There are many mistakes companies and marketers alike make when breaking into digital marketing. Whether we’re talking about automotive SEO, PPC, or social media, you have to understand the fundamentals of each type of marketing strategy before you can truly create successful campaigns.
If your business is looking to invest time and money into a new digital marketing strategy, in order to succeed, you need to avoid these five basic mistakes:
Thinking in Terms of Pure Traffic and Volume of Rankings
When you’re just starting out in digital marketing, building traffic can be addictive. But like any addiction, it’s unhealthy.
Your goal should be to grow traffic, but do you know where the traffic is coming from and who your audience is? We’ve talked about targeting by location and interest many times before on the Wikimotive blog, but it really is one of the most important things to consider.
And the same is true of content, whether it be on-site, or on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Creating content is not about volume anymore. Customers expect a higher quality from businesses, and throwing content at them hoping something sticks is the worst approach you can take.
Instead, focus on creating content you’d want to click on or share if you were a potential customer. That doesn’t mean post irrelevant content, it means get your customers excited about your products.
Trying to Appeal to Everyone on Social Media
Unless you’re a national or international brand, you can’t appeal to everyone. And even if you are, you still have an audience with specific interests.
Take the time to test the waters and keep track of what does and doesn’t work. If you’re a car dealer, reach out to your local community while reinforcing your inventory by posting content that inadvertently helps sell more cars. You don’t have to always focus on an actual piece of inventory or the idea of “SELL, SELL, SELL” in order to generate real leads.
With the tools Facebook and other social media sites are developing for businesses, it’s becoming easier and easier for local and small businesses to target the people who are in the market for a car or have an interest that matches up with your current customer base.
Not Investing Enough or Going the Cheap Route
More money is not always the answer to digital marketing problems, but when a service’s cost seems unnaturally low for the work required, you can guess the results.
In order to succeed with SEO, PPC, or social media, you have to invest. SEO requires custom attention and strategies, PPC requires a multitude of campaigns, and social media is vastly becoming pay to play.
The harsh reality is that your business has to spend money to make money. You understand how that works with traditional marketing, and the same principles apply to digital marketing.
Failing to Understand Statistics and ROI
Many digital marketing professionals will show businesses results without delving deep into the statistics behind those results. For instance, you can be at the top of page 1 for 1000 different searches on Google and never see a single lead or sale as a result.
Why is that?
Because no one is actually searching for the terms your automotive SEO company is working on. That’s why it seems so easy for them to achieve, and why you’re not seeing more sales.
Take the time to access and assess your website’s analytics and line those up with incoming leads and sales. The ROI is often hard to pin down, and won’t happen overnight, but you know there is a point where something has got to give.
Not Being Patient Enough with New Strategies
Like I said, ROI doesn’t happen overnight. Patience with your digital marketing company or new internal marketing strategies is crucial to seeing real results.
SEO and social media can be particularly slow at the start of a new campaign. It takes time to build search engine authority and to grow an audience worth marketing to on several different social media sites.
If you want to separate yourself from the competition, however, SEO and social media are the keys to digital marketing success.