How is your marketing serving your business? Make sure that you avoid these rookie mistakes.
You have a website, and you want the world to see it and to purchase your products. You know that inbound marketing can draw your customers in with great content, and you hope that they'll stay around and buy. But are you setting yourself up for success? Entering the world of web-based marketing can be very exciting, but don't let your excitement get in the way of a steady and savvy business plan. Here are some common rookie marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. You Set Overly-Optimistic Goals
Goals are good, but getting your web presence moving is a huge undertaking, and it's one that's best done at a slow and steady pace. Think about your image, your message, and the venues that are best for you. If your goals are too big, you may feel like giving up altogether. Consider where you want to put your focus in these first weeks on the web. You may not be a Twitter superstar or a top tier blogger in week one, but by setting small but realistic goals and working towards them you have a chance to take steps towards a solid web presence.
2. You Forget About Your Existing Resources
Out with the old? Even if you have an outdated web site or have been focused on more traditional advertising methods, you probably have some gems that you'd like to keep around. Whether it's a deep understanding of your customer demographics or some outstanding web text, remember to keep what serves you as you remodel your web presence.
3. You Don't Understand Your Customers
Inbound marketing is all about developing a thorough understanding of your customers so that you can speak directly to them. Create profiles of your customer groups, survey these groups, and look at the keywords that they use in searches. Use your customer information to build your site, blog, and social media presence. Target your blog posts and your email lists so that those who get to the site and the posts want to be there and want to buy.
A blog is a venue to share fresh ideas with prospective customers: use it wisely, and use it often.
4. You Don't Have a Blog
A web site is not a pamphlet or a business card, it's a living document. While your site may be exceptional, you'll draw in much more traffic if it's exceptional over and over again. To create a venue for your great content, you need a blog. Blogging will allow you to reach out to your audience over and over again in a diversity of ways, using the keywords that your prospective customers are seeking. With a blog, you have multiple opportunities to show that you're an authority in your field and to approach it in a diversity of ways.
5. You Don't Measure Your Results
Inbound marketing is a good way to market, right? How do you know? When you're working on your inbound marketing strategy, make sure that you plan how you're going to analyze your results. By using analysis tools like Hubspot that help you understand who your customers are, you'll be able to inform your future blog posts. That way, you'll achieve your ultimate inbound marketing goal: converting readers to leads and leads into customers.
Inbound marketing is a way to build your digital community, reaching out to those who need your information and building a customer base that trusts what you have to say. If you're new and looking for help with your inbound marketing, visit Digital Inbound today.
