Note: This blog post is a sponsored conversation written by Lynn Smythe, the Founder and Chief Blogger for The Creative Cottage lifestyle blog. The opinions, thoughts, ideas and text are all mine.
There are many online marketing mistakes you can make, some of which cost you time and others, which cost you money. The main goal of online marketing is to get your product or service noticed and to put it in the view of as many people as possible. Using the wrong strategy could prevent this from happening as quickly as you would like, and is one of the reasons that so many new startup businesses in the US fail in the first 12 months.
Research Your Target Audience
The first thing you need to decide is who your product or service is aimed at and those are the people you need to connect with. By not researching where you should be aiming your marketing, you could be missing out on many potential customers.
This really is important, as you cannot expect to sell snow bibs to people who live in South Florida, or grass seeds to people who live in the desert. If your product is meant for college students, or for working moms, that is who you need to target your marketing on.
You should also research your competitors, as failing to do so could mean you make the same mistakes as they do. Look at what you think they may be doing wrong then alter your marketing strategy if necessary.
This is one of the very basics of a good marketing strategy but if you are finding this a daunting prospect you can complete an online MBA in marketing in less than a year. The more tools you have in your arsenal, the more successful you will be.
Engaging And User-Friendly Website
Your website must be engaging if you want viewers to spend more than a couple of seconds looking at it. If there is not something that catches their eye, they will quickly move to the next site, which will increase your bounce rate when looking at your Google Analytics. Your website could be the first time a viewer sees your brand so your home page needs to have something that will hold their attention. It is said that people who spend more than 10 seconds the first time they visit a website are more likely to convert to customers.
It also needs to be very user-friendly, as if it is not the users will get frustrated and leave without bothering to come back. If they want to move to another part of the site it should be easy for them to find and not take a long time to load. Users have become used to the Internet reacting quickly and if your site takes more than a couple of seconds to load or to move from one page to another, they will lose patience with it and move on.
Your website should provide a good user experience or your business might as well close its doors now. To attract the viewers to your site to start with it need to be rich with keywords for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, although you should not overdo them as the search engines don’t like keyword stuffing. If you want to move up the search engine ranking make sure you upload new content regularly so they know your site is still relevant, and include videos and images as well as written content. Businesses that ignore SEO will suffer from a lack of interest in their site.
Don’t Ignore Social Media
It took a while for businesses to realize the marketing potential of social media, but now there are very few businesses without a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or a combination of them all. Platforms such as these, and of course, the others like YouTube, and Instagram can reach far more people than any other method, and at a much lower cost.
Facebook has more than 2 billion registered users, and the others all have many hundreds of thousands each. Many millions of people log in to their social media accounts every day and although you cannot expect every one of these to see your posts, potentially many thousands could.
Make sure you reply to any comments in a positive way, and that not every post you do is promotional. Viewers will become customers if you can solve a problem for them, such as where to buy a certain product, and you can have a post about these things without advertising your brand every time. Just make sure there is a link to your webpage at the end of the post and that will get more viewers to see what you are selling.
You should also ensure that all your posts are easy to share, as you need to make it easy for viewers to pass your post to their connections. It is also a mistake to ignore any new platform, as they do tend to grow very quickly. Being one of the first businesses on them can give you a big advantage.
Ignoring social media is a mistake that no company should make, whether yours is a new startup or an existing business that has been running for some time.
Building Your Email List
You should compile an email list of as many viewers as you can. Perhaps give them a small discount on their first order when they sign up for your newsletter. Email marketing is a great way to connect with existing customers as well as potential new ones and could help to bring you repeat business.
The email you sent should always be of interest to those who read it and have a link to your website included. The emails can be used to announce the launch of a new product, to let them know about a special promotion or just to say something simple, like ‘Hi, how are you today?’
The whole point is that they are a very easy way to keep in touch with people and businesses that do not use email marketing are losing a great opportunity.
Do not be put off by thinking you will have to sit and send thousands of emails yourself. There are online sites that will do this for you. You just create the email and these platforms will send out however many thousands you want to go. Often, the first couple of thousand are free, but once you pass that number it is still a cheap way to stay in contact with your customers.
Get Your Marketing Plan in Place
A marketing plan is a crucial part of your businesses success and without one, you could be wasting time, effort, and money. Sporadic marketing when ‘you have time’ will not have the effect you want and the growth of your business will stall. You will not really be able to tell what marketing is working best for you and all that will happen is that your efforts will not produce results.
A planned approach will be much more successful and will allow you to find out which areas are working the best. There are tools such as Google Analytics to help you find this information very easily.
Do not set your expectations too high, but put together a long-term marketing plan with short terms objectives. You should not think that marketing plans are only for big business. Every business needs to work on their marketing in a controlled manner if you are to beat the competition.
Not having the time to put a plan together is not a feasible excuse either. You need to make the time and then you will reap the benefits of a marketing plan. If you are unsure where to start, either complete an online course in marketing or seek help from the professionals.
Learn From Your Mistakes
Online marketing is like everything else in life, you will make mistakes and fail. The people that do not learn from them are the ones that will fail as they tend to repeat the errors again and again. You can also learn from mistakes that other businesses make with their marketing, and when you see something not working for another business, consider if it would be the same for you before you invest time or money in it.
All of this will be a learning process, and if you want your business to succeed to have to be prepared to spend the time and money to get your brand recognized whenever it is seen.
If you have a logo that is original but easily recognized, this will help a great deal. Businesses that make their logo overcomplicated, or have a name that is easily misspelled, will lose out on traffic to their website because viewers will have difficulty finding them.
When you are ready to start marketing a new startup, or trying to improve an existing business, remember that whatever strategy you use will reflect on your brand. Cheap and tacky marketing equals cheap and tacky products as far as consumers are concerned, and this applies to your website, your social media posts, your emails and anything else that shows your brand. It is worth investing some money to give a good impression because that helps to build trust and in turn will win your more customers.
+ There are no comments
Add yours