While there are a number of digital marketing mistakes to avoid, the biggest of them all can end up doing far more harm than every other mistake combined. While you may be able to turn things around if a smaller mistake is made, it becomes far harder to see any results from digital marketing if you are making this major mistake.
Avoiding the Biggest Digital Marketing Mistake
What exactly is the absolute worst digital mistake to avoid? In a nutshell, the worst thing you could ever do is attempt to proceed without a strategy or plan in place. Failing to plan is a mistake that can cost you far more in the short and long run.
Some of the repercussions of not having a digital marketing plan in place include the following:
Disjointed marketing
When you proceed with digital campaigns without a strategy, it becomes difficult or even impossible to maintain a cohesive brand experience. This is not unlike trying to paint a masterpiece in the dark, without being able to see what you are doing or even if you are painting on the canvas rather than the wall. The effect is a disjointed experience that is off-putting and even frustrating for your audience. It does very little for your reputation, either, making you seem disorganised, lazy, and unprofessional.
Undefined goals
Another drawback of ‘winging it’ with your digital efforts is the lack of clearly defined goals. What are you hoping to achieve? More traffic? Better engagement? More sales? Without a plan in place, you will not have any insight into your goals. This, in turn, will make it harder to meet your goals. Simply churning out social media posts, blog posts and a few emails now and then to show that you are making an effort is never enough.
Wasted resources
Finally, it is also worth noting that proceeding without a plan can often end up costing you more than you realise in time, effort, and even costs. When you are doing a bit of everything without any plan in place, without tracking or goals, you have no idea whether any of your efforts will bring any sort of results. You are for all effects putting things out there and hoping for the best, which is never a good way forward. You may spend a small fortune on PPC, only to realise that SEO delivers more value. Or, you may set a budget for ecommerce marketing, only to find that you have not done enough personalisation to see results. A strategy brings everything together in a way that helps you move forward in the best way possible, with minimal hassle.
Stay clear of this mistake, get your digital strategy in place, put in the effort to avoid the smaller mistakes and remember that digital marketing is something that is a work in progress.
