One of the best parts of digital marketing, now, being a mature industry, is that we have clearly identified what you should do and what you should not do when it comes to this particular marketing opportunity. Knowing the guidelines as to what is expected or ideal and what is not expected or not ideal for growing your business and making an income from your chosen opportunity is important. Let’s move towards dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
Here, we are going to discuss three things that you should absolutely not do in your business and five things that you should do in order to kick start your growth. Understand that this advice comes from the hands-on experiences of countless entrepreneurs who had come before you and paved the way for you to generate success in your digital marketing business. While you can certainly ignore these if you desire, I suggest you don’t. Following these simple steps is the easiest guide to help propel you toward success much faster in your digital marketing business.
Dont’s
1. Do Not Obsess Over Other Marketers
One of the biggest mistakes that new marketers make when they launch their online businesses includes obsessing over other marketers. A piece of advice frequently given to new marketers is to take a look at the competition to identify what the latest trends are, as well as to be inspired for how you might consider marketing your own business. This is and always will be true, but many new marketers do not know how to use this as a tool without turning it into a game of comparison. When it comes to looking to other marketers for inspiration and ideas, it is important that you do not obsess over what they are doing.
Excessively fixating on what other marketers are doing and how they are growing their businesses is an excellent way for you to tank your own business for many reasons. First, many people who engage in this behavior find themselves feeling inadequate, or like they lack the necessary skills and talents to generate a successful business online. This intense self-doubt can lead to you struggling to actually grow your business, which can result in you experiencing major setbacks to your success. As well, you might find that the more you obsess over other people’s marketing strategies, the less you give yourself creative freedom. Instead of being inspired and creating your own unique brand, you might find yourself trying to copy another brand out there, which can lead to you stunting the growth of your own business by cutting off your own unique edge. Another big mistake that commonly happens when this behavior takes place is that marketers find themselves switching strategies too quickly as they attempt to “keep up” with everyone else. By rapidly switching strategies, they end up confusing and ultimately losing their audience due to not being able to provide a clear and consistent brand experience.
If you want to really expand your business in digital marketing, you need to give yourself time to slow down and build your own brand. Do not be afraid to look at other marketers for inspiration or advice, but refrain from getting caught up in any obsessions over how people are growing their businesses. It can feel scary to believe in your own ability to make something equally as successful, if not more successful, than your competition, but trust that it is possible and that with consistent and intentional efforts you will succeed in doing so. This was don’ts amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
2. Do Not Sell Low Ticket Items
A big rut that many online marketers fall into involves selling low ticket items. When it comes to generating success online, low ticket items are never the way to go because low ticket items require high volume sales for you to generate enough income to make it worth it. Once you factor in the cost of running your business, such as your Amazon account expenses or your website fees, plus advertising costs, there is not enough of a profit to make it worth it. Even if you have the funds to pay for the enormous amounts of advertising that you would need to drive enough traffic to your page to reach these volumes of sales, you do not yet have a reputation strong enough to make that volume matter. People who landed on your page would still not have a clue as to who you were, and it would take time for you to build up a reputation strong enough to create a sustainable business. In the end, it will feel like you are pushing a bike up the hill while its brake is engaged. It’s possible, but it’s incredibly challenging and virtually pointless.
Instead of selling low ticket items, switch out for medium to high ticket items that are going to earn you larger profit margins. Most marketers say do not settle for anything that generates less than a 30% profit margin, as you will not have enough of a margin to reasonably manage sales or earn a decent income from your business. As you look for products or services to sell, make sure that you have a 30% profit margin after you factor in the cost of the item or service plus the cost of running your business. You need to make sure that you can afford to keep your systems in place while also earning a strong profit off of your business, as this will make it worthwhile.
When you switch to selling medium to high ticket items, the larger profit margins mean that you do not need as high of sales volumes. This means that you will not require as large of a marketing budget and that you afford yourself time to build your reputation so that you can increase your momentum and further grow your business. Over time, you can add a few low ticket “entry-level” items to encourage people to buy from your business and get a feel for who you are and what you offer. Or you might consider adding low ticket add-on items that people buy after they have purchased a high-ticket item. Otherwise, everything else should be a medium-to-high ticket to ensure that you have generated enough of an income in your business to make it profitable and worth your efforts. This was don’ts amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
3. Do Not Stand Still to Seek Accuracy
When it comes to marketing, good enough is good enough. Even larger companies and massive corporations make mistakes in their marketing campaigns or their systems, and people still are loyal to these businesses and shop with them regularly. That is not just because they are already well-known and loved by their customers, but also because customers are not actually as nit-picky as we believe they will be when we first start out in our business.
Getting caught up with perfectionism is only going to lead to you struggling to go public with your business because you will be fighting to make every little thing perfect. You will read, re-read, re-write, and re-read your content and marketing materials over and over again, constantly tweaking them and refining them in an effort to achieve a level of perfection that even you are not totally sure of what it is.
