When it comes to marketing there isn’t really a right or wrong answer to what can work for your business, but there are often small things we marketers don’t think about or push aside that can really elevate our marketing to the next level.
In this blog, we’re going to talk you through 10 of the most common mistakes we see marketers make.
Number 1: They don’t check their setup
Whether it’s Facebook Ads or Email Marketing, we understand how exciting it can be to get your next marketing plan underway. You’ve put so much passion and focus into your designs and content, you can’t wait to see how your audience will react. But when you go to hit that publish button, a big red error icon blocks you.
There is nothing more annoying than getting everything ready and then being stopped because something isn’t right and this is something we see a lot with our Facebook Ad clients. Not setting up your accounts correctly right from the beginning means you lose out on time later down the line.
Before you start your marketing, dedicate a couple of hours to ensure your setup is correct. If this is for Facebook Ads, then look at your Ad Account, is it associated with your Pixel, your Catalogue, your Social Media and your Shopify store? If you can confidently say your setup is working and correct, you’ll be ready to start running ads.
If you'd like to some extra help getting your set up correct, download our helpful checklist here.
Number 2: They have the wrong objectives
Whenever you start a new project it’s important to have clear objectives in mind. If you’re looking to increase the size of your mailing list but are only directing people to your website, the objective you have is wrong for what you’re doing.
Picking the wrong objective is extremely common in Facebook Ads. A client's typical goal is to increase the number of purchases they have but if they choose any objective other than Catalog Sales or Conversion, their ads are not going to be optimised for purchases.
You really need to put some time aside to figure out what your goal is. If you’re new or a fairly small business, any goal that increases your brand awareness, reach and website traffic is a great place to start. We know it’s tempting to want to jump in and try and convert people straight away but if they aren’t going to your site in the first place, it's going to be difficult for you to do.
We've created a handy guide on Facebook Ad Objective. Download it here.
Number 3: They don’t leverage organic assets
When you think of marketing, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Facebook Ads? PPC perhaps? Well, you don’t have to jump straight to paid advertising, there are a number of organic marketing methods that are usually forgotten by marketers.
First and foremost social media! Simply having a social media presence allows anyone to engage with you and your brand and it doesn’t cost you anything. But if you still aren’t convinced social media is the right tool for your business, why not check out blog explaining why it’s great for e-commerce brands.
If you excuse the monthly service costs Email Marketing and Facebook Bots are also great ways to market to an audience without paying a fee per action. Marketers miss out on keeping in touch with some of their most engaged audiences and this means they could be missing out on sales. So before you start paid advertising, make sure you leverage these organic assets.
Number 4: They don’t produce regular content
Although leveraging your organic content is great, it’s only great if you’re producing regular content. There’s nothing worse than seeing a Facebook Ad, clicking on a business page and then seeing no Facebook posts. This is a big red flag for most people and will put them off from engaging with you further.
Within your marketing plan, make sure you’re regularly posting to Facebook and Instagram, regularly writing new blogs and regularly sending out email campaigns. The more consistent you are with your content, the more your audience will trust your brand. If they see that your website, social media and emails are all linked through design and brand voice, they will see that you are a legitimate business and this is the first step to gaining a potential customers trust.
Number 5: They don’t set up key flows
One of the great things about Email Marketing and Facebook Bots like Octane.ai is the ability to set up flows. Flows are automated emails or messages that send out when a subscriber completes an action. For example, if you sign up to a mailing list, you should receive a welcome email from the brand.
We see so many clients who haven’t set up these key flows and they’re really missing out on retargeting a good quality audience. If they’ve signed up to your mailing list, they are going to be engaged as they’ve actively chosen to receive emails from you.
You should make sure you have: a welcome flow, thank you flow, browse abandonment flow, abandoned cart flow and win back flow in place when you start your marketing.
Having these flows in place means that you can reach new subscribers, as well as anyone performing actions on your website and anyone who isn’t engaging with you. These will become even more important as your marketing goes on. As your website traffic increases, it’ll lead to more signups and more valuable actions, so why miss out on retargeting them?
If you use Klaviyo you can also integrate it with your Shopify Store. One of the benefits of doing so allows you to segment your subscribers in a more detailed way. For example, it can predict when a customer is likely to make a purchase again. Finding out this information means that you could send an email campaign at this time point to give them a nudge in the right direction.
Number 6: They don’t listen to their audience
When you target a new audience for the first time, you have no way of knowing what they like. So how do you know what ads you should be running? A common mistake we see here is marketers restrict themselves to the visuals they like and have available, but when they don’t see the results they want, it’s hard to figure out why.
