Monthly Archives: January 2020

Are You Avoiding These Digital Marketing Mistakes?

A quick Google search will reveal countless digital marketing tips, guidelines, and “must-have” insider information. The internet is flooded with marketing formulas that are guaranteed to transform your company’s online presence. But what about what doesn’t work? With so much information about what to do, who is focusing on what not to do? How can you take failed digital marketing experiments and turn them into valuable guidelines for the future?

Digital marketing and data go hand-in-hand. Today, we find ourselves in a data-driven world, dictating decisions in nearly every industry, and on a global scale. This means that there is an abundance of facts and figures to shape decisions and guide new initiatives. In marketing, data lays the foundation for action.

While all digital marketing mistakes are avoidable, some of the more commonly seen blunders are certainly preventable. Having a dynamic approach to every digital marketing initiative is crucial to online success.

Have you given any thought to the mistakes that your organization has made? If not, it’s time to start digging in.

Digital Marketing Mistakes To Dodge

The enormity of digital marketing options can be paralyzing. Some companies are so overwhelmed with where to begin, they fail to get started at all. The fear of making a mistake is certainly daunting, but the beauty lies in the lessons taken from those mistakes, all made possible by the nature of digital information.

Making changes to a marketing strategy is far more complex than it may appear. So to say that one can address digital marketing mistakes with “the click of a button” is an oversimplification. However, since proper research and due diligence can set up any organization to succeed digitally, starting by pinpointing preventable mistakes is key.

The following are some of the most frequently seen digital marketing mistakes:

  1. Refusing to be dynamic. Trends change faster today than ever before, and this means not only being on the cutting-edge of those changes but having the flexibility to act accordingly.
  2. Failing to clearing state and write down marketing objectives. This is one of the most commonly seen errors today. People are so eager to get started, they fail to take a step back and determine where they want to go.
  3. Missing the mark on targeting the right audience. Digital marketing options today mean that you can create campaigns to speak to a very specific set of individuals. Ignoring the power of reaching a targeted audience, with the right message, can be disastrous for any campaign.
  4. Approaching social media marketing with a “post and pray” attitude. It’s easy to feel like simply posting on social is enough to engage an audience and remain top-of-mind. But without a strategy, your posts will fall on deaf ears.
  5. Ignoring the opportunity to test. A/B testing is extremely powerful in gauging the right approach to the audience, the medium, and so on. It’s easy to jump to a conclusion about a campaign without properly assessing its performance, but no assessment is complete without some form of testing.
  6. Spending minimal time with analytics. Falling into the trap of sending a monthly report is all too common. Are you spending time with the numbers to truly understand what they mean? Analytics provide a goldmine for marketers looking to make the most out of their digital campaigns.

We could go on and on about the mistakes digital marketers make, but the above six mark the most impactful issues to date. You will inevitably make mistakes in your efforts to dominate your competition online, but approaching these mistakes as opportunities to learn and evolve will set you up to avoid failure in the future.

At Big Customer Network, we approach mistakes with open arms in our quest to perfect our clients’ digital marketing strategies. Are you ready to take your company to the next level? Contact us today to get started.

9 Email Marketing Strategies for Major Marketing Wins

Smart business owners look at marketing as a necessity, not just a bonus if the budget allows. Even smarter business owners look at each individual marketing tactic separately to determine its return on investment (ROI). While measuring ROI on digital marketing initiatives may be tough, email marketing is indisputably one of the winners. Why? With low costs and high returns, email makes perfect sense for budget-conscious entrepreneurs looking to make a splash in 2020.

Social media is getting all of the recent hype surrounding digital marketing success stories. But the reality is that email marketing actually converts 40 times the number of customers. The ability to speak directly to a prospective customer puts email marketing in a league of its own. Sure, strategies involving Google ads and sponsored Facebook posts are important. However, the power of reaching someone exactly when you want to cannot be overstated.

Email marketing, when executed correctly, can truly transform an organization’s lead generation capacity. Today, we discuss 9 email marketing strategies that will make a big impact this year.

Taking Advantage of Email Marketing

Far too many marketers fall into the trap of assuming email marketing will work if they have a large list of subscribers and some content to share. In theory, that situation would facilitate some leads and general interest. In practice, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Who are your emails being sent to? Should all of those people be receiving the same content? What is your purpose behind sending the email? What action do you hope the recipient takes upon opening the email? The answers to these questions will lay the foundation for a successful strategy and create a new pathway for leads to travel.

No matter what your marketing objectives may be or how you decide to achieve them, email marketing should absolutely have a prominent place in your marketing mix. The following are some of the most impactful email marketing strategies to consider incorporating into a digital marketing plan:

  1. Focus on subject lines: while it can be tempting to stick with something catchy, the subject line must also facilitate conversions.
  2. Personalization: from personalized copy to action-based or location-based offers, customer retention is dependent upon a personal touch.
  3. Incorporate animation: things like GIFs are an easy and effective way to engage your audience.
  4. Keep it simple: take advantage of white space on your email design to focus your message and intention clearly.
  5. Content value: be sure to send emails filled with valuable content – whether that means an incredible offer or a background story about your company.
  6. Make it social: be sure to include icons of your social channels and encourage recipients to follow you there.
  7. Deploy A/B testing: running two campaigns simultaneously and comparing performance results is essential to effective email marketing.
  8. Time it right: time of day is crucial when it comes to email communications, we recommend sending an email between 10 and 11am.
  9. Track everything: customer insights and analytics are crucial to taking full advantage of the power in email marketing.

Using marketing automation, companies have seen massive improvements in the ability to communicate with their target audience and turn new leads into customers. At Big Customer Network, we are email and marketing automation experts. Using cutting-edge techniques, we have perfected the craft of generating leads for small to medium-sized businesses.

Are you ready to deploy a robust email marketing campaign? Contact us today to get started.