the business. But whatever marketing campaign and whatever marketing you’re actually doing, you’ve just got to make sure that you’ve got that client, that customer, in your head, ready to go. And that’s one of the big things that you need to be trying to focus on. So, not truly understanding who that client is.

And the second mistake kind of goes off that as well. And it’s about not understanding your customer, but also not understanding their pain points. What do they actually need help with? What is the reason that they’re searching out a company like yours? And remember, a pain point is not only just a pain point. It’s something that they’re also searching for. They need a problem solved, for example, as well. If we don’t understand that, then there’s no way that we’re going to be able to create marketing campaigns, Google Ads campaigns, or copy for your Facebook, or your social media strategy, or your website content. Nothing. You’re not going to be able to do any of that without fully understanding who that client is and what their pain points are.

And I get a lot of people asking me, okay, so how do you kind of work that out? And obviously, it’s quite a bit of strategy behind your ideal customer and your client, that’s going to be based on the service or the product that you’re solving. But when you’re actually talking about their pain points, the best way to do it is literally talking to your customers. And you’ll get a bit of an understanding with this the more that you work with customers. And the more that you work with customers and clients, the more the pain points that they’re coming to you with might be more and more defined.

And it might even help you define your service, and your service offering, and the product that you’re doing. And this is something that we found with Done By Nine, for example: more and more clients were coming to us with literally no strategy in terms of their marketing. They were hitting hope, which is exactly like my golf game: literally standing up to the tee, hoping that you’re going to hit the ball close to the hole. And chances are, it’s not going to. Obviously, there’s a few businesses that have lucked out and done really well. But I think the main point is that a lot of the businesses don’t come to us with that clear strategy.

And that’s one of those things that you need to really sit down and have a bit of a think about, and really start to build out for yourselves as well. And understanding who that client is and what those pain points are, and really build that strategy. And adapt it if you needed to as well. And also, the rule of thumb for your digital campaigns is that you need to be thinking about how you take the journey of before to after for your customers. So you’re not going to understand the before to after for your customers if you don’t actually understand their pain points and what they’re after, what they want their after to look like at the end of the day as well. So that’s why it’s so important for you to understand both the customer and their pain points as well.

So the other mistake that we see quite a bit is people just missing the mark on some of the digital marketing basics. Sometimes we get so wound up in some of the real technical things: is my pixel working, is this working, is that working, should I be running Performance Max campaign or just display campaign, should I be running YouTube ads, should I be focusing on LinkedIn or Facebook? All those different things that we’re trying to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

But then some of the absolute basics are missed, and I do this as well. For example, let’s say you focus too much on your social media, and you’re really focusing on social media, but then you can neglect things that are so much more important, things like your website. Obviously, social media is great for conversions, for performance-based marketing, for brand-based marketing, but at the end of the day as well, we really want people to get an understanding about who you are, and making sure that when they go to your website, the website really clearly articulates what you do, the problem that you solve, and making sure that the customer knows that they’re in the right place at the right time. It’s so important for us to do that as well.

So sometimes neglecting your website can actually have negative connotations, and it’s one of the easiest things to neglect, because you’ve spent so much time on there yourself and it probably turns into a bit of a blur when you go to your website. But challenge yourself to go back through your website and make sure that it is still talking to your target client.

And also, speaking of websites as well, I do see it a lot that some people and some websites, now this kind of depends on your business, kind of depends on your client and your customer, but sometimes they’re just over-designed and over-complicated and too difficult to navigate, because you’re trying to be too smart, or you’re trying to be too clever with all these fancy whiz-bang things that happen when you scroll and things like that. Sometimes it can be too difficult for your customer to actually navigate, and again, that comes down to your customer. You’re going to need to make that decision based on who you’re trying to talk to, and make that decision based on that. But just making sure that the site is designed, it is clear, and the copy is well written for your target customer, and you should be good to go.

And also the big one that we always make, and even I have to go back and review the pages of my website as well, so don’t audit me, is some of our basic SEO, and I talk about this a lot. This is usually one of the first things that I’ll run through with a new client coming through: having a look at their website. And it’s amazing how many websites still don’t have the basic SEO set up. Even on a brand new website, the title tags just aren’t right, that they’re not even filled in, meta descriptions aren’t filled in, all of those basics that you should be able to do really quickly.

And you should be able to even just chuck it in Google: Google “how to update my meta title”. And if you’re on a WordPress or any type of site like that, Squarespace, Webflow, it’s so easy to make those small changes. Google it, work out how to do it, and make sure that your meta titles and descriptions are right, because that is another first impression of your business. When someone searches you on Google, they’re going to look at your meta title and description. Got to be perfect. So make sure you do that.

And also, just when you think about your SEO as well, without going too much into SEO on this podcast, because it’s a whole new kind of realm and it would be a whole podcast in itself. But just thinking about those keywords that you actually want to rank for: what are some of those core services? What are those things that people are putting into Google to eventually try and find a business like yours? Those are the keywords that you need to be having across your site, and prominent spots across the site as well, for two reasons.

First, because it’s going to give Google the indication that that is obviously what you are trusted for and authoritative for: those keywords and that product and service. But also, on the other aspect, you’re supposed to be writing this copy for the user, and the user needs to come to your website, see those keywords and go, shit, this is the place I need to be. This is where I need to go right now. I’m in the right spot. So that’s the reason you need to understand those keywords. So just give your site a bit of an audit in terms of those as well at the end of the day, and just make sure that the site is still ranking.