Listening to what your audience does and doesn’t like is crucial to a successful marketing campaign. Restricting yourself from the get-go won’t allow you to see what your audience actually likes. If you’re starting out with Facebook Ads you need to be broad. Test every ad format you can, keep age brackets open, and test different placements. Then listen and look at the data from your ads to determine which one is successful.
A great example of this comes from a recent experience we had with one of our clients. Our client believed the age bracket for their audience should have been 25 - 44, But after running ads for 2 months, all of the valuable actions showed that 45 - 65+ were actually the audience responding to the ads. We wouldn’t have known this if we went straight to targeting 25 - 44 year olds so who knows what the results of our ads would have actually been if we excluded this engaged age bracket from the start.
Number 7: They focus on what they like
Occasionally though sometimes the data gathered isn’t enough for marketers to steer their ads to what their audience likes. One of the most common things we hear clients saying is they don’t like their videos as much as images, or they don’t like this particular style or colour etc. Marketers can sometimes get in a rut of personal preferences. If they think the ad looks good and reads well, that's it, it’s going to perform great. But this isn’t always the case.
Whilst we always want to do our best to accommodate what our clients want their ads to look like, we can’t ignore the facts. If the audiences we target show they really like a particular design that our client hates, we’re going to go with what our audience likes.
If you use the data from your ads to support your visuals and content, you are going to find an ad combination your audience likes and wants to engage with. At the end of the day, this is where the key results you’re looking for will be and who knows you may find something completely different your audience goes crazy for. If this is the case, you should really consider bringing it into all your marketing even if it’s not what you first envisaged.
Number 8: They don’t utilise their customer journey
Do you know what journey your customers take to get to your store and purchase? Believe it or not, most marketers don’t and this means they’re really missing a trick with their ads. It’s great that you can retarget people who have been to your website but do you really want to try and get a cold and unengaged audience to purchase from you straight away? This is often a reason potential customers can be put off you purchasing but it can be avoided.
Think about how new audiences come to your site, what is that makes them click? Starting your ads with an acquisition stage allows new people to learn about your brand, see them a couple of times and then persuade them to take a look. Acquisition isn’t about being pushy for sales, it’s about peaking an interest with a low commitment action like going to your about us page. If these people then proceed to have a look round your site and your products, they’ve shown a legitimate interest in you and this is where you can start the remarketing stage.
It’s also equally important to get this balance right. Just because you see an increase in website visitors doesn’t mean you should stop your acquisition stage straight away. It never hurts to get new traffic to your site. Instead, play around with your budgets and put more budget into the place you want to grow.
Number 9: They forget about potential customers
The customer journey doesn’t just end at the audiences going to your website. What about everyone who has thought about purchasing but hasn’t yet completed it? Retargeting abandoned carts is becoming more and more popular for every online store and sometimes a potential customer may be looking for an incentive before they purchase.
By incentive, we mean a discount code or a free sample. How many of you are guilty of deliberately leaving something in your cart to see if a discount code will pop up later on? It’s almost become a marketing strategy even the customer has learned to expect so if a discount code doesn’t come their way, they may decide not to purchase.
If you do decide you want to give these potential customers an incentive to buy then just make sure you are only giving this incentive to your most engaged audience. Being honest anywhere you have a discount code will persuade people to purchase but at the same time, you don’t want to be offering a discount for every person on your site. If you keep this incentive only to those who really need the extra push you’ll get sales from this tricky customers without compromising your profit every time.
Number 10: They don’t encourage customer loyalty
One of the most forgotten areas of marketing is engaging with your actual customers. Just because someone has purchased doesn’t mean they’re just gone. Encouraging customer loyalty is a great way to increase your repeat customers but also persuade new customers to buy.
Customer loyalty is all about showing your customers you’re grateful for their purchase and if they’ve had a good experience with you from the start they’re, a) likely to purchase again and b) likely to leave a review. Reviews are a huge way to increase new purchases as so many of us want to hear others' experiences with the brand before we go ahead and purchase ourselves.
Another way to increase customer loyalty is by creating a loyalty program. It’s what big brands today have mastered. If you get points for your purchases that allow you to get a discount off your another purchase, who isn’t going to partake in this? If you’re looking to create a stellar loyalty plan, LoyaltyLion is great at doing this as they integrate seamlessly with your Shopify Store, allowing you to easily create loyalty with your customers.
Making mistakes is all a part of your marketing journey. It’s going to take a while for you to learn what works and what doesn’t work as well as get everything you need in place. We hope this blog has given you some insight into what you can do to get around these mistakes and move forward with creating a marketing plan that is right for your business.
We also understand that marketing isn’t for everyone and that’s why here at Blend we offer a variety of marketing services from Email Marketing Set up and Management to monthly Facebook Ads Management. If you like to speak to one of the team to see how Blend can help you, please feel free to contact us here.
