Top 5 Mistakes For Small Businesses To Avoid in Digital Marketing

digital marketinggoogle business profile

Sep 26

Making mistakes is a big part of running a business (and life in general for us humans) and should never be considered a bad thing until those mistakes are repeated. Below we have identified the five most common mistakes that businesses make in their digital marketing strategy. Once you learn them, you will know what you can do to prevent repeating these mistakes which will help you improve your overall return on marketing.

1) Utilizing Google Business Profile

At this point, you would be hard pressed to not have a Google Business Profile account if you have a website associated with a storefront. If you do not have an account, it is vital to create one as it is a free business listing service where Google’s countless users will be able to get information about your business like products, location, and hours of operation. One common mistake with GBP is not filling out your profile to completion. There is a reason Google asks you for all of this information relevant to your business and it will only serve to benefit you to provide as much as you can. You can also use the tool for events and promotions and even track traffic to your site to benchmark against other traffic sources. You can find more information here: Google Business Profile.

Key Actions:

Complete Business Profile
Utilize Posts and Attributes
Add Photos

2) Customer Reviews

This can be a touchy subject but we want you to know that it is OKAY to ask for reviews. Having a large amount of positive reviews across various platforms is extremely important in today’s digital landscape. According to BrightLocal, 82% of people read online reviews for local businesses and 48% of people only pay attention to reviews written in the last two weeks. Additionally, the average business listing on Google has 39 reviews but businesses ranking in positions 1-3 have an average of 48 reviews. If you’re worried about the amount of reviews you currently have, do not worry, 76% of customers will write a review if you ask them, so don’t be shy! Be sure to train your sales managers and any other relevant employees to ask for reviews as well and be sure to include links to review in email campaigns. While Google may seem to be the focus, other review sites like Yelp, Amazon, Bing, and industry specific sites are also important so make an attempt to spread your reviews out.

Key Actions:

Ask for reviews across platforms
Respond to reviews
Consider emailing review requests after a purchase is made automatically

3) Neglecting Social Media

Social Media by itself is an entirely separate, important, and complex component of any digital marketing strategy to consider. You can keep it simple by posting occasionally on your social media pages for your followers to engage with all the way to adding in deeply integrated advertising strategies geared towards a variety of goals you may have for your business. What you need to know is that regardless of the level of social media usage in your overall marketing strategy, it cannot be ignored. Be sure that on a monthly basis you have a plan for the content you want to post and track the engagement with those posts as well as changes in followers on a monthly basis. You will begin to identify trends of what is working and what isn’t which will allow you to make your social media efforts more effective.

Key Actions:

Post to social media on a regular cadence
Try different types of content and review engagement results
Remember the audience you are trying to engage

4) Set It and Forget It

Your digital marketing campaign should not be likened to a pot roast. What worked last year or even last month may not work as effectively today. Keep your campaigns fresh by updating ads and site links, adding in offers and promotions whenever possible, and analyzing your target audiences on a monthly basis. If you are running campaigns through an agency be sure they have not put you on the back burner and are consistently optimizing your content and advertising.

Key Actions:

Meet monthly with providers to confirm features are refreshed
Review performance metrics to make sure you are targeting appropriate areas
Update messaging and promotions to reflect what is going on in your business

5) Most Important! Not Having Goals!

The reason this pitfall of digital is listed last is because everything up to this point ties in to this mistake and sometimes you really do need to save the best for last. Every digital marketing campaign you run should have a goal in mind. Maybe it’s acquiring more social media followers, maybe it’s driving more e-commerce sales on your webpage, and maybe it is simply to make your brand more well-known in your market. Regardless, these goals can all be tied to various digital strategies and then tracked in Analytics tools. A free tool that can be extremely helpful in assessing your digital marketing effectiveness is Google Analytics. Just be sure to add tracking parameters to your pages to measure traffic correctly. Additionally, any platform you are using to advertise online should have its own reporting tool to measure performance. Overall, having all of these tools at your disposal allows you to optimize on a consistent basis to the goals you have for your business which ultimately will help you get a better return on marketing. Certainly can’t argue against that!

Key Actions: