4 mistakes you could be making with your marketing

Marketing your business as a small business owner can feel like a bit of a minefield, especially if marketing isn’t something you feel particularly confident about. That said, a good marketing strategy doesn’t have to be overly complicated. But you do need to avoid making some of these common mistakes.

Relying solely on social media

Whilst social media is an integral part of many marketing strategies, it shouldn’t be your sole focus.

Social media should be seen as your shop window; it entices people in. For most businesses it’s there to build brand awareness and create a community around the brand. It then directs people to your website and email marketing. These are your shop floor and should be designed to convert leads into sales.

Your social media marketing should work in tandem with other aspects of digital marketing and shouldn’t be the sole focus of your marketing strategy.

DIY branding

Your branding is one of the first things potential clients will see online. If your branding doesn’t live up to the experience you intend to deliver, you could be creating an entirely different impression of your brand. People will get different ideas as to what your brand is like to work with, and if your branding doesn’t live up to the expectations of the products/services you offer, you could be unknowingly turning people away.

Ignoring the data

To know if your marketing is working, you need to be looking at your marketing data. In short, your website, social media and email marketing analytics should be your best friend. They tell you what is, and isn’t, working and should be informing how you take your marketing strategy forward month on month.

When it comes to social media, you should be looking at:

• Reach: to know how many accounts your content is reaching.

• Impressions/views: to give you an indication of how many times the content has been seen, and if it is resonating with your audience.

• Likes, shares and comments: to understand if people are engaging with the content

• Profile or link clicks: to get an idea of the number of people clicking through to your website or to the links you are sharing.

• Followers: to review how quickly your account is growing (if that is one of your goals).

For email marketing, you should look at:

• Open rates: to see the % of people who opened your email.

• Click through rates: to understand the % of people who then clicked on a link included in your email.

• Conversion rate: to measure the % of recipients who took an action after they clicked on an email.

Finally, for your website the analytics you should be looking at include:

• Users: to review the number of visitors to your website over a given time period.

• Users by country: to see where the users are from.

• Device: to review what your website was viewed on, eg desktop, laptop or phone.

• New users: to see the number of first-time visitors to your website over a given time period.

• Engagement rate: to see the % of non-engaged sessions which is where a user leaves your website within 10 seconds.

• Engaged sessions: to review any time a session lasts longer than ten seconds, has at least two page views and/or triggers a conversion event such as a download, buying a product or filling out an enquiry form.

On your website analytics, you can also tell which pages were most popular, and where your website was found/where the traffic came from, such as from Google, from social media or from users coming to you directly.

Sleeping on SEO

If you want to be more visible and receive genuine enquiries from interested customers, then you need to invest time in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Utilising good SEO practice means that your website is more easily found by Google. A recent update on social media means that if you take these SEO techniques and incorporate them into your social media content, this content is not only more easily found on social media when users type in a search term, but it can also be found on Google.

You don’t have to market your business alone

Too often, we see business owners acting like they have to be wearing every “hat” within their business, and this really isn’t the case. If you feel you need more support with your marketing, why not give us a call on 01223 949443 or email studio@wearepostscript.co.uk?