9 Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes Every Business Leader Should Know

Every business leader needs to be aware of the exponential rise in online marketing. In a seven-year period, the global digital marketing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7%. If you don’t see how digital marketing is impacting your business, or you don’t have a single local expert to help you understand the crucial business concepts that the digital revolution represents, you are going to miss out on the opportunity to make your business grow, and to expand your profits.

As leading digital marketing experts in our various fields of digital marketing, digital marketing technology, website and application development, and eCommerce experience I have put together a special list of what I’m calling the “9 Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes Every Business Leader Should Know“, that focuses on the most crucial business concepts of the digital revolution, and help you deal with them. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

1. Hiring the wrong kind of expert

Remember that every business today is a combination of different disciplines, and every person will bring a different skill set. Being able to relate to the enterprise customers using digital techniques is the key because the highest level of success will be achieved when your team members understand their role in your enterprise. So hire the right expert, whether that is the right employee, subcontractor, or vendor.

2. A bad network effect

Networks, in today’s day and age, have the ability to increase sales, improve brand image, and bring good values to your customers and employees. What’s important to remember is that you need a large, active, and loyal customer base to generate a healthy ROI. Let’s face it, it’s hard to get that for a small online business. So, it makes sense for the need to increase your “network” to have an “effect” on them, to be able to provide them with your products and services and to keep them as on-going customers.

The point? The greater your network, the more effective you’ll be and have.

3. Lack of knowledge about the future

One of the worst things you can do to your business is to fail to understand the future of it. You might be an expert in the company you founded, but the world around you is changing, and the changing world needs a whole new approach to business, and to business strategies. (see #10)

• The point is, you provide a service and/or products or both, but will you always just provide the same product and services?
• Will you integrate and add new services and/or products to your offerings?
• Do you understand the market for these new products and services in order to stay competitive or even compete in space?

Knowing your business’s future is crucial to the success, especially your exit strategies for you business owners out there.

4. Ignorance of the digital future

This is HUGE!! I see this over and over again in almost every C-Suite I consult with. Especially you Fortune 500s out there, so, listen up. One of the biggest mistakes organizations in digital marketing is making is spending all their time communicating with the past. Be it social media, web analytics, data analytics, or the building of an online presence, these three online marketing strategies are not reliable to be relied upon. Many organizations spend their time, money, and resources on a subset of these strategies, rather than focusing on the essentials. Learn from your past but your eyes should be on the digital future. 2020 and our global COVID pandemic should be enough for any leader to realize this.

5. Strategic ignorance

The following are things that must never be ignored when deciding how to properly operate in this rapidly evolving digital world. The experts have focused their attention on some key areas, but as you can see, they left out others. Use this as a guideline for how to answer these questions. Pay attention to Digital landscapes and stop ignoring them, only focusing on real world advertising (print, radio, television).

6. Passive vs. Active advertising

You can never rely on passive advertising. There is no place on the Internet for this. There is no such thing as such a thing as passive advertising. More often than not, it will bring you advertisements designed to try to lure you back to your website. It will force you to pay more money. These two options are a no-go. You must be proactive and always “cut and paste.”

7. Use optimization software

Software optimization (also known as web-mastering) is a crucial component for many entrepreneurs. There is no point in spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to try and build your own social network marketing platform for your business when you can find many different platforms out there that can do the job tasks like scheduling and monitoring in less time and at a lower cost. It is not rocket science and you have the tools at your disposal to make it happen. Check out Monstrous.Digital or some of the many other free alternatives out there.

8. Use Search Engines with AdWords

It is far too easy to find negative search terms. Unfortunately, you can be exposed to negative search terms on the Internet even if you don’t use ad-block software. A big part of your business is to create good titles, descriptions, and keywords. If you are not running AdWords, you must! Read that again, “You Must!”. While your PPC ads are running, Search engines will take care of the rest of your SEO strategy and you can focus on the good stuff like running your business.

9. Use your Google Analytics to monitor and identify the places where your product and website are being abused, or are downright terrible

Users on Google are extremely suspicious of competitors’ websites and they will abuse the information available to them. With Google’s much more sophisticated analytics tools, you can track the actions of the searcher and the links they click. Make sure your site is not abused and you will build more trust, encourage conversions, and spend more money on better advertising.

Why? Like PPC Ads, you must! A better website, higher DA (domain authority), which in turn means higher rank over time. Think of it this way, why should Google rank your website, page, content over your competitors? Takes the math out of the equation, doesn’t it?

Get up to speed with our Google Analytics 101 guides:

PART 1: Google Analytics 101
PART 2: Google Analytics 101.

Conclusion

Your goal is to make your product feel real and authentically valuable. You must get this right. Make sure you have a strong site that is immediately familiar. Your homepage should be simple and well organized. If it is not, it will no longer seem authentic. However, make sure you have a compelling product. A compelling product means a compelling DA (domain authority). A compelling DA, means higher rank and thus, continues the circle of digital life.

Building trust with your customers can be a challenge. However, you must be alert and proactive to stay ahead of the competition. The more you are transparent about what you do and what you stand for, the more you will make them feel your products and your company are legitimate.

You are not alone. Never fear, we’ll help. Let’s talk!