Online Marketing Mistakes You Can Make (But Really Shouldn’t in 2023)

The area of marketing is so wide that making any mistakes is inevitable. No matter if you use tools for automation, or do everything manually: you can, and more likely – will, make online marketing mistakes. 

Customer service, influencer marketing, link building or analytics are just a few key elements of many social media strategies. It turns out, though, that they may be the most troublesome for many brands. 

We’ve decided to talk to those who breathe marketing. We’ve asked them what, in their opinion, is the most crucial online marketing mistake.

Here’s what they told us. 

Wasting the potential of your links

While sharing any links, for example, via social media, you should use shortened URLs with superpowers.

This way, you can add:
retargeting pixels – create a custom audience and reach people who clicked your links;
CTAs – drive traffic to your product pages;
pop-up – grow your newsletter list faster;
chatbox – talk to your visitors and take advantage of conversational commerce.

The sky is the limit! You can add all sort of widgets to your links and boost performance. 

Not knowing your customers

With more than a decade of digital marketing under my belt, I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t experienced my fair share of marketing mishaps. For me, the biggest one was probably making assumptions about our customer demographics.
Don’t believe me? According to Google, 40 percent of those who purchase baby products live in homes without children.

Even if you think you know your customer base, take the time to define the characteristics of your target audience and then segment them into different customer profiles—casting a broad net and targeting everyone is a surefire way to burn through your marketing budget fast.

Ignoring qualitative data

Google Analytics can tell you what’s going on, but it won’t tell you why it’s happening. In order to come up with a relevant solution for a problem, you need to get to know your users first. Session recording apps can be your superpower. It’s a great tool to get more context about the performance of your campaigns.

What’s more, you can also use session replays to analyze your marketing funnels.

Avoiding content repurposing

The production of original and value-driven content should be a focus of any effective content marketing campaign.

The regular posting of unique content such as videos or images altered thru photo editor or picture cleanup tool would inform potential customers that your brand exists, and that it is a source of valuable information.

Developing unique content on a daily basis is time consuming and expensive. Lessen this expense and generate more value to your brand by repurposing your existing content. 

A word of warning: Duplicate content can have a negative effect on your website’s search engine ranking, but only when large blocks of text are duplicated in an effort to trick search engines. Effective content repurposing can include turning an existing blog entry into a useful infographic or linking to existing content on social media platforms. Gathering multiple postings into one larger post – with minimal rewriting – is useful as well. Just make sure the repurposed content is evergreen in nature.

I could recognize three mistakes…

Some of the digital marketing mistakes that I see while conducting competitor research include poor knowledge of the SEO trends, difficult website navigation, and a lack of interactive content. 

When it comes to the SEO, I often discover that businesses struggle with doing content SEO optimization. Google changes its algorithms regularly, and it could be hard to keep up with everything, so a lot of content quickly becomes outdated or not optimized for search intent, etc.

Next, I’ve seen some amazing ads and content marketing pieces, but when you click on them and land on a website, it’s very hard to know your way around.. In many cases, the navigation on a website or a landing page is unnecessarily difficult. No wonder so many sites have high bounce rates even despite creating great content.

Lastly, I think that businesses should invest more in interactive content like quizzes. The evidence that it produces higher engaging rates is indisputable but there are so many companies that choose to ignore it altogether. 

Focusing on quantity

Research shows that – with the amount of time they average on a webpage – visitors have time to read at most 28 percent of the content they encounter. Most won’t read that much. Given that statistic, it can be tempting to overload customers with a barrage of content in the hopes that some of it might stick. That approach is misguided at best. When you bombard your customers with content, you inevitably increase your bounce rate.

Unique visitors are not nearly as important as are returning, brand-loyal customers. Building brand loyalty means instilling trust, which results from delivering valuable content. Instead of focusing on prolific content production, focus on its quality. Discover your target audience and speak directly to them. Assume they know the basics and focus on solving their problems. Consistent and effective content helps you build a solid customer base over time.

Avoiding social media

Social media is the key nowadays and I can’t believe that so many brands simply avoid making the most of this opportunity! Being on social media is no longer about presence only: you need to be active. Test out some new additions to your strategy, keep engaging your audience, get to know them better. If you don’t do any of these things, and you stay away from social media with your brand, you lose a lot. 

Neglecting mobile users

The number of mistakes that people make when marketing their company is enough to fill a book, but there are a few common ones that you can easily avoid. The first and arguably most common one is the failure to consider mobile users.More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices rather than desktops, so be sure to optimize your website and marketing campaigns accordingly.

