5 Missed Online Marketing Opportunities Hurting Your Business

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If you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on your digital marketing but have struggled to move the needle on conversions and sales, you may unknowingly be doing some things that are hurting your efforts. Don’t worry; you’re not alone—it can be a challenge figuring out the best practices for this aspect of your business. To help, we’ve put together a list of some of the most common online marketing mistakes businesses make that undermine their success long-term.

Here are five online marketing practices that may be costing you, as well as advice on how to fix them.

1. Not Using Video Content 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a minute of video is worth a million. If done properly, video content can provide a great return on investment (ROI). With 5 billion videos being watched on YouTube and 100 million hours of video consumed on Facebook daily, video has become an important way to engage users and promote your brand awareness.

There’s also one other important detail to remember about YouTube. Google owns them, so the more engaged you are on the platform, the better your site ranks on Google. If you add a link to a video that’s embedded in your website, your chances to rise to the top of the search engine results increase dramatically. It also helps increase conversion rates, which leads to an increase in sales. 

With so many benefits, there’s really no reason not to take advantage of this resource. Invest in a quality video camera, get your employees some training if necessary, and start creating video content. Your business will reap the rewards!

2. Poor User Experience (UX)

Nothing can send site visitors running for the exit and tank your search engine rankings like a poor user experience. If you’re spending money on SEO to attract people to your site, you want them to stay long enough to convert and become customers. Here are some things you can do to improve the usability of your site.

• Make sure the pages of your site load quickly. Slow websites are frustrating and have higher bounce rates.
• Don’t confuse visitors with complicated layouts. Make your site easy to navigate with a clear call to action.
• Use language that is easy for everyone to understand. It should also be written in a font that is easy to read.
• Make relevant product information, pricing, contact info, and other important details easy to find.
• Check your site regularly for broken or outdated links.
• Avoid bombarding your guests with too many pop-ups.
• Make sure to test the usability of your website with your target users. You can streamline this with the use of user testing software.

Every business owner knows customer experience is vital for the success of your business, and that’s no less important online. Prioritizing user experience will only help your online marketing efforts flourish.

Look at your site through the eyes of someone who’s never met you. Make the necessary adjustments to make it easy for them to get what they need from you in the shortest amount of time.

3. An Absence of Internal Links

One of the most common best practices for SEO is using internal links as part of your content. Interlinks are an essential part of making your site seem more legitimate and authoritative to Google and providing a better user experience for readers. As a potential customer reads through your blog posts and finds links to previous content you’ve created, they start to see you as an authority in your field. Being seen as a thought leader or innovator is key for building a brand.

Not only does this SEO hack improve your search rankings when used consistently over time, but it can also increase revenue. Adding links to relevant products in your blog posts is another great way to increase sales immediately. Make it easy for your customers to access the products they need—the simpler it is to buy from you, the more they’ll buy.

If interlinks have been a missed opportunity for you in the past, it’s never too late to implement them. Make this a priority going forward, and don’t forget to go back and add them to your old blog posts as well. Task a team member to go through past blogs to identify interlinking opportunities and update past posts, and you may be surprised by the results.

4. Choosing Not to Collect Emails

Believe it or not, email marketing is still a cost-effective way to build relationships with leads and promote your products. With a small initial investment in your marketing automation software, you can give people the opportunity to opt-in to your fantastic content. By offering a coupon or an exciting lead magnet, you can easily grow your email list.

Sending out coupons or notifications about sales is a great way to take advantage of impulse buying. As long as you’re completely transparent and send out helpful information, it’s a great way to increase revenue. Problems only arise when you try to dupe people into signing up for things. This makes you seem shady and should be avoided at all costs.

Clean your email lists regularly. If you have unengaged people who never open your emails, purge them from your list. It may seem counterintuitive, but you only want to stay connected with people who want to hear from you. This helps you avoid seeming like a spammer when you’re trying to add value and nurture relationships.

As long as you’re approaching it strategically, there’s a lot of value to be had from email marketing. Don’t write this strand off; keep your email lists up-to-date and take every advantage of sales to generate leads and conversions. If you’re not sure where to start, enlisting the services of a specialist agency could be worth it.

5. Not Turning Visitors Into Subscribers

Like email marketing, allowing customers and potential customers to subscribe to push notifications when visiting your website can help your bottom line. Subscribers is a service you can sign up for for free that works with any type of website.

Signing up for this service is easy. All you have to do is go to Subscribers.com and enter your URL, install a javascript or WordPress plugin, and you’re all set. You can send out push notifications for promotions and other relevant content.

Subscribers provide you with all the analytics to see who’s engaged and who’s not. Just like email, you can set up a drip sequence for your push notifications. If you send out messages consistently, you can generate more traffic to your website for free.

Simply getting customers back to your site is half the battle. Once they’re viewing your site again, your outstanding merchandise and that positive user experience you’ve been cultivating can do the work. Turning traffic into conversions will boost your business—and its revenue.

Every Little Bit Helps

When it comes to marketing your brand online, every piece of the puzzle gives you an extra boost when properly employed. Video marketing, UX, internal links, email marketing, and push notifications can synergistically bring you a better return on investment and improve SEO.

Armed with the knowledge of these common online marketing mistakes, take a good look at your own business. Identify the most crucial area for improvement—would an email marketing campaign provide the boost you need? Maybe, after taking a closer look, you realize that the user experience on your site needs work. Whatever the biggest pain point, develop a plan to improve that issue and then implement it. Start today to see business growth in the near future.

Once you’ve seen growth in that area, you can re-evaluate to determine the further necessary steps to improve your business. As a business owner, your work is never done; the businesses that succeed are the ones that continue to seek improvement year after year. The strategic analysis of missed opportunities and how to overcome them is crucial for long-term success. Set your business up to flourish with a critical approach to your online marketing practices. 

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Guest Author Bio: Jordan Brannon.

Jordan Brannon is President and Co-founder of Coalition Technologies, a leading US digital agency. For the last decade, Jordan has led Coalition’s team of experts as they drive outstanding outcomes to hundreds of businesses through SEO, SEM, Paid Social, Email Marketing and Web Design. Jordan is an annual keynote speaker at the Global eCommerce & Retail Forum and a presenter for BigCommerce, Shopify, Yotpo, and other digital marketing-focused events and conferences.