5 Digital Marketing Mistakes Brands Should Avoid Making
Digital marketing mistakes are easy to make. We all know that digital marketing moves fast, and because of that, there’s a tendency to always look towards the next best thing and focus less on the lessons of the past.
But developing an awareness and understanding of past mistakes is one of the best ways to pave a path to future success. When we look at how brands have run their digital marketing campaigns in the past, we’ve noticed many of the same issues coming up time and time again. Being aware of the most common digital marketing mistakes can help ensure your brand avoids them in the future, so with that in mind, here are some of the biggest missteps brands routinely make.
1 – Failing to set goals
Before you jump into executing your digital marketing campaigns, you need to establish what your objectives are and outline a set of measurable goals that support each objective. Without goals, you’ll never be able to measure your success or identify areas where your campaigns need additional support or require a shift in strategy. It will also be difficult to justify future digital marketing investment if you can’t demonstrate progress against a set of goals.
2 – Not paying attention to your analytics
When it comes to digital marketing, there’s no such thing as “set it and forget it”. Campaigns require constant maintenance and oversight, and that means checking in regularly to measure performance. That’s not to say you need to sweat every single day-to-day change in your website visitor metrics, but you should be paying attention to macro trends. It’s important to focus on the whole picture when it comes to campaign and channel performance. For example, the channel that provides the highest volume of traffic may provide the lowest quality of leads, so looking just at referring traffic won’t give you a holistic understanding of performance.
3 – Failing to test
Many of us leap to conclusions about why something is or isn’t performing without doing the proper legwork to find out for sure. Leaping to conclusions about what works and what doesn’t is a mistake that can have serious ramifications for the success of campaigns. Making testing a priority is the best way to ensure marketing spends are put to good use and campaigns are given the best chance to thrive.
4 – Jumping on every hot new trend
In digital marketing, there’s always a delicate balance between staying current and jumping on the bandwagon. Staying on top of the trends and changes in the industry is an absolute necessity if you want to be successful in digital marketing.
That said, one mistake many brands make is to assume that just because a certain platform or technology is trendy, they should automatically add it to their marketing mix. The truth is that it’s a bad idea to blindly follow the latest trends without first gaining an understanding of how implementing a new idea or technology will benefit your brand. Be aware of the latest news in digital marketing, but don’t jump on a trend before you get a sense of how it will impact your strategy.
5 – Targeting the wrong audience
You have to spend time getting to know the audience you’re speaking to. What are their pain points? What types of language appeals to them? What words do they use to describe what they’re looking for? Knowing the answers to these questions is key to designing campaigns that will appeal to the people you’re trying to reach.
To Conclude:
Avoiding these top digital marketing mistakes will go a long way to helping your brand or business thrive in the digital space, and not just survive. If you feel like you may be in over your head, contact Blue Ridge today and let's see how we can help your digital marketing thrive.
Click here to view the full article via Forbes.com! — Article originally published on Forbes.com by Gabriel Shaoolian
What is Brand Identity? And How to Develop a Great One
First off, what is brand identity?
Just like your personal identity makes you uniquely you, your brand identity is what sets you apart from every other company or organization on the block. It is what shapes your company! But what exactly is brand identity? How do you shape a strong brand identity that takes your business to the next level?
The terms “brand,” “branding,” and “brand identity” are sometimes treated as interchangeable, but that’s not always the case.
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Brand is the perception of the company in the eyes of the world.
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Branding involves the marketing practice of actively shaping a distinctive brand.
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Brand identity is the collection of all brand elements that the company creates to portray the right image of itself to the consumer.
Let’s say you are a middle school student. As an awkward pre-adolescent, you want to be perceived as cool and get invited to sit at the best table in the cafeteria. But you can’t just force other people to have that image of you. In order to develop this brand, you need to do some work.
Maybe you start shaping up on your free throw skills, then you start working on a hilarious impression of Mrs. Smith, your history teacher. These actions are the work you’re putting towards developing your desired image; your branding.
Last but not least, you need to make sure you look the part. You save up your money to buy the newest hot basketball shoes everyone wants. You get a new hairstyle. You try out for (and join) the schools hottest sports team. Those tangible elements—the shoes, the hairstyle, the sports team membership— all of that is your brand identity.
Your brand identity is what makes you instantly recognizable to your customers. Your audience will associate your brand identity with your product or service, and that identity is what forges the connection between you and your customers, builds customer loyalty, and determines how your customers will perceive your brand.
So, how do you develop a strong brand identity? — Know who you are.
Before you know what tangible elements you want to make up your brand identity, you need to know who you are as a brand. This made up of a few key elements:
1. Your mission (the “why?”)
2. Your values (what beliefs or belief systems drive you?)
3. Your “brand voice” (how would your brand talk if it were an actual, human person)
4. Your brand personality (if your brand was a person, what would their personality be like?)
All of these things combined are what define your brand, and before you start building on your identity, it’s important you have a clear understanding of each of them.
