If you’re reading this, you’re doing something right. Not because we’re the proprietors of this site, but because you’re doing the research. That you ended up with us is flattering—but this isn’t about us. It’s about you and your personal gain, and we’re here to help. With that in mind, we’ve put together another list for you to check off when working with influencers and digital marketing campaigns. If you’re already aware of these common pitfalls, pat yourself on your back. If not, read the below—avoid these mistakes, and then pat yourself on the back.
1) Not Having A Clear Goal – Sure you want to create awareness, yield sales, etc. But unless you set a specific objective for your campaign you won’t be able to measure its success. Even if all you want to do is get people to sign up for your mailing list—make sure you know where you’re at before the campaign so you can compare the number yielded after and precisely measure your return on investment.
2) Not Targeting The Right Audience – Say you’ve already made the content and it’s everything you’d hoped it’d be—don’t just put it out into the world. Take the proper steps to find the correct audience. Break down the awaiting public beyond personal descriptions; look into behaviors; look into people who have already visited your site/shopped your product. Speak with your digital marketing team (and if it’s a one-person operation ask yourself) about casting a wider net. Might someone outside of these habits/descriptors appreciate what you have to offer?
3) Impersonal Shortcutting – Ever get an email blast that aims for being personal and engaging, but reads more like an un-fun Mad Libs? Like they just copy and pasted your name on a pre-typed message. Don’t cut corners; customers don’t like this. Especially if you misspell their name or address them inaccurately somehow, which is quite common with this type of shortcutting. You shoot for personal and end up being impersonal. Not cute, babe.
4) Ignoring Mobile – The internet isn’t just about desktop experience anymore. Make sure your website is “responsive” and loads accurately across all mobile platforms. User experience is key and if your website loads poorly on mobile it will deter people from connecting. Don’t be so eager to launch, take the time to test everything on all devices.
5) Writing Off Email Blasts – See our third note above? If you do this correctly and offer incentives on email blasts, people will not unsubscribe. Don’t only offer incentives, it’s fine to communicate—just don’t abuse your subscribers’ time! It’s all about clear communication. It doesn’t have to be constant, but it should be worthwhile. Quality over quantity here.
6) Being Anti-Social on Social Media – Every social media influencer worth their weight in gold will tell you: You’ve got to show some love in return. Great, you’ve posted amazing content and the numbers of followers and corresponding likes are validating your success, but you’ve also got to share the love. You likely got there by doing so—and it’s not something you can eventually dismiss. Fostering these relationships, whether you’re an influencer or a brand is imperative. Be social! Like, comment, favorite, RT in return.
7) Buying Social Media Followers – Come on, guys. Duh.
8) Outsourcing Social Media – There are digital marketing companies out there who can do this for you. Some are really good. Most are not. And the worthwhile ones don’t come cheap. We urge you to do this yourself, though. Don’t be lazy. We’ve been giving pretty solid advice on how to jump right in and be effective across social platforms if we do say so… The excuse of not having enough time only holds so much weight. Once your brand’s message is clear, the best person to communicate that message is you. And you can literally do it while on the toilet. This doesn’t preclude you from teaming up with social media influencers. What we’re saying is this comes first. Once the brand identity and message is clear, you’ll be able to pair yourself with the right influencers.
9) Never Automated – This goes along with buying followers and cutting corners on email blasts etc. We know all about the bots that’ll comment on other people’s posts for you… don’t do it. Just. Don’t. Do. It. An actual human has to interact with the post; this cannot be automated. Otherwise, you’ll end up posting a smiley face emoji on a post about mourning the loss of the family cat. It’s happened before and it’ll keep happening unless you switch from automated to doing it yourself!
10) Measure Results! – After you’ve done the above and you’ve posted your campaign and the validation (be it from increase in followers or sales) has come in, don’t just go on break or call it a day. Measure the results! Analyze it and think about ways you can improve upon it next time. Then take that break.
Digital marketing is not rocket science.
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