Stark Services – “AC in the Attic”
Stark Services was an HVAC – Plumbing company in Dallas, TX and part of Church Services...
It’s funny how some companies say that they don’t believe in marketing, but, in the traditional sense, marketing is the four P’s: the products you sell, the place you sell them, the price you sell the for and the promotions you use to communicate all of the above. But people still equate marketing with promotions only and ignore the other three “P’s”.
By definition, digital marketing really should be called “digital promotion.” But we’re not here to rewrite the books on marketing, but, rather, help you understand where your digital marketing may be failing you and how you can fix it.
So here’s a list of things that you shouldn’t do if you want your business’ marketing strategies to work harder for you:
Targeting the wrong keywords
Every marketer who has been keeping up with the latest marketing trends knows the importance of using organic keywords. These keywords are determined by understanding your target audience and incorporating the words and phrases they use to search for products and services on search engines.
Targeting the wrong keywords can make your website rank lower on search engines making it much more difficult for you to reach those who want the services you offer. No matter how well you’ve written the content, it won’t rank high until you’ve used the right keywords to attract the right organic traffic.
Forgetting about buyer personas
Creating buyer personas is essential to any marketing strategy. Defining your ideal customer will help you create the market strategies that will attracts the people for whom you’ve developed your product and services.
By conducting market research, surveys, and interviews, you gain insight and understanding into who your buyers are and what their hot buttons are. Anecdotal experience with your customers is actually good if it opens the doors to further research. But you can’t devise an effective marketing strategy based on your perceptions alone. You need more data to either confirm you assumption or to gather a more realistic cross section that will lead you to a more truthful and accurate profile.
Making claims that you can’t substantiate
The beauty about the web is that we live in the most transparent environment ever. If you make a claim about what your product can do or what your service does, but you have no proof, chances are, SOMEONE will punch a few clicks on a smartphone and call bullshit on you. Never deceive your audience because today’s consumer values authenticity higher than almost any other virtue.
That doesn’t mean you can’t get creative. In fact, creativity is more important than ever in the digital world. What great customer research does is help your creativity become more truthful and authentic because you know who you are and how your brand meets your customers’ needs.
Undisciplined creativity
If you want to be like everyone else, you’re guaranteed to blend in. At the same time, being overly cute for the sake of being creative can waste both your and your prospects’ time. There’s a place for silly and you have to be wise enough to know when and where that is.
Research and strategy give creativity focus. With them, you can solve a specific problem rather than working with a blank piece of paper. A disciplined strategy give creativity power like playing on a bowling alley and you’re in lane 6. Now you can ignore all other lanes and focus all of your resources on throwing your ideas the hardest and most accurate down lane 6. That’s how you win.
Not measuring
The beauty of digital marketing is that everything can be measured. From the number of visitors the time spent on your site to phone calls and form fills. But remember that not everything measurable is of value and not everything of value is measurable.
When you hire a digital marketing agency like OAK, we measure and report everything in real time so that you and we know what’s working and what isn’t. We show you all of the metrics from Google Analytics as well as call tracking and, when possible, your own sales results. Not one metric is more important than the other as they create a mosaic of data that allows us to make adjustments to strategy and campaigns.
When you don’t measure, you don’t know if you’re begin effective or not. Every businessperson knows this.
If any of these fails look familiar, call Oak Interactive, an advertising and digital marketing agency in Houston that has helped countless businesses in all sizes grow. We can help you with a customized marketing package tailored around your brand, objectives and your budget.
Get in touch with our brand marketing firm Houston TX for a free website assessment.
Meet Your Team
Our Featured Work & Case Studies
