Do you feel guilty of living in the past? The methods that were once battle tested can now prove to be dangerous to your business. There is so much happening in the digital marketing arena today that sometimes even professional marketers struggle to keep up. In fact, it happens with me too. Although, I am a self-made digital marketing expert in Chandigarh, at times, I also feel pressure to be progressive and actively integrate new digital marketing strategies into my campaigns. But, still as I am fond of finding the best of best- I always have an idea or piece that does well and give my clients the best possible bang for their buck.
I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with different strategies till now. And based on that I believe it’s always good to adapt to the new form of marketing with the time. This is also a necessity if you want to develop a more authentic and more people-oriented approach. People today have numerous options to compare products and services before they come to any conclusion. So you need to stop using conventional marketing strategies in your modern-day business. Or else, you could be potentially damaging your business that can even send you to the poorhouse.
I polled our digital marketing team and arrived at a very strong census that the old school digital marketing strategies given below are by far the most common reasons why some businesses fail.
Also read: How to get prospects eager to buy from you
SEO practices that are no longer effective
SEO techniques keep changing for good and some SEO tactics you consider tried and tested may no longer be valid. While you must be aware of the latest Google updates and other algorithm changes, your focus on good digital marketing and all other things should fall in line, and major algorithm changes shouldn’t be a concern. Gone are the days when marketers could produce lots of thin content with zero value to achieve the top position in search results.
- Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading content with keywords that repeats inadequately. This makes the content appear as out of context, which happens due to an attempt to appear relevant to search engines.
- Do not include all possible variations of the keyword in the title. Instead, put only one highly relevant keywords with informative description. Here is a good example, which shows overall relevancy and accurate use of the keyword. As you can see below, the keyword apartments in Zirakpur is included both in title and description with a focus on readability as well.
- Creating dedicated pages for every keyword variant was the tactic used years ago. That time acquiring higher search engine rankings required the creation of specific pages for every keyword variant. But, now you can’t stuff your site with multiple variations of targeted keywords. You can’t target all keywords individually to dominate search by every keyword variation. Instead, you should focus on proper keyword selection with a content that brings actual value to users.
Irrelevant content marketing strategies
There may be some content marketing pillars that are unchanging, while there are many others which are out of relevance. Therefore, if you’re no longer getting results or your business has become stagnant, you might be adopting the outdated content marketing strategies.
- A lot of marketers think that the best strategy is to keep rolling out and wait for the leads to pour in. But, the reality is that developing more content is not the answer as providing too much information to your audience will only overwhelm them. Let’s take an example of my website ajayarora.in, where I have published only 28 blogs until now. Despite that, I have been able to bring in over 30,000 unique visitors in the last month.
My post, “learn how to increase Google AdWords conversion rate” generates me more than 5000 unique visits per month.
So always choose quality over quantity and provide your audience with the best possible content.
- Being a brand owner, you might feel tempted to focus on the topics that interest you most. Instead of making it all about you, focus on the content that your audience wants to consume. It should be useful and customer-centric.
- Painstakingly creating content just for the sake of finding results from the time, energy and money you put into a campaign can make things sour. It’s better to concentrate more on informing then selling while keeping an ultimate goal of educating the audience first and sell secondly.
Using social media tactics that have stopped working
Some social media tactics that may have worked in the past may not be quite so effective nowadays. Once you cut these loose, you’ll spare more time for the tactics of the future. Here is a round up of few social media mistakes with their solution.
- Images and text still drive engagement, but you can’t only rely on them. Social video is becoming too important to ignore. As per a statistic on WordStream, Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. So, for harnessing the power of video in your digital marketing strategies, you can create customized content for each platform. When making YouTube videos, it is necessary to include audio for engagement. Like in the below video, Green Lotus Saksham walkthrough has been shown with an engaging audio tone.
- Not utilizing the media in social media. This means being on social media is not enough, it is also important to consider the overall appearance that your media creates. The overall appearance includes adding only high quality content, maintaining brand consistency and pursuing quality over quantity will yield the greatest return.
- Not building real relationships or connections is another big problem. So you should never forget that you are dealing with human beings and you need to engage, interact or share your good stories with them.
Website with a plenty of Pitfalls
With millions of websites today, you simply cannot afford to have a website that will negatively impact your brand and does not go with the digital marketing strategies that works today. In an increasingly sophisticated digital age, you can’t use the same old age website designs. Because at the end of the day, the results won’t be what you expected and you’ll be disappointed.
- Not developing mobile-friendly websites. It’s been a long time when Google confirmed that mobile searches had taken over a desktop. So, consider investing in a fully responsive website to offer a better user experience to visitors. Check here to see how mobile friendly your website is.
My website, ajayraora.in is the first website in Tricity to release its AMP version, i.e. accelerated mobile pages so as to provide more mobile-friendly content to the visitors. It ensures visitors the best overall website user experience on mobile devices.
Also read: Google AMP- secrets unveiled
- Failing to capitalize on the changing search landscape. As there is a huge surge in the popularity of visual search, you need to make sure the images you choose to display are well optimized. So that search engines understand your images and help drive traffic to your website.
- Neglecting your website’s SEO. Invest your time and money into the SEO of your website, if you want to bring it to the forefront of your digital marketing strategies.
Relying on automated marketing
- Automated marketing makes task handling much easier. But most of the times, it proves to be a turnoff for your audience. Thus, don’t be the big advocates of automating and scheduling to speed up the results you can get. By solely doing this, you’re treating your connections or audience like a robot, which isn’t going to work.
- If you don’t want to come across as being automated or even creepy, you’ll have to provide relevant information to the right people at the right time. As a part of your revamped digital marketing strategies, you need to build a positive relationship with your consumers.
- Put an end to automated Twitter messages. Those messages are impersonal and come off as lazy and ingenuine. Engage and communicate with users, rather than damaging your brand and annoying your potential customers.
Bonus Point: Not testing new types of campaigns
If you want to be successful, you have to constantly lookout for better ideas. Your spirit must drive digital marketing efforts. Like if your business gets stuck in a rut, say SEO and email marketing, you may never realize that social media, AdWords or PPC are the most effective means of driving sales. Smart marketers don’t merely dabble in new digital marketing strategies; they instead put together a plan, deploy resources and evaluate results.
Everything comes with a shelf life and the digital marketing strategies are no exception. So, marketers need to stay on the top of the latest trends and incorporate a digital marketing plan that will reach your buyers and gain their attention.