Most companies know their business backwards and forwards. Many have a handle on marketing. But a great many don’t yet understand digital marketing. Here are a number of mistakes that companies make.
These problems could be solved if they would hire someone, either an outside consultant or a full time employee or a part timer to handle some or all of what is covered below. Internet marketing is so key in today’s world that it is amazing that so many companies do it so poorly.
Social Media Presence
Most companies should pay attention to Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter. For Facebook, companies don’t post often, don’t respond to negative comments, don’t bother to get likes for their page, and sometimes their posts are unprofessional.
For Google + (or Google My Business), companies have minimal profiles with barely anything filled out. They have also not bothered to get the business verified which means it is not likely to show up on the maps in Google searches.
Similarly with Pinterest, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter, profiles won’t have been filled out, there is little response and interaction with followers. Generally a missed chance at interacting with potential customers or current customers.
Reputation Management and Citations
There are many sites where people can give reviews of your company. Facebook and Google + are just two. There is also Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Foursquare, Angie’s List, BBB and many others. You need to first have your name, address and phone number listed on as many as possible and those items should be consistent across the different sites. This will make it possible for more people to find you when they do an online search. But, you also need to monitor the major ones to make sure there isn’t any negative feedback. If there is, you need to respond to it and be proactive.
Employee Involvement
Unfortunately if you do a search online what you sometimes find is unhappy employees trashing their company. Not a great way to grow the business. So you need to track that. But you also want employees linked to your Facebook and LinkedIn pages. You want them giving positive feedback. It will help ensure their jobs and make raises more likely. They should be liking, sharing, retweeting and anything else they can do to promote the company.
Poor Design, Poor Monetization
Some websites are very minimal. Others are much more extensive and very pretty but they aren’t built to help bring in sales. Often it is difficult to find out where to find a form to fill in to get more information about the company or the products. There should be a simple way to do this on every single page. You never know which page of the website people are going to land on. They won’t always land on the home page. Also, often it is difficult to find the phone number and also difficult to find the email address. Is this some sort of weird stealth marketing? People get bored and frustrated fast. Make it as easy as possible to engage with your company in some way.
Is Your Website Current?
Often websites haven’t been touched in ages. They look out of date. There isn’t any recent information, no updates, no specials, nothing to generate recurring interest. Most importantly, they aren’t mobile friendly (which means they automatically reformat the display to be easily readable on cell phones). Did you realize that over half of internet searches are done on cell phones and tablets these days? Many websites are not designed to be easily read on a cell phone. This has a double negative involved. First is that most people won’t hassle with a website that does not work on cell phones. They will just find another (your competitor) that does. Secondly, Google and other search engines penalize websites that are not mobile friendly. This means they raise mobile friendly sites up in their search results and push your site down where it will never get seen. For those two reasons, you could be losing out on thousands of dollars of sales a year or potentially a month.