Expensive Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Call 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about digital marketing services from WebFX, or keep reading for four common marketing mistakes that could be negatively impacting your campaigns.
Our digital marketing campaigns impact the metrics that improve your bottom line.
See More Results
WebFX has driven the following results for clients:
$6 billion
In client revenue
24 million
Leads for our clients
7.14 million
Client phone calls
1. Not using negative PPC keywords
When you launch a PPC campaign, your main focus is choosing the keywords you want your ads to display for. And in most cases, you want those ads to reach as many people as possible.
However, not all the people searching for a given keyword are necessarily qualified leads. That’s where negative keywords become important, and not using them means you could end up overpaying on Google Ads and other platforms.
Ranking for as many searches as possible may seem like a good thing at first. However, if customers click on your ads and then leave without buying anything, you’re still spending money on those clicks—even though they’re not generating any revenue for you.
If you identify keywords that are similar to your target keywords, but indicate that a user isn’t a potential customer, you can add them to your campaigns as negative keywords. Your ads won’t show for these searches, meaning that even though you’ll likely see a reduction in clicks, you’re only eliminating users who are unlikely to become customers—and eliminating the possibility of wasting your budget.
For example, let’s say you sell sneakers and cater to athletes. You could add negative keywords like “orthopedic” and “dress” to your campaigns, so that people looking for orthopedic shoes or dress shoes won’t see your ads—even though their searches include the word “shoes.”
Identifying the right negative keywords for your campaign will require time and research, but the money it can save you is certainly worth it. The less you spend on unqualified leads, the more room you’ll have in your budget to spend on potential customers.
2. Neglecting analytics
At its simplest, analytics refers to data that can help you make decisions. In marketing, analytics usually refers to data that shows how well your campaigns are performing.
For example, the analytics for your company’s website include the number of unique visitors you get per month, the location of those visitors, how long they spend on your site, and how they found your site in the first place.
Strong analytics are essential to making sure you’re making the right moves with your marketing campaigns. If you’re spending a lot of money on PPC or social media ads, for example, but find that most of your website visitors are actually coming from your email newsletter, that’s a sign that you may want to refocus your efforts.
Essentially, it shows you the most effective channels for your business.
Analytics also gives you a better understanding of your customers, so you can do a better job of providing the content they want on the channels they prefer. Look at which pages on your site are the most popular, what topics they address, and what formats they use.
Knowing this allows you to create more of the content customers want, driving even more traffic to your website.
Knowing where your customers come from is also invaluable. If you notice many of your online visitors are being referred from a certain social network, you may consider investing more of your budget in that network—and less in the others.
Without using analytics, you’re essentially guessing what customers want and how they’re responding to your current strategy. With analytics, you have the data to back it up.
3. Targeting broad SEO keywords
Broad SEO keywords may seem like a good idea since they have high search volume, but your business is unlikely to be able to rank for them.
For example, if you run a personal injury law firm in Maine, broad keywords for you might include “lawyer,” “attorney,” or “law firm.” And while these words are certainly relevant to your business, they’re extremely competitive.
Law firms and attorneys from different practice areas and from across the country and around the world are using those very same words all over their sites. This means that the likelihood of outranking them unlikely, unless you’re a major corporation and your site has thousands of informative pages.
A better option is to use targeted long-tail keywords. For example, your business is much more likely to be able to rank well for phrases like “Maine personal injury attorney” or “law firm in Portland, Maine.”
Adding more specific keywords about the services or products you offer, as well as information about your location, improves the chances that the most relevant potential customers will find you.
Long-tail keywords also reflect how people look for information online. When someone’s looking for a florist, for example, they may type “florist” into a search engine at first, but they’re likely to get millions of unhelpful search results. Their next step is usually to refine their search a little more.
If they’re in Boston, for example, and they know that they want English roses, they might change their search to “online florist in Boston selling English roses.” If you have a page on your site that matches that keyword, you’re extremely likely to rank well for it.
4. Ignoring responsive design
Today’s Internet users don’t just use their desktop computers to look for the businesses and services they need. They also use tablets, smartphones, laptops, and any other device with Internet capabilities.
Not only that, but they have the choice of many different operating systems and browsers, as well as a variety of screen sizes. So, how can you make your website look attractive in all these different environments?
The answer is responsive design.
Responsive design is a type of website design using flexible CSS style rules, fluid grids, and flexible images. Essentially, what that means is that it allows your site to adapt to any device, screen size, and browser and still look great.
It also means that users on all of these devices can access and use your site without getting frustrated, which is absolutely necessary if you want them to turn into customers.
Are you making any of these expensive mistakes?
If you’re making any of the four mistakes above, your marketing strategy has room for improvement. And if you’re ready to address them, WebFX can help.
Our team has years of experience helping our clients make the most of their budgets, and we can do the same for you. Contact us today to speak with a strategist!