Digital marketing, you’re doing it wrong. Let’s talk about some of the common mistakes people make in their digital marketing and how to fix them.

Here are 10 common mistakes that businesses and agencies make when carrying out their digital marketing.

1. Forgetting Mobile Users 

When designing a website, it is common for marketers to design a website that looks good on a computer but completely forget about designing it for mobile phones. Last year in Kenya, 87% of all web traffic was on phones, with an average of 3 hours 48 minutes spent online on phone per day. With numbers like that you cannot afford to have a website that does not give a good user experience to a phone user. In fact, with numbers like that, you should build your website with the main focus being a great mobile user experience.

2. Not Measuring ROI

No matter whether you are doing the digital marketing yourself, or if you have an entire marketing team dedicated to it, digital marketing takes time, money and effort. Sometimes we end up putting in more effort and money than it’s worth without knowing it. Always measure the return on investment of your marketing efforts and see if they are actually worth it. If your business sells products directly online, it’s a pretty simple process of tracking sales points. If not, follow up on each lead by asking them how they heard about your business.

3. Targeting Everyone

When we believe in a product, we often think to ourselves, “who wouldn’t want to buy this?”, and that is how we end up targeting our marketing efforts. We end up casting a wide net because we think it may yield the most results. Sadly in digital marketing this is one of the worst things you can do. Casting to wide a net ends up expending valuable resources. Instead it is best to carve out a niche segment of people who NEED your product. Change your mindset from “who wouldn’t want this” to “who can’t live without this”.

4. Not Personalizing Their Communication

We have all received those marketing emails that start with “Dear sir/madam” from an email address like info@blablabla.com, and more often than not they either sit unread or get deleted immediately. That’s largely because of the cold detachment with which they are sent. Without the personal touch, nobody cares that much about what you have to say in an email. Next time you have an email campaign going out: address the recipients by name; make sure the content is for their benefit, not yours; and have the email come from a person.

5. Being Anti-Social on Social Media

A lot of older more established companies join social media and use it like a billboard or a newspaper ad; as a channel to pass on information and that is it. The beauty of social media is the ability to interact. If you just use it to share information and ignore comments and messages, people quickly see this as bad customer relations and quickly switch to a more interactive option.

6. Focusing on Acquisition and Not Retention
Most digital marketing efforts by companies are geared at getting new customers, reaching new people and markets. However in most cases, your business is sustained by repeat customers. If you are a garage, you want customers who will come back every time they need your services, the ones who will always tell their friends and family about their go to garage. The ones who know all the mechanics by name. Do not neglect them, because they are the ones that keep the lights on when business is tough. Instead offer them more and more reasons to come back.

7. Doing It Alone

Hire people.
Work with an agency.

8. Poor Budgeting

You get what you pay for.

9. Not Setting Goals

Set specific & measurable goals that you can actually achieve.

10. Not Using The Data

You are making assumptions about your customers.