6 SEO & Marketing Mistakes That You’re (Likely) Making

Marketing is a broad term, and each of those individual processes is very complex. It’s not often something that those who are inexperienced in the field would take on. But whether you’re looking to do it yourself or are new to the industry and are willing to learn, mistakes are made, and we’re here to highlight some of the most common ones. They won’t do the performance of your website any favours, which is why you need to be aware of what you’re doing wrong. With this in mind, here are six SEO and marketing mistakes you might be making that you should correct:

1. Doing work without knowing your audience

Doing research into your target audience is paramount. It’s the first thing you need to do before embarking on any other marketing venture the campaign might require. If you carry on with other marketing jobs or start devising a marketing plan without knowing your target audience, then it could all be a complete waste of time. There’s no point writing mortgage advice for a student blog, for instance. 

In much the same way, you wouldn’t write a blog post about how to mix the perfect cocktail if it’s being published on a blog for a retirement village. You need to know your audience, and that includes finding out their age, gender, location, job status, and even marital status, where applicable. This way, you’ll be able to put together a marketing strategy that is relevant and informative, ensuring maximum views, impressions, engagement, leads and sales.

2. Forgetting to address customer pain points

If your customers have feedback for you, then it would be a good idea to act on that feedback, especially if multiple people are mentioning one common pain point. You should address and acknowledge your customers and any problems they have. This helps to keep your customers happy and satisfied, therefore ensuring customer loyalty and the potential of new customers. Essentially, it’s a win-win for you as a business if you take your customers and their feedback seriously. 

3. Neglecting to do any keyword research

Keyword research is integral to how successful your marketing campaign is going to be. Much like your audience research, you shouldn’t start any marketing plan or campaign without first doing your keyword research. This stage is important because it means you’re hitting popular, common and well-searched for terms.

As such, you know that you’re basing your campaign around relevant information that people will actually want to read. If you dive in head-first without first doing your keyword research, then you’re going in blindfolded. It could then become a waste of your time, and all of your efforts will be for nothing. 

Do your keyword research in order to safeguard your time, your efforts and the overall performance of your marketing campaign. Don’t go in thinking you know what your customers want to see, hear or read about. Do some keyword research to either confirm or disprove those beliefs before starting any real work.

4. Not having a strategy in place

First things first, with most things, you need to have a plan in place before you embark on your marketing adventure. Not only does this help to give you some structure, but it also keeps you on the right track. You’ll have a better grasp on jobs that need to be done, jobs you’ve already done and any edits or amendments you need to make along the way. It also helps if you have clients, because it’ll be far easier for them to be kept in the loop, if that’s something that they require. Generally, it makes the entire campaign a lot easier to run, and the results will be that much sweeter as a result.

5. Expecting results overnight

Any results that are expected to come from your marketing campaign just cannot happen overnight. That’s a fact. No matter what someone tells you, campaigns take time to get off the ground and for some real, tangible results to become evident. You cannot expect, once a campaign has gone live, to see results overnight. It just does not happen. Instead, you need to have some patience. 

Bide your time, and the results you receive will pay dividends in the long run. The more you expect quick results, the more frustrated you will become. This results in abandoned campaigns before they’ve even been given a chance. Devise your strategy, set your campaign on its way and wait for success. Just give it a decent amount of time before making a reassessment.

6. Recklessly spending on paid ads

Paid advertising might seem like the most effective way forward. You may believe that it cuts out the middleman in terms of marketing research and strategy execution. But you’d be mistaken. Paid advertising should not be used in this way. It should be used as a way to complement your SEO marketing campaign that runs alongside it. 

If you continue to only push money into paid advertising, you’ll soon realise that it’s a waste of cash that would be better spent elsewhere. While we’re not saying that paid advertising is a waste of time, it should be used in conjunction with other marketing campaigns. Do not use it as a one-stop shop to increase website traffic because it just doesn’t work that way. 

If you’re looking for a PPC professional to help you along the way, then Kumo is on hand to help. We can provide expert PPC services to those who are looking to make a splash online. We can seamlessly integrate it into any other marketing campaigns you have running, managing it in a way that is cost-effective and worth your while for your peace of mind.

Kumo is a highly experienced digital marketing agency with over two decades of industry knowledge to draw upon. Our team of marketing specialists are dedicated to providing sterling marketing services that will propel your business into the spotlight and set you apart from your competitors. From SEO and PPC to content writing and website design, we will always be on hand to help. If you would like further information, get in touch with a member of our friendly, professional team today – we’re always pleased to hear from you.