We’re about to enter 2023, which means inflation prices are going to start effecting how people interact with your business. Since the pandemic, it’s become increasingly more difficult to attract clients to commit to larger purchases. It’s time to be one of those businesses that can adapt to a changing climate. Let us help you get a jumpstart on your marketing by telling you what NOT to do in your marketing.
1. Neglecting Social Media
Remember creating all those social media accounts? The ones that have your logo and company bio, but less than 10 posts? For your 2023 New Year’s resolution, we recommend taking another look at those and starting to add interesting content!
Most active business accounts who do regularly post will fall into the trap of all their content focusing only on their ads and promotions. In your personal life, would you follow businesses if you knew they only posted ads? This is great if you’re looking for deals and coupons, but we don’t consider this to be interesting content. People follow PEOPLE not BUSINESSES.
What content should a business post? A great place to start is blogs that lead back to your website. This can range from helpful advice to industry secrets that can help the average person make informed decisions on their purchases. If that’s not your style, simply post videos that demonstrate how your product or service makes you stand out from your competition. You don’t have to say those exact words, but focusing on pain points that your product or service solves can be the deciding factor to close a deal with a prospect. Make sure to keep it short and sweet!
2. Forgetting Mobile Users
Many companies fall into this trap. Your graphics and design teams are quick to optimize your digital ads and web editing to look fantastic on a desktop, but they forget that a significant number of prospects will be viewing your digital presence from their mobile devices. Have you gone to your phone or tablet and looked at your website? Are your pop-ups and forms still functioning? You may be missing out on sales if your content is not optimized for mobile.
You don’t have to be an expert on web and ad building to direct your team. Nearly all web builders have an option that displays mobile view and allows manipulation of content to best suite your situation. Most graphic artists know how to optimize websites for mobile views, but they won’t necessarily do so without being instructed to.
3. Avoiding Discounts and Promotions
If your prospects are serious about starting business with you, a discount or promotion may entice them to close the deal quickly. That being said, the majority of attention a discount or promotion will attract are people who are going to ask questions and ultimately decide they aren’t interested in purchasing. In other words, you’ll have quantity, but not quality. It’s the same phenomenon that happens when you offer free samples. You’ll have people come by and take those, but that’s the extent of the engagement.
Discounts and promotions perform best when served to an already established group of people who got right up to the sale and left, or people who have already purchased from you.
4. Targeting a Broad Audience
As mentioned in the previous section, you don’t want to spend time with a prospect that is ultimately not going to buy from you.
Think about which scenario you’d rather have:
- 400 people that saw your ad and 6 people bought
- 20 people saw your ad and 6 people bought
Keep your range of audience targeting to those who fit the profile of your past clients the closest. It’s tempting to send to everyone you have availability to send messages to, but your results will mean more money spent on a lower conversion rate.
5. Forgetting Keyword and SEO Optimizing
Want people to be able to find you on the internet? The best way to do that, without paying money to search engines, is to talk about what you do using as many words as possible in as many places as possible. Repeating yourself in different ways is a key point of marketing.
Let’s say your business is selling cookies:
- People sell cookies nationwide and locally.
- There are many kinds of cookies.
- It’s a physical product that you’re advertising digitally. The best part is the smell and taste, and your prospects can’t experience that online.
This is where having keywords can be your lifesaver online. When describing your product, think about what people search for to find cookies: sprinkles, chocolate, sugar, vanilla, desserts, sweet, competitor name, business name, location…etc. Use these for your hashtags if you are advertising on social media.
For the post that you make, or for your website, make sure to use all those words when writing your ad.
“Delicious, sweet, cookies sold fresh in California that are available in chocolate, sprinkle, snickerdoodle, peanut butter, and more! Great for the holiday season and will bring a smile to your family on Christmas morning!”
Even though you’ve only wrote 2 sentences, your keywords will rank higher on search engines versus simply writing “Business Name: Delicious cookies in California. Find us here!” Practice expressing a lot of information concisely so that previews coming up on search engines will give your client a full picture of what you do.
Stick with us for part 2 for more help with your 2023 marketing campaigns.
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