4 Bone-Headed Marketing Mistakes You Should Probably Try To Avoid

p>Look, we totally get it. Marketers are often swamped with a million and one responsibilities, so it’s not uncommon for things to…well, fall through the crack sometimes.

And while many marketing mistakes make themselves immediately obvious, many others aren't as apparent. You could easily become blind to a number of wrong approaches that, once corrected, can actually bring better focus to your content and techniques.

The question is whether you can scope those mistakes out before they start doing harm. Many of those mistakes relate to the content you create and your audience. However, you'll find other mistakes related strictly to mastering technology.

Let's take a look at what you're possibly overlooking and how you can easily correct them immediately.

1. Targeting The Wrong Audience

Most experts say not understanding your intended audience is one of the worst mistakes in digital marketing. It may seem like a stupidly obvious mistake, but falling into this trap isn't hard when you start to think you have content that's appealing to everyone. In truth, only certain segments of people will really respond to your content, no matter how entertaining it is.

The old idea that you can sell anything to anybody isn't true without targeting a demographic first. Try creating customer personas first before planning a digital marketing campaign. When you have thorough data on what a customer would truly want from you, all your content becomes easier to create.

It's also worth exploring what type of content a prospective customer would respond to. Doing so brings better productivity in content creation rather than merely creating based on hunches.

Read More: Creating Content With The Help Of Buyer Personas

2. Marketing On Too Many Social Media Sites

It's possible to spread yourself too thin on social media because of the myriad options. Also, social media sites have their own demographics that may prefer certain types of content. Marketing on all social media channels just ruins your focus and wastes your time trying to keep balance.

Even worse is when you have branding changes and forget to reflect it on every social media site. After a while, it feels too much like juggling and prevents any consistency to your company message.

Do some research on where your demographics are most likely to hang out online, then focus your digital marketing strictly on those, which could end up being only one or two social media locations.

Read More: Developing An Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy For Your Business

3. Lacking Focus On Quality Content

Digital marketing is a diffuse subject, yet content is the true backbone of it all. Without quality content, you really have nothing and will end up having a hard time reaching people.

Be sure to hone in on creating quality content for all your marketing. Don't cobble together a blog or video that has no purpose except the sake of creating something.

There’s an applicable Robert Frost quote that states: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” The same applies to your marketing content. Your audience is going to notice how much thought you put into your content, and any sign of rambling or being amateurish will turn them off to your professed professionalism.

Read More: The Difference Between Good Content and GREAT Content

4. Ignoring the Evolution of Mobile

If you've put off dealing with consumers who use mobile devices, you're already far, far, behind. With statistics showing 3.65 billion unique global mobile users out there, much of your digital marketing isn't being seen if you're not creating it for mobile devices.

That’s not all. Even if you do go mobile in some (but not all) ways, there are mistakes that can be made that can and will negatively impact your efforts. Not testing your content on the numerous mobile operating systems available can make your content look jumbled.

Because mobile users want information fast (including marketing content), they don't want to scroll to view content you didn't customize for a smartphone or tablet. Keep in mind that despite responsive and adaptive design on mobile, you may still need to manually tweak details of your mobile content if it isn't easy to consume.

Read More: 6 Features Your Mobile Website Must Have        

All of these mistakes are of the slow-burn variety, meaning that you might not see their effects for a very long time. But once you know what to look for, it’s easy to to identify and correct them so your marketing efforts are as efficient and effective as possible. And when all else fails, there’s no shame in having the fresh eyes of a third party to help you fill in the blanks.