The Halloween season is here and a great marketing opportunity is near. Ghosts, witches, cemeteries, and abandoned houses can be pretty haunting, but what’s scarier is that there are so many marketing mistakes still haunting marketers. Today, marketers continue to make the same old mistakes with their strategies and ignore the warning signs. Customers are experiencing nightmares when they visit your website and but you may not even realize that they’re running to the competition! Focusing efforts and budgets in different places are frightening the growth of your business and it’s time to revive your digital presence back to life.
Discover 9 spooky marketing mistakes to avoid and what to do instead for this Halloween season and beyond.
Mistake #1: Ignoring Local Listings
Mistake: Ignoring your potential customers with absent, haunted local listing profiles are hurting your online reputation and keeping your business as an online secret. An empty or an inaccurate profile will hurt your search engine rankings and online visibility. Today, marketing is more than just about updating your website.
Image Credit: http://www.ahatechnocrats.com/seo-services/local-listing/
Instead: Manage your business local listings to ensure your business information is accurate to help drive visits, improve your online reputation, and SEO. Claiming a profile on business directory sites such as Google, Yelp, and Yellowpages can help you stand out as a reputable local business. Use your business profile to update your operating hours, address, photos, phone number, website URL, and more to keep your business updated and help customers can find you.
Mistake #2: Buying Social Media Followers
Mistake: Becoming an internet zombie by buying followers and fans to look more reputable and well-established. It may seem like a great idea at first to have a ton of followers, but not all social metrics are created equal. Paying a tool to get you hundreds or thousands of likes or followers from fake accounts makes you look like a zombie account. Your social account will be filled with spam, low to no engagement, and a decreasing online reputation. Doesn’t sound like it’s fun to be a zombie.
Image Credit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-business-digital-zombie-denise-marie-whitmore/
Instead: Since consumers are becoming more social media savvy, they can tell if you’ve bought fake followers. Instead, build an authentic network by frequently engaging with your audience and providing real value through your content. Engagement numbers matter more than follower numbers.
Mistake #3:Copying Competitor’s Content
Mistake:Copying website content from competition doesn’t work brew with Google. It may seem like an easy tactic to engage with visitors or compete against other marketers in the marketplace but the potential penalties aren’t worth the trouble. Search engines are becoming more aware of duplicate website content so you’re probably wasting your time, money, and won’t help improve rankings anytime soon.
Image Credit: https://www.singlegrain.com/blog-posts/content-marketing/the-art-of-ethical-content-stealing/
Instead:Don’t be a content theft. Instead, you should create original, relevant content to avoid Google penalties, accurately fit your potential customer’s needs, and stand out from the competition. Writing authentic content takes time but it can be worthwhile for your brand in the long run.
Mistake #4: Posting Video Content on One Platform
Mistake: There are not enough eyes on your video content because you’re posting it in one place, at one time.
Resource: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/seamless-pattern-halloween-eyeballs-326545778
Instead: Consumer’s eyes are everywhere. Some watch short videos on Instagram or long videos on Facebook. Just like your written content, share your video content on multiple platforms so it can get more views and reach more audiences. There isn’t one perfect platform to use but utilize your buyer’s persona to post video content on platforms that are best for your brand. Know where your consumers will most likely be and consider what stage of the buyer’s journey they are currently going through.
Mistake #5: Not Optimized for Mobile
Mistake:Forgetting about your consumer experiences on mobile devices is a real-life horror story. Losing website visits and potential sales all due to a poorly optimized mobile site is a bad experience you’ll want to avoid.
Image Credit: http://blog.leonardo.com/mobile-compatible-vs-mobile-optimized/
Instead:Optimize every part of your digital marketing strategy for mobile especially since consumers perform more searches on mobile than desktops. It’s important to realize that users on mobile typically go through a different experience than desktop users. They expect to easily navigate through your website without a problem. If they can’t find what they are looking for in 3 seconds or less than they will go to the competition. Also, your content should be easy to read, focuses on your brand’s key messaging, and provides a great user experience. Mobile optimization is a simple way to keep users on your website and increase the metrics you’ve previously overlooked.
Mistake #6: Having a Generic Brand Voice
Mistake: Having a generic brand voice is sucking the life out of your consumers.
Resource: https://ronsamazingstories.blog/2016/11/
Image Credit: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/how-to-develop-a-brand-voice-for-your-email-marketing
Instead: Uniquely create your brand voice around the voice of your potential buyers and use it consistently. Know who you’re speaking to, what you’re saying, and how you’re saying it. Your brand voice should be consistent, clear, authentic, engaging, savvy and so much more across all of your messaging. Utilize your brand persona and current marketing strategies to assess your voice’s direction.
Mistake #7: A Mummified Resource Center
Mistake: Having a resource center that goes undisturbed and wrapped up in an empty tomb.
Image Credit: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/vintage-old-books-covered-in-cobwebs-royalty-free-image/108175740
Instead: Don’t let your online resources stay buried. Continuously update your resource center to provide visitors with educational content, in a digestible format. If any visitors have questions, your resource content can address the questions before they even try contacting you. You’ll look like a reputable, digital influencer. It can help visitors stay on your website, search around, and universally improve your website’s performance.
Mistake #8: Ignoring Data
Mistake: Continuing to do more and ignoring to utilize marketing data that’s already there.
Image Credit: http://wilsonprintingusa.com/learn-marketing/business-envelopes-biggest-missed-opportunity/
Instead: Utilize the valuable data you already have to learn from your business, consumers, and competition. Data can simplify your decision process and help you update your most effective marketing materials related to current goals. For an example: add a video to a landing page for SEO, improve an eBook, optimize a blog post, etc. Your data insights can provide you a small and big picture, it just depends on what areas you want to update.
Mistake #9: Not Testing
Mistake: Never a/b testing landing pages, ads, form fields, webinars, etc. performances will never help you learn and improve from your mistakes. You don’t want to become an invisible marketer.
Image Credit: https://www.sharethis.com/platform/social-ab/
Instead: Create tests to see which variations of your materials statistically works best for the conversion goals you’re trying to track. Compare your control test to the variation test to see which experience works better for consumers. Learn from this data to see what you can do to attract more conversions, lower bounce rates, have a higher increase of the average time on a page, etc. It could be to change a small element like a CTA button color or to make a big change like changing a page’s content.
Conclusion
Digital marketing can be scary but have no fear! Starting this Halloween season, don’t let these simple marketing mistakes haunt you. Look for the early warning signs so you can avoid making the same old mistakes again and again. Try out the latest trends and technologies to find any hidden treats. The digital world is always changing, so always continue to adapt and your business will become alive again!