Instead of holding yourself up to impossible standards that even the best marketers out there do not hold themselves against, start to become comfortable with doing your best and leaving room for growth. Even if you do notice an error, later on, you can always tweak it or use it as a lesson to help you do better in the future when you run similar marketing campaigns. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake or leaving room for growth, as this is all a part of the business. Be patient with the process and trust that good enough is, in fact, good enough for you to make money from. This was don’ts amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
Do’s
1. Do Leverage Video Content
Video content has grown exponentially in the past five years, to the point where it is now the most popular form of marketing on the internet. If you want to grow your business quickly, you are going to need to be willing to leverage video content so that you can get in front of your audience in a way that they are readily willing to receive.
The biggest reason why video content has grown so popular is that it adds back the personal touch that the internet tends to lack otherwise. With video, you can show people who you are, generate a face-to-face relationship with them, and even do product demos and help physically show them what you are talking about in all of your marketing materials. It truly provides that added personal touch that many need to encourage them to purchase from your business.
There are many ways that you can leverage video content for your brand, ranging from creating stories and live videos to uploading videos that you have pre-filmed in advance. All of these video forms help you get in front of your audience in their preferred manner and grow your business faster.
When it comes to stories or story-type sharing, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are all great platforms for you to use. Instagram and Facebook offer stories that can be shared to your profile, whereas Snapchat is entirely built around story-type sharing. Each platform can be leveraged by creating unique, behind the scenes type footage that allows you to share a relationship with your customers and followers that is more personal than a formal newsfeed. When you do share to your stories, make sure that everything you share is relevant and portrays your brand in the best way possible to avoid creating a story feed that detracts from the quality and purpose of your brand.
Live video is another form of footage that you can use to grow your business with. Live video allows your customers to watch you and engage with you real-time, making it feel as though you have a personal relationship with your audience. You can use live video to do Q& A calls, to do product demos, and to announce updates for your business while having a real-time conversation with your customers about whatever your live topic may be. The back and forth interaction makes this particular type of film both popular and successful, and you can use a live call-to-action to prompt people to buy from your business or otherwise take action that will lead them through your sales funnel.
Footage that you have already filmed is not quite as interactive as live content, but when it is designed and edited properly, it can be used for many different things. You can use this footage to share instructional videos, updates, and informational videos to your social media accounts. They can be uploaded as a post, or uploaded to YouTube and then shared as a post to your platform if you are going to be using YouTube as a part of your primary marketing strategy. Although you cannot get live comments, people can comment on your video depending on where it is posted, so be sure to take the time to comment back to people so that they still get that personalized feel. If you create and promote video content and then fail to respond to those who engage with you, you will miss out on a huge opportunity to really leverage that personal connection.
A great way to turn video marketing itself into a strategy that extends beyond cultivating brand awareness and into drawing traffic to your website is to create videos for YouTube and leverage them elsewhere on the net. YouTube videos can be created either with you talking and sharing information or with you doing a voiceover for an informative video that educates your audience on something relevant to your business. For example, if you are a business coach, your video could focus entirely on identifying your target audience and creating your “target persona” so that people watching your video learn how to clearly identify their own target audience. After you have created this video, you can share it out to Facebook and promote it as an advertisement, as well as send it out to your email list. This way, when people see the video, not only do they receive high-value content right then and there, but they also receive an incentive.
These days, some brands are even promoting their videos at the beginning of YouTube videos so that when people are looking for similar content, they come across their video, first. This is a great way to capture your target audience and provide them high value while also encouraging them to follow you and pay attention to you, rather than having them instead click through to your competitor and purchase from them. Using this strategy correctly can have massive benefits, so it is definitely worth looking into. This was dos amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
2. Do Create a Strong Facebook Presence
Facebook continues to serve as one of the best platforms to grow your business when it comes to creating a social media presence. If you are going to pick just one platform to grow your business on, pick Facebook. Facebook is a powerful business tool for many reasons, but one of the most important reasons is that people will frequently go to Facebook to verify the quality of business before actually buying anything from that business. Facebook allows people to see what type of content business posts, how frequently they update their business page, and whether or not the reviews for that particular business are of high quality. They can also see what is being said about the business, or to the business, through the comments section of your posts.
When it comes to growing your business online, Facebook offers great in-app features as well as ones that can be integrated with Instagram, which is a social media platform that is also owned by Facebook. Some of these features include pages that have shoppable content, the ability to tag your products so that people can go straight to the product page on your website, and customer service features such as chat through messenger. Facebook also offers an extensive and proven native advertising opportunity that allows you to promote advertisements on Facebook and Instagram so that you can get your products or services in front of users scrolling the app. This particular paid advertising feature allows you to increase your viewership without having to do quite so much hard work with your organic advertisements.
