Let’s whizz through some of the most prevalent digital marketing strategy failures and how to avoid them. If you can cut these common errors out of your work, you’ll likely improve your chances of success.
One of the great advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing is that we can accurately measure the effects of many of our actions. In a PPC campaign we can view conversions in real-time; in SEO, we can use tools to measure how our websites are ranking in web searches; and we can use web analytics to see which website content is drawing in the highest number of sales leads. Gaining comparable insights into a traditional poster campaign would be nigh-on impossible.
Digital offers incredible measurement opportunities for marketers. Your competitors will likely be taking these opportunities – and so must you. Take a look at our guide to a tried and tested effective measurement framework and start learning how you can put one to work for your organisation.
Digital marketing and technology are changing at an exponential rate. This means that as digital marketers, we can never afford to get too comfortable with the status quo. What works for your business today almost certainly will not in a few years’ or even a few months’ time.
Looking ahead to the next few years, we can see video gaining in importance (accounting for 75% of mobile traffic by 2020), SEO being significantly affected by growing use of voice search, and QR codes coming back with a bang.
All these things may or may not happen. What we’re trying to illustrate is that digital marketers must be ready to change with the times. To this end, we suggest you pursue an iterative digital strategy, using short-term tactics that contribute towards long-term objectives.
The changeable nature of digital marketing has encouraged many in our industry to become multi-skilled, with specialisms in certain areas and competencies in others. A classic example of this would be a “T-shaped” person who has a deep knowledge of AdWords and less developed proficiencies in copywriting and web design.
Understanding the skills profile of each team member and your team as a whole will empower you to make enlightened decisions about how to use the talent at your disposal. Failure to do so could result in skills gaps that you might have been able to plug with effective on-the-job training.
Target Internet offers a free tool called the Digital Marketing Skills Benchmark, which uses themed questions to create a report on an individual or team’s digital marketing proficiency. Try it out to see how your skills profile stacks up.