Falling into bad marketing habits can spell disaster for your business. If you fail to update your marketing methods or keep current, up-to-date best practices in mind, you may find your marketing ROI decreasing, your customers showing less overall satisfaction with your business, and your brand recognition falling fast. Fortunately, there is a solution: ditching the bad habits of the past and utilizing a more effective strategy moving forward.
Have you fallen into bad marketing habits? As you move into 2021, consider these practices that you need to leave behind.
Ignoring Reviews
While many marketers want to gather reviews, they frequently consider their jobs done once customers leave their reviews on Google, Yelp, and other platforms. This type of thinking is a missed opportunity to create goodwill and positive brand recognition by interacting with customers regardless of the review. It also makes the brand appear to be insensitive to customers' problems with product quality, distribution, or billing.
Responding to negative reviews promptly and with an honest intent to remedy the customer's inconvenience can turn a dissatisfied consumer into a repeat customer and future brand ambassador. Thanking people for leaving positive reviews shows current and potential customers that the brand appreciates the time they took to review their experience and cares about their satisfaction.
"Set It and Forget It" PPC
Pay per click campaigns have become an incredibly popular solution for many marketers. Unfortunately, many marketers set up these campaigns, but only monitor and make adjustments to them in the beginning. Good PPC management requires checking for keywords to add to the "negative keyword" list and adjusting bids depending on the success of different campaigns. An effective PPC strategy requires attention and maintenance to optimize the return on investment (ROI).
Adding "Fluff" to Reach a Certain Word Count
Currently, SEO rankings are higher for content that has more than 2,000 words. While longer content often provides more value, contains more keywords, and keeps consumers on the page longer, simply lengthening the content will not automatically cause it rank better. Marketers instead must consider what it is about longer content that gives it that higher rating: its more in-depth information and greater overall value to the consumer. Padding the content just so you can reach a set word count can dilute the message and leave consumers scrolling for far too long to find the information they really need--or make them rush off to another page to find the information instead.
Longer content has a number of advantages to your brand, so you should certainly look for opportunities to produce those longer blog posts. It's important, however, to make sure that the content in the post adds genuine value to your readers.
Buying Links
Backlinks are an essential component in SEO that can be hard to get naturally. Because links from other sites let Google know your site is a quality resource worth citing, it can be tempting to purchase links from companies who sell paid links. It doesn't take long, however, before Google will discover exactly where your links came from--and penalize you accordingly. If you are caught with paid links, it could result in a lower page rank or even being dropped from the Google index as a punishment for you and a deterrent for others. Instead, focus on building links organically by providing high-quality content for your audience.
Forgetting Traditional Media
Digital marketing has become incredibly important for your business and offers a number of opportunities. That does not mean, however, that you should put all your eggs in one basket. There is still great power in traditional marketing channels. Local radio, for example, should always be included in your advertising budget. Radio has a broad reach across demographics. Your radio ads can cast a wide net that may help you reach consumers who had no previous knowledge of your brand. They can also help reach an audience who might not be on social media or who might not have shown an interest in your products in the past, allowing you to get your brand in front of new consumers.
Putting your ad on the radio can also help increase consumer opinion of your brand. Not only do loyal radio listeners value the opinion of the hosts, they are more likely to pay attention to ads by their favorite radio personalities. They naturally have a higher degree of trust in your brand when they hear those radio personalities talking about you.
You can create an effective strategy when you integrate traditional and digital channels in your marketing campaigns.
A 2021 Resolution for Success
Have you found your business falling into these bad marketing practices? Have you struggled with producing too much "fluff" to fill out your content, focused more on current trends than on what your analytics are really telling you, or been tempted to purchase links instead of building them organically? This year, resolve to change your marketing efforts and focus on the best practices for your business. Toss out these bad habits and watch your marketing efforts achieve better results.
