The first step to establishing a digital marketing plan is having a clear understanding of your audience and the specific results you want to achieve.

Knowing who your ideal customer is ensures that your content resonates with their interests, and needs. Therefore, you’ll attract the right audience and traffic every time.

Also, setting clear, measurable goals will offer direction and help you better optimize your digital marketing success. So whether your goal is increased traffic, better social engagement, or more leads, set a reasonably achievable goal on the feasibility in order to be able to effectually work towards achieving said goals. A very important step in gaining clarity of your audience is by creating buyer personas. Taking the time out to develop buyer personas will add amazing value to your content creation team.

This extends beyond knowing the basic demographics. Acting or interacting more as a friend than as a business, will actually boost customer relations as they will be able to share better with you and help you better understand their needs and ultimately help you serve you better in the long run. This way, everybody wins!

2.) LACK OF A DOCUMENTED STRATEGY

The importance of creating or establishing a ore existing content marketing strategy in businesses cannot be overemphasized. According to stats gathered from Hubspot, only about 32% of B2B companies have a strategy for their content marketing. This percentage, is rather low because this means that only 32% of companies have a higher probability of effective digital marketing with a large percentage of companies being left in the gray area. Don’t be one of the remaining 68%! Undoubtedly, mapping out a strategy which would serve as a guide for your content marketing will go a long way I bet the ultimate success of your brand .

Failing to do your due diligence in digital marketing planning is one of the biggest digital marketing mistakes around. It’s important to not only establish your goals but to clearly map out the activities your business will do in order to make them happen. It is therefore very essential to start with about 2-3 digital strategies at a time if you have a small marketing team or to leverage a digital marketing agency to help you create a documented strategy. This way, you don’t have a whole lot to contend or deal with while starting out. As your business progresses, your priorities will increase and so should your strategy. It’s all about moving at the right pace.

By honing in, testing, and concentrating on your tactics, you can quickly discover what’s working and what isn’t. This way, you can double-down on what’s driving results and make adjustments to everything else that you’re doing in your business.

3) CONTENT CREATION WITH NO GOALS

We all remember the post Mark Zuckerberg released earlier this year on Facebook regarding focusing on meaningful interactions:

“…we’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to help you have more meaningful social interactions.”
It later reveals how Facebook users will see fewer posts from brands and businesses. Except, that it should encourage one thing: meaningful interactions between people.

Although this was officially shared in January, creating valuable content that purposely engages your audience was and will always remain a best practice for social media marketing. Simply posting just to post doesn’t cut it. It must have an end goal of connecting with your follower, adding value, and getting them to take a specific action.

In fact, here are a few tips for bolstering your social media marketing strategy:

Your post should educate, entertain, or inspire.
Spend time crafting great headlines to stand out. Questions, facts, and how-to’s work well on social media. Also, use a tool like CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer to create better headlines over time.
Encourage engagement by responding to each comment.
Live videos are all the rave, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Use them to your advantage to build authentic relationships with followers and move them to action!

4) FAILURE TO DEVELOP YOUR SEO STRATEGY

As already earlier mentioned, strategy is everything. It is what guides you every step of your business venture and failing to constantly keep up with it will definitely leave you in limbo. To that end, I must mention that it is absolutely germane to up your SEO game. SEO by the way, simply refers to your Search Engine Optimization. I mean, what would it profit a business to gain online presence, but be unable to be found? Think about it. The SEO aspect of your content marketing means that a lot of research must be put into what trends drive the market of the industry you’re in. Gather information on what potential customers are constantly looking for when they type on the internet searching for services or products that you deal in. And then find a way to create relevant content around the keywords relating to your services. This makes your visibility almost automatic (as long as you keep your game up). On-page content must be expertly developed and delivered in order to driver in more traffic. Including your primary keyword in the title tag, meta description, URL, and naturally and semantically throughout your post.
Adding visuals and interactive content to improve dwell-time.
Including authoritative backlinks.
However, the search algorithms continue to change. Meaning, what works today may or may not work tomorrow. Therefore, keeping up with the latest SEO practices is crucial to remaining competitive. By not honing your SEO strategy, you’re committing one of the largest digital marketing mistakes there is!

Another benefit of working with a digital marketing agency is that you’ll be able to use their expertise to advance your online marketing efforts. Instead of having to stay abreast of what’s constantly changing, they’ll ensure your website is up-to-date to give your brand the slight edge in the industry.

To learn more about how a digital marketing agency can work for you, contact MediaCraft Studio (MediaCraftStudio.com) for enquiries.

5)UNDERUTILIZATION OF RESEARCH

This is rather straightforward you would agree. You absolutely can not survive in business without research and this includes case studies. Did you know case studies are a powerful tool for helping you convert leads into buying customers? In addition to performing incredibly well for decision stage content, case studies can boost your organic traffic, improve website-experience, and increase lead conversions

You see, stories sell! People want to see how your business has successfully helped others to determine whether or not you’re a good fit for meeting their needs. It increases your credibility and builds trust. It’s one of the most valuable assets you could have in your digital marketing arsenal.

Yet, many brands are making one of the most common digital marketing mistakes by not using case studies to their full advantage to experience these amazing results. They either feel their results are not impressive enough, don’t have the time, or simply don’t have the client’s permission. However, you’ll be amazed at how willing your clients would be to share their success story with your company.

So, begin implementing case studies in your content marketing. Foster relationships with your clients and let them know that you would love to spotlight their company and customer success on your website. Then, leverage these stories in your email, search, and social media marketing to catapult your overall digital marketing efforts!

Conclusion – It’s Time for Digital Marketing Dominance!
Use this guide to overcome any mistakes your business may have made in its digital marketing. Be sure to test your efforts to see what produces and what needs to be modified. In due time, you’ll experience greater results in follower engagement, traffic, lead conversions, and sales.