Digital Marketing Strategy: Mistakes You Should Avoid [Part 3]

We continue with the series of articles where we share mistakes that are commonly made in the digital marketing strategy, along with many suggestions you can follow to avoid them. In this way I send you the material presented in the in the online chat (video available) that I recently made for the New World Crafts, an event organized by friends of the Handmade commission of the Guatemalan Exporters Association.

We have already added 10 failures to our list, through the previous publications entitled Digital Marketing Strategy: Mistakes to Avoid Part 1 and Part 2. Let's now look at the last five, from number eleven to fifteen.

#11 Not working on your personal brand

We are referring to you, the professional behind the business. Don't make this mistake by following these tips:

• Show who is behind your products or services. Whether you are a small or large company, you should not allow any mistake you make to be reflected in the brand. That should be a crisis management of something personal. You should not mix those two scopes.
• Tell your story. Continuing with the previous point, this also helps in your digital marketing strategy because your clients will know that there is someone like them behind the brand.
• Take care of your social networks, even if you do not like to expose your private life. You do not have to show your most personal, family or house where you live, but if you feel the need to show your dog because it motivated you to create a new product for pets, it could be a very good story. It is also interesting to talk about your beginnings or what motivated you when you were a student. Tell what motivated you to create your business and what knowledge you used to create your products. See how you are showing your personal brand, in addition to the purpose of your company.

#12 Talk only about your products or services

How boring that sounds. Nobody follows a brand like that on social media. A digital marketing strategy is much more than that:

• Remember the purpose of the brand, since the pillars of communication emerge from there. When you put together your social media strategy, you should know how to convey the benefits of using your product or service, how to inspire and motivate your followers, etc. Look for communication elements that are more than just talking about what you sell.
• Focus on your client and make him participate in the creation of content. In addition to asking directly, also observe what they do on social networks to get ideas. What do customers do with your products? What other brands do you follow? How do they interact with those brands? This way you will be creating people-centered content.

#13 Forgetting to build networks

Having a presence in social networks as a brand or company is not creating networks. To avoid making this mistake in your digital marketing plan, think about it with these ideas:

• Have an active LinkedIn account. This social network is a world apart and goes beyond looking for work. It is the right place for the person behind the business to work on his personal brand, regardless of whether he manufactures pharmaceutical products, is a lawyer or makes artisan articles. In other words, entrepreneurs must be in this social network, especially in these days of almost 100% remote life.
• Make sure your close network knows what you are doing and that you know what they are doing. It is a tool to keep abreast of what is happening in the industry and with our pairs. With the hustle and bustle of our daily work, we lose sight of people and being aware of their current reality allows us to understand how we can help them or how they can help us. If I disconnect since I finished studying or since I left my last job in a company, by focusing only on my entrepreneurship, I am missing many opportunities to contribute to others and to make use of the skills of others for my business. Being connected is part of an optimal digital marketing strategy.

#14 Worrying about attracting new customers and forgetting current customers

It is very common especially when we have a budget for a digital marketing plan. To avoid it ...

• Systematize customer information (Excel or CRM, no matter the form). You must know who they are, where they come from, what they bought from you and when. If you only care about generating greater visibility to more people, that others find out about your brand and buy from you, and you are forgetting your customers because you think it is difficult for them to buy from you again, that is not building relationships.
• Brand presence (branding). You must be concerned about your customers and this is one way to do it. It is part of the relationship that one as a brand has with them. For example, if your business is B2B, you can make a call and ask your client how their sales are going, how they have reconsidered in the face of the crisis or tell them how interesting their Instagram campaign has been; incidentally, also find out who is doing it. You can do something similar with your clients in a B2C business, using your social networks or mailings to make them participate in surveys and thus measure how things are going with them. You have to be open to collaborating and sharing.
• Worry about them (what they need, how the purchase went, how they project themselves). Having a genuine concern, beyond sales, should be part of your digital marketing strategy. In the end, it is cheaper to keep and retain an existing customer than to win a new one. With them you can achieve a new sale, get them to recommend you to their friends or get involved with your brand.

#15 Believe in magic

Thinking that a successful brand became known from one day to the next is a mistake. There is always behind an agency that has worked hard to generate value for its client and after several attempts it turned out. Check out these tips to avoid this error:

• Be disciplined. It means that, if you want to have a healthy life, for example, you should worry about your diet, sleep well, and play sports. If you don't do any of those three things, it's no use being purposeful. The same applies to your digital marketing strategy: if you want to have the best e-commerce on the market, but you only spend half an hour a day and not a single dollar, you will not get anywhere with your project.
• Develop habits. Nothing is learned or achieved overnight, it takes years to achieve.
• Make a sustained effort over time. Good results come from here, although not everything you do will work, that's why ...
• Practice a culture of experimentation. If it didn't work today, you may find it later.

To finish

There is no magic recipe. Make things happen, assuming your limits and resources, perhaps, stopping doing something to focus on other issues. And obviously keep learning, don't stop, keep exploring.

With this last article we have added 15 very common mistakes in a digital marketing strategy and many ideas for you to avoid making them. I hope this material is very useful to improve the actions you take to manage your e-commerce and achieve your goals.

Would you add more bugs to the list? Do you have any more tips to share? Tell us in the comments field.