8 Online Web Marketing Strategy Mistakes To Avoid

Your online web marketing strategy is what helps your business to increase sales, raise brand awareness, connect with customers and reach your goals while meeting your customers’ needs. However, there are many pitfalls to avoid and mistakes that could render your strategy ineffective at helping you achieve your business goals.

So, here are 8 online web marketing strategy mistakes to avoid:

1. Not identifying target market segments

This is one of the biggest mistakes made by many businesses in their web marketing strategies. Most businesses do not have the resources to target all market segments, so they choose segments that are relevant to what they sell and to people who have the means and intention to purchase from the business. This is known as target marketing and it is important especially on the web where precise targeting is often more achievable than offline marketing.

2. No marketing objectives

Marketing objectives are essential in guiding the marketing strategy, and having a target that is relevant, realistic and measurable for the business. Objectives are short-term goals usually between 6 – 12 months and they inform your internet marketing strategy regarding how you will advertise online, what features/benefits to promote, how to position your products or services and what budget to set.

3. Not monitoring competitor strategies

Monitoring competitors online helps you identify their strengths and weaknesses and with that you can decide how to position your business in the market. Whether they are direct or indirect competitors it’s important to understand who they are, what product or service benefits they have and how they are performing on key metrics like unique visitors, bounce rates, page views etc.

4. Using too few online channels

Using a few channels to promote your business online is quite common with many businesses, who will focus only on search engine optimisation, social media or blogging to reach customers. This leads to low conversion rates and with customers using multiple channels to research and purchase products, you miss the opportunity to increase sales and raise brand awareness with target customers.

5. Not having a digital marketing strategy

A digital marketing strategy is what helps you target your markets and meet their need and wants with your offers. Your customers should be at the heart of all online operations and your strategy should highlight how you will meet their needs.

6. Insufficient budget

Having a low budget or one that does not allow you to implement all tactics that are part of your online marketing strategy means that you are unlikely to achieve your objectives. So, you should prioritise tactics that will help you achieve your objectives and that are most important to your business and ensure that you have sufficient financial resources to implement them.

7. No benchmarks

You should create key performance indicators for each of your objectives that help to benchmark your progress and compare against competitors too. Doing this helps to ensure that you are always on track and that your objectives are realistic and achievable.

8. Incorrect tracking

You should decide which metrics are most important for your business, to achieve your objectives. Sales and leads are obvious ones and you track these with ecommerce and goal tracking in analytics, but you need to go deeper into your reporting to track acquisition, conversion and retention metrics in analytics that will help your business to achieve good profitability and ROI on the web.

Summary

Download the free online web marketing strategy template to start planning your campaigns and achieve your business goals and mission. Also, contact me to discuss your marketing strategy and if you need help creating and launching it.