Working on expanding your digital footprint takes a daily commitment in updating your brand and keeping your finger on the pulse of new trends. It’s also important to think about the experience from your customers’ point of view as well. As a visitor or current customer, what is likely to put them off and turn them away? Here are some pitfalls and digital marketing trends you should avoid for your business.
Impersonal email marketing
Have you ever received an email filled out with the wrong name, gender, location, or anything else? It’s irritating and immediately gets sent to the trash. If you have an email marketing campaign, make sure that at least all of your customer’s information is correct and the email is relevant to them. Keep it informal and light, which means steering away from “Dear Customer” and heading more towards “Hey there” or “Hi [name]”. Don’t send out mass emails blindly, but customise them carefully.
Anti-social media
If you have a social media account, use it! Don’t be a business that has an account for the sake of having one. Dedicate 10-20 minutes a day to keep up with mentions and engagements, like or re-share relevant material, and post good quality original photos and information of your products – a deal or competition wouldn’t hurt, either.
Buying followers
It’s the quality of your engagement with followers, not the quantity of followers themselves, so don’t fall into the trap of buying them. It’s pretty easy to tell if an account has fake followers by a quick look at the interactions or at the accounts themselves. A fake account – or bot – will post jibberish or strangely worded stuff on their account, and someone who has 25K followers but only a few dozen likes or comments on any of their posts is clearly buying the followers. Don’t fall for it, it’s not a good look.
Bombarding with ads/cookies/pop ups
Customers are majorly put off by pop-ups, demands, and questions as soon as they arrive on your site. Things like “please disable your adblock”, “accept these cookies”, or a rudely obtrusive self-playing video that is impossible to get rid of (and actually blocks your site content), are all very annoying. Keep your customers engaged and coming back with good, interesting, useful content instead.
Being unclear
Business speak is primarily used for making small stuff sound more important than it is, or for skirting around an issue with big words. For customers, it just makes everything sound unclear and complicated. If they don’t get what you’re offering within a few sentences, they’re unlikely to stick around. Keep it light, friendly, and to the point.
Quantity not quality
In a nutshell, don’t post if you don’t have anything to say. Content is important, but it should always be useful or interesting (or both). Hitting targets for quantity that is useless, spammy, and annoying are bound to put people off, so always go for quality.
Opening a new account
People have more than enough online accounts and hate being asked to open another one. Often, this is necessary, for example, if customers can purchase products via your site. However, consider offering the option of purchasing via a guest account, which means they don’t need to add yet another password and account to their list if it’s just a one-off purchase.
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