5 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes & How To Avoid Them

June 21, 2017

Creating a reputation and optimizing your brand is difficult, and takes time and resources. There are several elements business owners have to juggle, and the process of putting the business on the map can be overwhelming for many. But this isn’t where you quit. Consider working with a digital marketing agency to help achieve your marketing goals, and look out for common digital marketing mishaps. These five mistakes will help you avoid a potential disaster, and help your business navigate the tricky waters of digital marketing:

1) Knowing When To Use A Paywall

A common practice, especially among publishers, is to use a paywall that allows users to pay for premium content. Brands like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are charging for content, and this gives the impression that the paywall concept will work for many others. But these are big companies who can afford to test the paywall theory — regardless of whether you host credible, cutting-edge content, if the brand isn’t recognized, people won’t pay.

As an alternative to creating a paywall, follow in the footsteps of companies like Simply Measured, whose premium subscription comes in the form of social promotion. To get their services, the company only requires that users tweet about them. After users sign up and are familiar with the products, they then can upsell them on other premium services. Alternatively, give a sampling of your service and allow users to pay for the full product. This is what companies like Dropbox do with their product: customers are allotted a certain amount of free space before they have to pay for more.

2) Ignoring SEO

No business should go without the benefits of SEO, especially small business and startups. Search engine optimization helps align these companies to better attract customers who are actively seeking information and services. In that sense, SEO is an investment – and it’s been likened to real estate investments by many. Unfortunately, many businesses put SEO on the backburner.

The fact is, having high placement in search engine results is more important now than ever. There are plenty of ways to go about creating an effective SEO strategy. In addition to hiring a digital marketing agency, you can hire a freelancer on sites like Upwork or, if you have the time, read up on free SEO resources and spend some time teaching yourself new principles.

3) Not Having A Blog

Content marketing is so important. Regardless of the kind of service or products you offer, a blog is necessary to complement it and give search engines more to crawl on your site, increasing your SEO. The company Kissmetrics (which sells a customer engagement automation platform among other things) receives 70% traffic to its blog, which then helps them make sells on actual products. You can create a great blog by hosting it on your domain and publishing quality content that readers will enjoy. Don’t have the time to write blog posts? Don’t feel confident in your writing abilities? No problem. Hiring freelancers for writing services is simple across several platforms, from Upwork to Craigslist.

4) Ignoring Local Strategies

Now is a better time than ever to take advantage of your location. Potential customers frequently use Google to find services and products in their general area. For example, someone might search for “best bakery in San Diego” or “coffee shops in Bushwick.” You want to be the first company that appears. To best optimize your site for local search, you can do several things such as claim listings and put your business information into local directories. This ensures that you’re appearing in front of the most relevant audience. These searchers want services in the immediate area, and are going to go somewhere – why send them to your competition?

5) Not Having A Real Marketing Strategy In Place

To really take advantage of digital marketing opportunities, you’ll need to have a solid marketing plan in place. This should outline how you’ll increase SEO, attract customers, run your social media pages, and create great first impressions with your web design. This plan will help guide you to great results, and keep you on target with each day. This marketing strategy should be accompanied by a way to analyze your results and see what’s working and what isn’t. If you’re working with a digital marketing agency, they’ll be the providers of a comprehensive marketing plan, created in collaboration with your team.