Another common mistake that new marketers make is setting a code in which they “never offer a discount.”Some people think that offering a discount devalues their product, but in reality, it’s one of the quickest ways to get new customers that will keep coming back — even when regular pricing resumes.

The third crucial marketing mistake that a lot of companies make is the lack of a blog. You might be wondering why blogging is so important.Well, in addition to the massive traffic potential that you get by adding a blog to your site, you’ll also build credibility with readers as you continue to publish informative articles.There are many more mistakes out there, but these three are the most critical.

Generalization is THE mistake

Marketers direct their message to everyone, hoping that their target group will be found in this group. A good marketer knows with whom he conducts a dialogue and adjusts his communication so that a potential client feels caring, is interested and willing to perform the action we want.

Putting your customers… last

With over 7 years of digital marketing experience, I’ve found that most companies want to promote their products on social media, but they forget to put their customers first. In other words, just a few of small businesses provide customer support on social media.

However, it’s easier for users to call out brands on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and they lose interest in your brand when it takes days (or weeks) to get a reply from your company. Thus, it’s important to monitor customer requests if you promote your business on social media.

Stop learning

You never can STOP learning marketing. Marketing is such a dynamic field that it is impossible to “learn” it over a period of time. You need to be up to date with the latest news and trends such as attraction marketing, don’t be scared of implementing them, don’t ignore what’s going on in the industry. Well, unless you want to watch your competitors back – I guess not.

Implement tools (for example digital asset management software) to make your work easier, sometimes you’re simply not aware how much they can change. 

Presenting poor copy efforts

The biggest mistake that I see businesses making online nowadays is with their copy. Most business owners focus on selling too much and they swamp the visitor with their features. Instead, they should take the position of the customer and focus on the benefits.

In other words, you should write about what the customer gets and not what you provide to the customer. So, instead of “We save you money and time by doing your website maintenance” try writing “Save time and money by outsourcing your website maintenance”. It’s a small difference but a significant one.

Neglecting a website speed

I see a lot of amazing websites that do not care about the loading time. Google can put a penalty or a bonus to your rank in search results, based on the time your website needs to load. If your website runs on WordPress, then in most cases it’s really easy to improve it’s speed. You can use tools like Page Speed Insights from Google to check the website score (0 to 100). If it’s anything below 50, Google can put a penalty on your website. However, if it’s 80+, you’ve done a good job already and there’s nothing to worry about.

To speed-up your website a little bit, you can use WordPress plugins like Autoptimize, Short Pixels and WP Super Cache. They are free to install and can speed up a lot of content on your page, which will likely reduce the loading time.And remember – page speed insights give you different scores for mobile and desktop loading times.

Not thinking about word-of-mouth

When we make decisions, we care about what others think and say. 80% of all purchases (B2B and B2c) involve some sort of word-of-mouth recommendation. Word-of-mouth is crucial, but companies blunder into mistakes when they:

START A FIGHT ONLINE – There are angry reviews and online trolls, but the worst thing a brand can do is start a fight. It makes the brand look bad and exposes them to a witch hunt. Far better to leave a classy, sincere reply – engage, but know the world is watching.

FORGET TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES – Companies sometimes do forget to promote their own initiatives.

DON’T TAP INTO WORD OF MOUTH: Coaxing customers into talking about you is powerful marketing. It can be in the form of reviews, or a shareable moment, or even a hashtag. Word-of-mouth from a customer is more authentic and valuable than brand advertisements.

Mistakes arise when companies fail to consider the good – and the bad – effects of word-of-mouth.

Writing (only) for SEO

One of the most common mistake I see when it comes to content creation is writing solely for the search engines. 

Sure, SEO-optimized content is crucial if you want to rank higher, but I often see businesses investing into poorly written, generic articles just because they see a chance to rank for certain keywords and phrases. That’s just bad for everyone. When the intention to provide real value for the readers is not there, the content will not be successful. 

It’s getting even more important to write with the user intent in mind and always provide a unique angle or perspective, as well as solid data to back up your writing if you want people to trust you and keep coming back.

Key takeaways & other ideas to avoid online marketing mistakes

There are so many things you can test! 

• Don’t forget about effective social media marketing – with the opportunities nowadays, it can take your brand places. 
• Think out of the box. For example, if your competitors focus a lot on one social media platform, think about conquering a different one. If they don’t send any SMS campaigns, stand out and be the first one who does. 
• Customer service and marketing go hand in hand. It’s high time for you to think about introducing some innovative solutions to make your work a breeze – Trustisto may be one of them. 

Good luck!