Do You Make These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes?

Do You Make These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes?

(This is a rough draft of my new position paper on common online marketing mistakes. I may change the title to “7  Marketing Mistakes that Kill Your Website” because it’s not a strict online/offline thing. We’ll see.)

Introduction

On any given day a new online marketing strategy is announced. It’s publicized. It catches on, becomes the next buzz phrase, gets everyone excited and finds its way into a meeting where the question is asked, “What are we doing about SEO/PPC/content marketing/automation/analytics/CPA/CLV?”

Before you take action, make sure your firm is avoiding the 7 most common online marketing mistakes. Avoiding these mistakes will solve 90% of your online business development efforts.

I’ll detail these 7 mistakes in a minute, but first, let’s get on the same page when talking about prospects/customers. The people you want to provide solutions to. Regardless of industry or geography or demographic statistics, your prospects share one common trait:

They follow a decision making process that starts with a need to solve a problem.

That problem may be defined as a universal issue, one that is so generalized (strategy, communication, leadership) that all firms have problems around it. It may be defined as a problem that is created because you bring a solution to the table (automation solutions, websites, branding) that highlights a problem to be solved, or it may be a forecasted problem. Anticipation of a problem that is going to crop up based on conditions (executive distance learning, Gen Y communication styles) and preparation today will help alleviate it.

Whatever the problem is, they want to solve it and they follow a 4 step process to get there.

First – Recognition of a problem. “There’s an issue up ahead that I may need some help with.”

Second – Gathering of information. “Someone has to know how to solve this.”

Third -Evaluating options. “In house? Training? Outsource? Purchase?”

Fourth – Securing the best deal. “Is this the best price I can get?”

In the past (which can be defined as recently as the early 90s), that second step in the decision making process might have involved a discussion with you or your colleagues, especially if you were known to have opinions or solutions. What’s changed? The internet. Your customers are going to the web information on how to solve problems.

* Want to know what others have done with underperforming assets in the equipment rental business? Google it.

* Curious about the street value of your company’s Facebook Fan Page? Lots of opinions are a click away.

This paper will cover the 7 mistakes that are made in online marketing, and touch on solutions on how to work through them. Your prospects/customers have questions, you have answers, avoid these 7 mistakes and give them what they want, when they want it.

Mistake #1. No measures in place.

Before you can market effectively, you need to know what your objective is, know how you’re going to measure it and have established a value for that result. “Our website looks great but doesn’t seem to be working”, means one thing. No one has taken the time to figure out what you want to measure. Simply decide where you are today and where you want to be in the future. Then assign a value to the difference.

It’s simple, but not easy.

The larger the organization, the harder it is to get agreement on what needs to be measured, where it is today and where you want it to be in the future. Competing priorities begin to clash and the exact right solution is pursued. Here’s the secret to success in measurement: start measuring something.

Start with some basics like how much a customer is worth over time. (Customer Lifetime Value) Then do something bold like find the number of new customers, total marketing spend to attract those customers and come up with a Cost Per Acquisition.

Some measurements are better than others but the act of measuring within the “today, goal, value of reaching that goal” framework will help you move the needle. 1% improvement every week adds up over time. Compound interest.

Mistake #2. Not looking at your analytics.

By now, everyone has figured out that you can track any and all movements on a website. Don’t be distracted by the appearance of accuracy. Narrow your focus to desired results. Gear your analytics focus to those items that impact what you’re measuring.

We are swimming in data. It gives the false impression that everything is trackable and that’s just not true.

Buying decisions are complex.

Learn how to track your progress on the desired results in analytics. Use it like the sales department would and build a crude funnel to track progress toward the intended target. Take a snapshot each month and measure the progress to the goal.

Mistake #3. Not talking to your customers.

It sounds simple because it is. Talk to your customers. Time and time again, we spend a fortune capturing business and then do the equivalent of giving them the cold shoulder. It’s time to fall in love all over again. You want to know all about the journey they took to get to you Most customers can tell us the last point of contact, but go back further.

What other solutions did they look at? How long ago did they know they would need help? What did they do then? Where did they go for information?

What has happened, will happen. History repeats itself and your current customers can give you insight into how they made their decision to use your solutions. Chances are your future customers will follow a similar path.

Be bold and venture out to talk to lost deals. Why did they decide on a different course of action? Did they do anything? What did our competitor do that we missed? How did they get to the point of comparison?

Collect the insights and sit on this information. Let it simmer.

Ask “what is this information trying to tell me?”

Mistake #4. Your site content doesn’t match your customer’s decision process.

Going back to the 4 steps of how a decision is made, your website needs to talk to prospects at each stage of the process. If they are investigating options, are you providing videos, research papers, testimonials, press releases, or blog posts that focus on the problem and all of the possible solutions? Even the solutions that your firm doesn’t provide? If they have narrowed their choice of solution, do you have videos, research papers, testimonials, press releases, and blog posts that help with the last step of how to choose a vendor? If they are at the end of the cycle and making sure they have the best price, do you have a way to engage them?

Create content with one goal in mind. Help your prospects and customers make good decisions. The firms that win are the ones that help customers make a good decision that is INDEPENDENT of doing business with them. To win online, you need to take it that far. If our prospect/customer after careful consideration of information, comes to the conclusion that another solution is the right decision for them, we should be happy.

It’s not a zero sum game. Take an approach of abundance, not scarcity.

Online, our prospects/customers are very sophisticated in their ability to sniff out intent. It works best to be as transparent as possible.

Mistake #5. Not tracking leads based on where they are in their decision making process.

This is where the definition of a “lead” is helpful. There are Marketing Leads and Sales Leads. The difference is that sales leads are for closing. Marketing leads are for nurturing. If a customer is early in the process, talking to a sales person intent on “sealing the deal” only serves to make both parties mad. If they are down to shopping for the best price, discussions about alternative solutions frustrate both parties.

Talk to your customers where they’re at.

How can you tell where they are in the process? You can ask them and listen carefully . . . or, in the case of website leads, assign them to your funnel based on the content they are consuming.

If you’re new to tracking this way, remember that it’s a process, not an event. Start somewhere and be willing to make changes as better information comes along.

Mistake #6. Not taking the time to nurture your early stage leads.

Remember drip marketing? It was hot in the pre-internet days, came back in vogue during the internet’s pre Pay Per Click days and now is raising its head again as Automated Marketing. Essentially you’re looking at ways to help your prospects/customers move through the decision process with periodic touches.

This is where the “email is dead” people and “catalog marketing is dead” people and the “bricks are dead” people are wrong. Your prospects/customers may combust into spontaneous buyers here and there but more often it’s like that movie Inception. . .you plant a seed, nurture it and then one day you’ll have a chance to work with them.

Think business to consumer sales are different? They aren’t. The smaller dollars involved may compress the sales cycle into minutes, but everyone’s moving through the decision making process. Help them.

Mistake #7. Not trying to get better at it.

A system like this is fluid. Take a page from the old direct marketing gurus. They would manually segment their lists and periodically re-test copy, list segments and calls to action. Measure the results against expectations. Rinse and repeat. The work was never done. So it goes today.

Establish metrics, set a target, work towards that target, measure progress, repeat.

Don’t let the desire for perfection prevent you from doing the work. You need to be better at this process than you are today. Not the best that ever was.

Conclusion

After 20 years of business development, these 7 mistakes encompass 90% of the issues I’m hired to fix. Your website is more than an interactive brochure. These days, it has become a tool that helps your customers make better decisions, whether it’s price shopping or figuring out an approach to solving their problem. Eliminate these 7 common mistakes from your approach, and your firm will be start seeing results that are aligned with expectations from your investment.