As we often note, everything changes so quickly in our digital age. With marketing now being so much more online-based than print-based, there are so many tools, so many options, and so many constant developments, that it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

All these tools help you have a more efficient and targeted marketing campaign, but it’s still not easy to create, implement, and manage a successful campaign. Here at Ring Ring Marketing, we have to stay on our toes all the time to keep our clients ahead of the curve.

Meanwhile, we see a lot of mistakes made by our competitors, and these mistakes help us know what pitfalls to avoid while running campaigns that increase traffic, drive brand awareness, and attract leads to making your phone ring.

While some of these mistakes get a bit technical, others are general enough that you can benefit from understanding them. Here are a few of the big marketing mistakes it’s important to avoid:

Not setting specific timelines/goals
At Ring Ring Marketing, we set specific timelines and goals for all our campaigns. This comes from listening to our clients and understanding exactly what they want to accomplish and when. However, many competitors choose to implement marketing campaigns with vague goals, overly flexible timelines and unrealistic expectations. That’s a recipe for disaster.

To do it right, you need to think critically about what you want your campaign to achieve: Do you need to generate more net new leads? To nurture existing leads? Increase your social media reach? Double the number of conversions from qualified leads clicking on your pay-per-click ads and visiting your site?

Figure out what’s most important and use the SMART approach. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. When a goal covers each of these criteria, you have a recipe for success.

Not taking advantage of all the current marketing tools
We’re not referring here to specific products or brands. We’re talking about the basic ingredients that make up the foundation of a successful marketing campaign. While not every campaign needs to use every single one of these tools, all successful campaigns employ the vast majority of them. These integral tools include:

• Your landing page (often your business’s homepage): This is the foundation for providing key information, putting your best foot forward in one place, directing traffic to your site and converting visitors into customers.
• Calls-to-action: Your site needs to have a clear CTA that explains the benefit you provide and what the visitor should do to take advantage of it.
• Email: This standard tool lets you communicate information, promotions, and coupons, and it provides clear performance metrics to see how well your messages are engaging leads.
• Blogging: A business blog is a great tool for increasing brand awareness, providing fodder for social media sharing, and giving you great original content for your site, which improves search engine rankings and traffic.
• Social media: Used properly, social media is an incredible instrument for getting your message out, engaging customers and leads, and increasing trustworthiness with potential customers.
• Analytics: No campaign can be as successful as you want if you’re not tracking its effectiveness compared to other campaigns, determining which marketing channels contribute the most, and understanding which advertisements or marketing messages are more successful than others.

Not being clear
Amazing as it might sound, this actually is a marketing mistake we see every day. People get so caught up in all the bells and whistles that they fail to realize they’ve omitted basic, necessary information.

Whether you’re launching an event, an offer, a contest, or whatever, specific details need to be communicated. Imagine sending everyone to a webinar registration landing page without stating when the live webinar will take place or who the presenters will be. Imagine launching a contest and directing users to its landing page without explaining the terms, what one must do to win, or what the prize is. Sounds crazy, but we see this from competitors all the time.

Be sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted before launching a new campaign. If you launch with incomplete or erroneous information, you’re digging yourself a hole from which you might not be able to climb out.