5 Digital Marketing Mistakes Every Brand Should Avoid The internet is offering marketers the perfect opportunity to reach out to their customers and influence their decisions

By Ambika Sharma

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The world is shrinking faster than we can imagine with rapidly increasing interconnectivity all across the globe. And at the epicentre of this phenomenal change are digital technologies and their growing role in our day-to-day lives. The internet is offering marketers the perfect opportunity to reach out to their customers and influence their decisions, but the only way to pull off this feat is by leaving no scope for mistakes in your digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the more common digital marketing mistakes that marketers make it a point to avoid while reaching out to their customers:

1. Not understanding the consumer journey

Consumer journey plays a pivotal role in the purchase decision. One of biggest mistakes in marketing is failing to take this factor into account while targeting customers. Understanding the customer propensity and coming up with a personalised targeting strategy can enable you to be more effective. This extends an evolved service experience to the customer while boosting the overall conversion rate.

2. Ignoring emails… and the fact that they still work

Emails have gradually lost their shine with the emergence of social media avenues. But a fact that every seasoned marketer is well-versed with is that they deliver favourable results and are here to remain. The efficacy of your marketing strategy can be enhanced by utilising this hidden power of email marketing. It can be done by creating and rendering high-impact kinetic emails while providing an omni-channel experience to the end-user. Marketers must also leverage interactive media, Big Data personalisation, and automation while opting for email marketing.

3. Underestimating the relevance of mobile

The wheel of marketing is spinning on the increasing adoption of mobile phones. Mobile phones now comprise 65% of total digital media consumption and are coming to the forefront more strongly with increasing smartphone penetration and internet adoption. Irrespective of your preferred channel, mobile must reflect strongly in your short-term and long-term marketing strategy.

4. Undervaluing content and relevant messaging strategy

Marketing demands you to reinvent your approach and think out-of-the-box while targeting your customers. But this must not be at the expense of losing the core messaging of your brand. Content plays a vital role in customer acquisition and retention, and so does the brand positioning. A loosely-planned marketing initiative can be made a compelling one by merely coming up with suitable content targeted at customers. Simply analyse your audience profile and keep their preferred content along with the relevant messaging strategy at the core of your marketing initiatives.

5. Failing to centralise digital data, optimisation and learning

Campaigns get inherently accompanied by an array of challenges including data export, reimport, and setting up of templates and messages in multiple systems. This creates information silos which become a major barrier in communication. This can severely damage an integrated digital media campaign. Centralising your data from your owned, paid, and earned channels can minimise such inefficiencies encountered while also increasing the visibility of data and overall functionality. This data further assists in acquiring deep insights into your marketing initiatives and paves the way for data aggregation, customer segmentation, campaign designing, scalable execution, and multi-channel orchestration. Marketers must also establish a Centre of Excellence to optimise digital campaigns and refine their approach with increasing data.

Digital media is gradually coming to the forefront in the realm of marketing, enabling marketers to play around with ideas while reaching out to their audience. A well-crafted digital marketing campaign has the potential to leave a telling impact on customers and prospects, and no marketing channel has ever been as rewarding as the Digital World. The secret to success, however, lies in the art of not making mistakes.

Ambika Sharma

Founder and Managing Director, Instappy

Ambika Sharma is the Founder and Managing Director of Instappy. 
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