3 Mistakes Small Businesses Make With Digital Marketing
As a startup or small business owner, it can be tricky to keep on top of your digital marketing. With a huge range of tools, services and platforms available, it’s tempting to think that you’re missing out on opportunities if you’re not using every single one of them.
However, while there is some truth in that, it can actually harm your business by stretching your resources too thin and not dedicating enough time to each channel. Below, we’ll look at the most common mistakes small businesses make with their digital marketing from our experience.
- Social Media Presence
Some would argue that having a social media presence in this day and age is vital, which is something we would agree with. However, doing it badly does more harm than good to your business. With each platform requiring it’s own dedicated time and attention, one of the biggest mistakes small businesses commonly make is spreading themselves too thin across multiple social media platforms.
Having a barely used Instagram page, with poor quality images and no real meaning or direction behind the posts, will result in a poor brand outlook from the customer and give them a negative perception and, in turn, make them think twice about buying your goods or using your services.
The first thing to do is decide whether you need a social media presence in the first place. Some industries naturally lend themselves to it – for example, a designer would benefit from visually showcasing their work, so having an Instagram profile would be beneficial. However, the same designer would benefit less from a Twitter account.
If you decide that your business needs a social media presence, then the next step is to decide on which platform. The most common are Facebook and Instagram, however more niche industries or younger audience targeting may look towards Snapchat / TikTok. Learn which platform suits your industry the best and has a larger proportion of your target market, and stick to it.
Be honest with the time you can dedicate to maintaining your social media presence and stick to it – it’s better to use one platform correctly rather than 5 or 6 poorly.
- Poor Website Design
Having a website for your business is a necessity, there’s no two ways about it. From increasing customer confidence in your brand, to obtaining new sales through search engines, having a fully operational website is non-negotiable for running a business in 2021.
Despite this, we see many businesses who neglect their website over time. One overlooked aspect about websites is the need for maintenance and updating – a website built before 2010 is a very different offering to a modern day solution, as it’s built with old technology and out of date practices – designing a website for mobile first was first brought in around this time but wasn’t widespread until later in the decade, which is a fundamental need in the modern day.
Despite this, we see many businesses who commission a new site then completely forget about it, leaving it to provide a poor experience for any customers who happen to land on it. Having a website should be seen as an ongoing investment, rather than a one off project and should be a fundamental part of your marketing strategy, no matter what sector you operate in.
- Ignoring SEO
Over 80% of internet users go to search engines to research or find products – for most major websites, it’s a good bet that over 50% of their traffic will come via Google or Bing. What’s better is that the traffic is free, so it provides a huge return on investment when it’s set up correctly.
For small local businesses, showing up for searches using ‘near me’ is vital to growing your customer base in the city/region you’re located. With less resources to spend on costly advertising campaigns, SEO or search engine optimisation should be the number one priority for most small businesses in their marketing arsenal.
Although it can take longer to show the ROI, especially compared to paid advertising, it’s a worthwhile investment that can reap rewards for many years after the initial investment, making it one of the best channels of digital marketing for businesses of any size to take advantage of.
Summary
These are just some of the issues we commonly see, however for most of them the core issue is time – not dedicating enough time needed to make the most of the channel, whether its social media, website or SEO.
If you’re finding yourself behind on these kinds of digital marketing issues, we’re here to help – Why not get in touch and see how we can improve your digital marketing performance today.