Creating a Facebook page should be one of the first things that you focus on when you launch your business online, and it should be a platform that you seek to maintain. Keeping a consistent, updated page is important in keeping your brands’ credibility and growing your business online. If you do not want to upload to your page consistently, you can always automate your content so that you only need to create and schedule content once per week or once per month, rather than uploading new content every day. This was dos amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
3. Do Start Your Own Blog
Blogging is an important tool to leverage when it comes to digital marketing. If you want to grow your business rapidly, and get more traffic to your website, you need to use your website to host a blog that is relevant to your business and industry. Creating a blog helps give people more reason to visit your website, offers you more unique reasons to promote your website freshly consistently, and also makes your website easier for people to find.
When it comes to blogging, you can leverage your posts to position yourself as an expert in your industry by writing content that educates and informs people on topics that are relevant to your niche. For example, if you are in the food industry with custom desserts being your niche, you could have an entire blog focused on topics relating to creating custom desserts. This could include DIY techniques for people who want to try it themselves, updates on the latest trends in custom desserts, and reviews on products that you have tried when it comes to making custom desserts. All of these topics are relevant to your niche while also providing you with great content to update your blog with. Then, not only are you creating fresh new content for your audience, but you are also creating a fresh new opportunity for you to drive your audience to your website consistently.
In addition to allowing you to regularly drive more traffic to your website through organic marketing, blogging also improves your ability to leverage search engine optimization, or SEO, to get more traffic to your website from search engines. When you blog, you upload more content to your website that is filled with keywords that your audience is likely to be searching on platforms like Google, which means that Google is going to be more likely to display your website over any other. As a result, you are going to get more organic traffic through search engines, too, which means that you will have an additional source of traffic landing on your website. This was dos amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
4. Do Take Advantage of Email Marketing
Email marketing, as you will grow to understand, is one of the most powerful forms of marketing available on the internet today. Your email list is the only thing that you truly own on the internet, aside from your domain. Without your list, you do not have any guaranteed way to contact your audience so that you can increase your sales.
Beyond giving you a guaranteed way to contact your audience, email marketing is still one of the best ways to contact your audience with new updates and offers in your business. Plus, you can customize and design your emails in a way that perfectly brands them to your business and makes it even easier for you to build brand recognition as you go. Since we will be talking in-depth about email marketing later, I am not going to go too deep into specifics right now, but understand that email marketing is definitely something you should do in your business. No matter what you may perceive its reputation to be, it is a powerful solution for any business that wants to generate greater sales. This was dos amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
5. Learn How to Produce High-Quality Copy
When you are an online marketer, producing high-quality copy is crucial if you are going to have people actually stop to pay attention to your brand. Without high-quality copy material, people are unlikely to pay attention to your business because what you have written is uninteresting, difficult to read, or laid out in a way that makes it unappealing to your audience. As a result, you are going to have a hard time capturing the attention of your audience and converting them into customers who are ready to purchase from your business.
What you need to do to create a high-quality copy ultimately depends on where that copy is being shared. Copy on a static website page, for example, is going to have different requirements from a copy on a social media post. That being said, every form of copy can be held to certain standards that can ensure that it has been properly designed to capture attention and produce results for you and your brand. This is a very useful dos amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
The first thing you need to do when it comes to writing any copy is to research the method that the copy is being delivered through. Whether you are writing a blog post, a social media caption, Amazon product descriptions, or website copy, stop and do some research to see how each form of copy is supposed to be laid out to produce the highest quality of results. Some forms of the copy are going to require headers and body content, whereas others will require a basic one to two sentences to get the message across. Knowing what is required for the form of copy that you are creating is important, as it will help you design yours properly.
Next, you need to make sure that the topic of your copy is relevant and interesting to your customers. When it comes to writing about topics that your customers are interested in, you need to consider both the content itself and the way that you present the content to make sure that it is a topic that captures your readers’ interest and keeps it. You can get a feel for what topics keep your readers’ interest by paying attention to what popular bloggers and influencers in your industry are talking about. Even if you are not a blogger or influencer, the topics that the bloggers and influencers in your industry are talking about are likely to be trending topics that you can leverage for your own copy.
After you have created your copy, you need to make sure that you proofread it. You want a copy that is free of spelling and grammatical errors, as well as copy that features language that your customers understand. In other words, you need to be using the slang that is relevant to your customer base so that they understand what you are talking about and relate to what you have said.
After you have completed these elements of your copy, you are ready to publish it. The next step comes after you have already published it when you check in on the analytics around the copy a few hours and days later to see how it performed. Keeping an eye on your copy’s performance helps you spot trends in what types of copy your customers like most, which helps you decide what to write, and how, when it comes to creating copy for the future. This was dos amongst dos and don’ts of digital marketing.
