In the spirit of all things spooky, we’re sharing 5 scary marketing mistakes, and a few tips on how to avoid making them.
1. Too much self-promotion
Focusing your content and social posts too much on self-promotion is one rapid way to make your target audience beat a hasty retreat.
If you focus solely on selling your product or service, rather than solving a problem for your target audience, people will switch off.
Instead, think about it from a customer’s point of view. What challenges can you help them solve? Are there any frequently occurring questions you can help answer?
Cringy pun alert…the key is to give your audience pumpkin to like, share, comment on (
sorry…more to come). And, if you’re not sure what your customers would find useful, just ask them!
2. Not creepin’ in real
Don’t trick your customers with vague promises, treat them to true benefits. Anyone can say “our service is the most efficient” or “our product is the best” or “we are cheaper”… you’ve heard it all before, we’re sure. And, why should your customers believe you?
Instead, focus on the benefits your product or service can offer your customers. For example, “our widget will cut down your energy use by 33%, saving you money and supporting your environmental goals”. And, evidence your claims with client testimonials and data.
3. Basing your marketing on witchful thinking
Does this sound familiar? You started your business because you are great at what you do. You’re selling products or services you believe in and are passionate about. Your business has grown organically over the years, but that growth has stalled, and you now need to look for other ways to increase sales.
After doing a bit of research, you decide to run some ads on LinkedIn. You’ve seen one of your competitors doing it, so it must be working for them and will therefore also work for you, right? You also try posting some photos and sharing info you think your customers want to hear.
You hope that your ideal customers are active on this channel, will see your ads and posts, pick up the phone and buy your product. Simple?!
Yes, you are trying. But without strategy and planning guiding your efforts, it’s all just witchful thinking. You could waste a lot of money and end up disheartened by the whole idea of marketing.
If you want to see how marketing based on sound strategy and evidence can support the growth of your business, give us a call.
4. Using black cat SEO tactics
Black hat SEO tactics carry a lot of risk….negative user experience, your website being penalised by search engines, terrible rankings etc. Despite all of this, it’s still frightfully common.
There are no black hat tactics in our approach, we choose the route that best builds search engine trust, employing tactics such as building quality links, optimising content, improving site architecture and undertaking keyword analysis.
5. Using unBOOlievably bad stock photos
We often use stock photography, for our clients and ourselves. There are some great free sources of stock photography, including Pixabay, Unsplash and Canva but, whilst there are some excellent stock images available, there are also some terrifyingly bad ones.
Here are 3 things to avoid when choosing stock photography for your next project:
- Images of desperately cheerful office workers, they’re seriously dated
- Stereotypes or cliches, they’re often offensive
- Low res images, always download the highest resolution available
Happy Halloween everyone!