Since the digital marketplace continues to grow, there are big opportunities for anybody to create their own business digitally from the ground up. Digital marketing has become a big part of business marketing, so if you are also interested in promoting your business and sell your products digitally; you can either seek help by hiring a web developer or attempt it yourself. One thing for sure you have to be careful with are certain mistakes that can cause your business to fail. Here below are our top 6 pitfalls to watch out for.
- No website
In this digital era, you might be surprised to know that there are still many small businesses that don’t have a website presence. This is of course a careless act as nowadays people spend more time on their PC or mobile gadgets to find for business and services on the internet. Therefore, without a digital presence it’s going to be very difficult for your business to be found. You can place your products on sites such as yelp, trip advisor, or white pages, but still most people will trust you more if you have a website as they can browse before they buy and see what your business looks like. Even a small café can get the simple benefits of “being found” when someone wants to book a table or even know if you have food that is safe for them.
- Performing Your Own Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One of the ways that you can attempt to improve visibility to your website is by performing search engine optimization. Theoretically, SEO has some simple steps in order to allow Google to recognize your site and also put up your ranking based on keywords that would best give you results. However, the practical implementation is not as simple as the theory sounds. This is because Google keeps improving its algorithm which causes the rules for SEO to constantly change. No wonder, many SEO analysists have a hard time trying to figure it out and balancing between not enough SEO and too much SEO.
It is also a very time consuming process. Even though it is possible to do it yourself, asking for SEO services’ helps will save you lots of precious time to focus on your business. A well balanced and successful SEO program will yield good results around the 6-12 month period. That’s not even counting the mess that you can cause and even damage the reputation of your SEO ranking if you make some simple mistakes along the way.
- Don’t Use a Website Designer
Building a website is not as expensive as having a real bricks and mortar shop, but of course, there are still costs associated with it. In order to save on those costs, many small businesses startups choose to use website templates or fast website creator tools rather than hire a website designer. However, this will raise some risks for your business.
First, if you are using a standard template, your website might look stock standard to all other websites, and it might raise a question from your customers – why would I choose them over the competitors (other than price). Secondly, doing the website yourself might also introduce a certain unprofessionalism that web development companies have long perfected in order to display your company in the best light. Again, remember the customer – would they trust your brand if they feel that the information presented to them looks and sounds dodgy? Hiring a professional design business will likely produce for you a satisfying result which will lead to an excellent reflection of your brand.
Remember that first impression definitely counts, so ask your designers to create an attractive design with a mobile friendly design as these days, up to 60% of people access websites via a mobile devices. That’s a market you don’t want to miss out on.
- Select the Wrong Web Hosting
Recently, you can find many options available to hosting your website, such as:
- Shared Hosting
- Virtual Private Servers
- Dedicated Hosting
- Scalable cloud Hosting
However, there are a number of factors that affect your type of hosting, such as download speeds, reliability, resource utilization, current volume of business, and estimated business growth. Therefore, it is important to have a help of an expert to ensure that you select the optimal solution and even then you don’t have to overspend. There are MANY cheap solutions out there also. Just remember, you get what you paid for. We have many client experiences of websites gone missing, small hosting companies going bankrupt, and having to start again.
- No social Media Presence
It is important to consider social media as part of your campaign as many types of businesses would do well being on social media. This strategy will help you build a following – posting great and relevant content and serving your customers.
Remember that consistency is important, you cannot say that you have lead a good social media presence if you only create a weak Facebook page or Twitter account with a few posts and a handful of followers as it basically has no difference than not having a Social Media Presence. In addition, make sure you are responsive to those customers that are posting regularly. Engage with them just as if they had walked into your store (or website) because they will return if you give them time.
- Not Testing The Results
Testing of results is a critical part of online,and there are many ways to test your digital marketing efforts but the A/B split testing is still the most important and straightforward process. No result can be repeated exactly from one website to another, because each one has it’s unique proposition and way of selling. However, you should definitely pay attention to minor details that might give a customer a clearer picture of what you do or a less resistant call to action. Let’s say you have call to action button for “Sign up now”. You could test variations of that same button with more friendlier alternatives that doesn’t signal to the customer that they are “locked” in to you. For example, “Try before you buy” might work better, but you won’t know until you test it. Make the change, collect the data for similar periods then compare the results.
A good web development firm will help you explore many tools to achieve these online marketing strategies, so make sure you discuss with them what you want to achieve, as in the end, the primary marketing should still be driven by you, and not someone else.
By understanding the above mistakes, you can run your business smoothly and mitigate some of those early startup failures that don’t need to occur.