The other thing I want to talk about today, one of the mistakes, is investing in digital campaigns, chucking money at Meta and LinkedIn, but doing it without having an overall digital strategy. And again, we see this all the time. Even when you come to our website, we ask what type of marketing budget you’re spending. It’s not just to work out the level of spend and how big of a business you might be. It’s actually more to work out and see really just how much you’re actually investing into digital, and whether that’s actually doing anything.

And we see a lot of customers that will go to us and say that they’re spending on Facebook. But then the question after that, are you working towards a strategy, then essentially saying no. So it’s kind of like, well, what’s all that money doing? Where’s it going? Where’s it being spent on? You’re essentially just donating to the Meta Christmas party, which is not the way to go.

So what I would suggest is making sure that if you are spending big bucks on digital campaigns, make sure it is aligned really closely to an overall digital strategy. That strategy should at least have some three clear goals. And some of those goals then need to have strategic KPIs underneath it, so you can actually measure it and see if it’s actually doing anything. So here’s what you need to focus on. Define the audiences and the personas. We’ve spoken about that so far. You want to set some SMART goals. We all know what SMART goals are. If not, go and Google it. And you want to set some SMART KPIs on that as well.

And that’s going to help you determine what’s working and what’s not, even if it’s just around your paid campaigns. I would say you need a digital strategy, obviously, for the entire business. But even if it’s just for those particular campaigns, even as a start, working on that and making sure that that’s actually working would be an absolute key. Then you want to define the tools and the channels and the tactics that you need, and that you need to invest in, to be able to achieve your goals. And then essentially you want to track those goals, track the progress and fine-tune the strategy again, so that your campaign budget just isn’t wasted.

So literally, and as a bit of a recap of that section: have a strategy. If you’re going to put money towards advertising, Google, anything like that, make sure it’s clearly defined the goals that you want to achieve, the KPIs that you want to achieve because of that paid campaign at the end of the day. Otherwise, like I say, you’re just donating money and throwing money away.

And this kind of goes nicely into the next mistake that we see as well, and that’s hastily prepared paid media campaigns. And again, if you’re not preparing your paid media campaigns nicely and well, they just become a waste. So firstly, the first thing I’d say is if you’re boosting posts on Facebook, try and challenge yourself to move a step further. You can go bigger than that now. Instead of just boosting a post here and there, instead have a think about how you can actually run some advertising campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Running an actual campaign means you can A/B test your ad creative. You can target your ads towards different audiences. You can define more of a budget and/or let Facebook work out that budget, about who’s actually going to work with your ad creative better. And you can actually scale slowly and start to see conversions and results as you go as well. So again, just take your time thinking about the paid campaigns. Think about the journey. Think about your goals and objectives. Are you going for conversions or leads? Or are you trying to build your brand, and your authority, and your trustworthiness? Think about whether it’s a brand-building campaign or a performance-based campaign. And really just think about moving past just boosting a post, and actually building a campaign that’s actually going to work towards that strategy and those goals that we just spoke about before as well.

Then the last one I want to focus on today is about social proof. I think a lot of clients forget about social proof. A lot of big businesses, you look at the amount of Google reviews they’ve got and they’re really small. I’m probably one of the worst examples of this as well, because I don’t search for social proof enough. And this is kind of a reminder to myself as well as to you that, when you read the stats, Google says that around 60% of buyers are actually searching for peer reviews and testimonials online before they buy or engage with a new business. 60%, that’s a lot. That’s a lot of research that people do. A lot of due diligence that people are doing before they actually become a customer of yours.

And so you’ve got to make sure that all of those touch points are covered, and that you can clearly show that people are using you, that they enjoy working with you, that you’re actually getting good results, or your product or service is what they need and how it’s affected their life. So whether that’s a testimonial, a video testimonial, which are gold, by the way, Google reviews, getting people to mention you on LinkedIn or Facebook, or getting people to comment and things like that, trying to build that social proof to show that you’ve got an audience, to show that you’ve got clients and people that trust you and enjoy your product and service.

It is so important, and it’s something that as business owners and as marketing teams, sometimes we do forget about. So I just wanted a little reminder in there, because that’s one of those key things to help businesses grow, because that’s a massive stat: 60% of all search for peer reviews and testimonials online before people engage. It’s a lot of people doing some searching.

And so, like I said at the start, I’ll be honest, I suffer from a lot of these different mistakes that we’ve been discussing here today, and a lot of other ones as well. So it’s just a reiteration that we’re not all perfect. Businesses are still growing, they’re still developing, we’re always pivoting, we’re always trying to look to get better. And I guess that’s one of the big things that I want to get across today, is that this is your chance to continue to rethink some of the things that we’ve spoken about here today, and just to get better over time, and start to get closer to that overall digital marketing strategy as well.

And hopefully today you can actually start making some moves to actually fix it. And if you want any further help, obviously I run a digital agency called Done By Nine, and you can contact me or my team via our website, donebynine.com. Or if you would also like to see a lot of our podcasts, or other blogs and articles and features, you can get that from our website as well, donebynine.com. Thanks so much for joining us today on another episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast, and we look forward to seeing you in the next one.