10 Common Digital Marketing Problems

Planning

Not setting proper and realistic goals.

This may seem obvious, but it’s amazing how many people we hear from that have never considered what they actually want to achieve with their marketing. Start by setting goals, this gives you something to work towards and will focus all of your marketing efforts. Be specific with your goals, “increasing sales” is not a measurable goal, “increase sales by 20% compared to last year” is.

Not creating content plans for Email/SM

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. When it comes to running successful email or social media campaigns, preparation is key. Start by writing a 6 month content plan. This doesn’t need to be fully fleshed out, don’t plan the exact wording of each tweet and email, just establish an overview of what you plan to send out. Bear in mind however, this plan is not set in stone, be flexible with your content and don’t be afraid to change things up.

SEO

Unrealistic expectations

Search engine optimisation is not an exact science and there is no magic trick to instantly send your website shooting to the top of search rankings. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint and often people come in with an unrealistic expectation that their new website will be sitting at the top of Google on day 1. It won’t.

Not understanding the core of SEO

Nobody actually knows exactly how Google, or any other search engine, ranks content. What we do know however, is they’re not interested in being tricked into ranking your website. Forget the tricks and gimmicks, writing great quality content for your visitors is the core of SEO success.

PPC

Not knowing how to properly measure success

What are you looking to achieve with pay-per-click marketing? Boost your website traffic? Increase the number of enquiries? Once you’ve settled on your PPC goals, make sure you’re looking at the right metrics to track them. What’s important for one goal might be totally irrelevant for another, focussing on the wrong statistics could send you down a wrong, and expensive path.

Setting a proper budget

The great thing about PPC is that it’s scalable. As long as you’re generating a positive return on investment you can continue to step up your daily budgets. Don’t get caught with going too hard, too soon however. Start with a modest budget that’s comfortably within what you’re willing to spend on advertising, run it for a couple of weeks and then look to increase it if the campaign is performing well.

Email Marketing

Growing a mailing list

The quality of your subscriber database will of course have a direct effect on how successful your email marketing is. But growing a list of people who are keen to hear about your company relies on you being interesting, informative and always delivering something of worth and value.

No matter what your business, devote time and effort into creating good reasons for people to sign up to your mailing list. Offering useful advice, newsworthy content, promotions and trial subscriptions are all great examples of this. So take a long hard look at what you can offer people in return for their email address, it has to be a fair transaction.

Non responsive emails

Amazing as it may seem, there still seems to be a large number of businesses who have the blinkers on when it comes to the creation of responsive email templates.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an accountant, a mechanic or a Bond Street retailer, there’s no earthly reason why you should not create something that looks just as good on a mobile as it does on desktop. Open rates on mobile devices have increased by around 500% in the last 4 years and continue to climb. Therefore the creation of properly tested, responsive email campaigns needs to become second nature if you want to succeed with email marketing.

Social Media

Not knowing what SM channels to be on/start with

Most people know they should have a social media presence for their business, the trap they often fall into is not knowing what channels to use. Start small, don’t dive in and set up an account on any and every network you find. Think about what social networks your target audience are most likely to be active on and start there. Once a couple of channels are ticking along nicely, you can look to expand.

Posting the wrong things

Social media is not all about you. Once you come to terms with this concept you’ll start seeing a far greater return on your efforts. Content on social media should engage your audience and promote conversation, if your posts only ever spruik yourself, you’ll quickly find yourself talking to no-one.