You're doing the best you can, given the circumstances. You're likely stretched thin with limited resources, and fatigued by the ever changing landscape of digital marketing.
You're only human. Life is trial and error. We all make mistakes, but wisdom is not making the same mistakes again. When it comes to digital marketing, there's some mistakes that will ruin most your efforts. You can do more with less (mistakes):
Not Knowing Your Audience
First question I ask any client - "Who's the audience?" Few have market research on their customers. But, it's easy to get some insights - Ask the sales team what they know. Better yet, ask a few customers some simple questions. Some information is better than none. When guessing how best to target an audience, try to make an educated guess. An audience targeting tool I sometimes use is Spark Social.
Suffering Shiny Object Syndrome
If there's one thing marketers love it's jumping on trends. Try this, try that, always looking for our next fix. We're notorious for going wide instead of deep. Unfortunately, when you try too many things you don't end up doing a good job at any of them. Focus on one or two channels where you know your customers likely are. You don't have to be trendy, you need to be relevant: Right message, in the right place, at the right time.
Lack of Performance Tracking
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. It's tough to know what's working when there's no key performance indicators or attribution tracking. Make use of tracking pixels provided by the big ad platforms and use UTM parameters on your links so you know what channels are driving traffic. Set up conversion tracking on your forms and checkout pages. It can get technical so that's why many skip this step, but that's a big mistake especially if you're paying for advertising.
Underfunding Advertising Spend
The organic reach of social media posts and website content is small and getting smaller. Only 1 - 2% of your followers are seeing your social posts and AI overviews in search results are cannibalizing website visits. It's futile to spend hours on content if nobody views it. You need to pay for digital advertising, period. Companies will spend thousands on a radio ad or trade show booth, so treat digital ads with the same or more importance.
If your organization needs digital marketing, we're glad to help. Deep Dish Digital always looks out for the best interest of clients even if that means referring them to somebody better suited. You can contact us by sending an email or calling 306-229-9437.
