24 Sep Mistakes To Avoid When Marketing
By Justice Abbott
Have you ever added something to your marketing plan, and then thought… “well, that didn’t work”. We certainly have! There are tons of avoidable marketing mistakes to ensure the success of your plan. Let’s get started…
Mistake: Neglecting Your Social Media
As business owners, it’s extremely likely for you to get super busy and completely forget about your social media, but this is a huge marketing mistake! Neglecting your social media will cause your supporters to gradually fall off as your content is inconsistent and they don’t often have much to support. It’s extremely important to keep a consistent social media posting schedule because one of the worst things you can do is go MIA for weeks, leaving your followers in the dark.
Posting every once in a while is hurting your business as an effective social media campaign posts consistently. Posting regularly builds your following and engagement. We recommend posting at least 3-4 times a week to maintain a consistent, successful marketing campaign!
We highly suggest using your account’s analytics to determine the best post days and times to help you create a posting schedule that will eliminate post inconsistencies. If you want to take this a step further, you can use scheduling apps that will allow you to schedule your posts ahead of time which will alleviate you from having to go in and manually post each day!
Mistake: Only using Graphics
If you’re only using wordy graphics or stock photos, you’re making a common marketing mistake. We recommend mixing in authentic photos of you, your team, or customers to humanize your content and connect with your followers.
We all want to promote our upcoming sales or new products, but in the midst of these computer-generated graphics, it’s important to “humanize” your feed. Humanizing your feed just means posting fun images that allow your following to see some faces every now and then. This will pique their interest and often start a dialogue which in turn, increases your engagement!
Check out this image that we recently mixed into our feed of our CEO, Lindsey Germono, in Downtown Hampton after a company brunch!
Mistake: Leaving Out Your CTAs
Take a quick look at your past 5 posts… Now ask yourself, did at least one of them have a firm CTA (call to action) for your followers?
A big mistake to avoid when marketing is leaving out a CTA. CTA’s invite people to share the post, comment, or call you for a complimentary 30 minute consultation (seriously, call us for a complimentary 30 minute consultation, we would love to help you).
Now, what should your CTA look and sound like? Your call to action shouldn’t feel pushy. You want a nice, comfortable feeling to your call to action.
Now, what should your CTA look and sound like? Your call to action shouldn’t feel pushy. You want a nice, comfortable feeling to your call to action. Try phrases like, “Comment your favorite…,” “Dm us for more info,” or “Visit the link in our bio to read more!”
You want your CTA to feel friendly and inviting because that will make your followers more inclined to do it.
Mistake: Blasting Sales Pitches in DMs
Direct messaging your followers with your sales pitches can quickly become very “spammy,” and you don’t want this to happen because you will lose the interest and loyalty of your followers. Spam-like content also doesn’t even get seen a good percentage of the time because there are spam filters, so, sending these overbearing DMs will be a waste of time and energy on your end as they’re likely to go unseen.
It’s important to nurture your relationship with your followers because you will, in turn, get your leads through DMs from them!
Mistake: Boring Visuals
We understand this can be an obstacle in a pandemic with the inability for your team to gather safely – visuals can become lackluster. A safe, COVID-conscious way for you and your team to gather unique visuals is for your team to take photos of cool landmarks or in front of fun backgrounds whenever they can. We like to keep a company Dropbox account where we can upload images from various dates and locations! Try to get out in the local community and see what inspires you.
The Germono Advertising team recently stumbled on this message at Mango Mangeaux during their walk around Phoebus. Isn’t it perfect? Don’t forget to look both ways before crossing the street to take photos!
These are just a few major mistakes to avoid when marketing online. If you keep these in mind and adjust your marketing routine to make sure you’re avoiding these, you will be in good shape! If you want us to take a look at your campaign to make sure you aren’t making any marketing mistakes, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at justice@germono.com!
