Those of you whose careers have traversed the glory days of traditional marketing would best appreciate how digital marketing has revolutionized the world of big businesses. Back then, the Internet was primarily a system that connected government agencies and institutions. Websites were recognized only as virtual marketing brochures.

Businesses that wanted to market and promote their products and services relied heavily on printed collaterals, various publications in newspapers and glossies, and lavishly produced content for mass media. Creating these materials was very expensive. They are also difficult to track and inefficient in terms of distribution.

As the Internet evolved, marketers have started to shift their focus to the virtual world. People and businesses have discovered the world through the Internet. By the year 2002, interest groups were sprouting up as virtual communities. These provided forums for sharing content, opinions, and ideas. These social communities became an innovative means for people to connect without the need for interstate travel.

It wasn’t long before these communities flourished and presented new opportunities for growth for businesses. Websites were also in a state of evolution. Its development corresponded with the changes in the virtual landscape. Websites were no longer just virtual marketing brochures. They became an integral part of the business development strategy of companies that wanted to capitalize on the vast market available on the Internet.

Slowly over time, the right components started to fall into place, and digital marketing was born!

Many businesses discovered a marketing method that was not intrusive. Digital marketing encouraged people to discover and explore potential solutions to issues and problems that concerned them.

The latest statistics on digital marketing clearly show how it has benefited businesses. However, digital marketing has downsides, which are largely a product of small business owners and entrepreneurs who have not done digital marketing before.

1. Lack of Experience and Training.

According to a study conducted by Profoundry, only 8% of entrepreneurs outsource their digital marketing programs to an agency, and 65% never receive formal training in digital marketing.

Entrepreneurs are risk-takers by nature. They want to take the bull by the horns and take control of the most challenging situations. However, there are times when the challenge can be beyond your capability. This is why, sometimes, the bull wins!

Despite the availability of technology and access to resources, digital marketing is an endeavor that requires both skill and experience. You should have technical and fundamental competencies to understand and utilize all the online tools at your disposal.

However, there is an intuitive component to digital marketing. You should have a feel of the market—an intuition of how the buyer persona behaves online. You can only develop this level of emotional connectivity with experience.

Entrepreneurs often find their days packed with various tasks and responsibilities. Not all of these tasks are essential, but an entrepreneur may choose to manage them because he or she may have tight constricted budgets.

Some entrepreneurs think that the work on digital marketing consists only of posting blogs on social media every few days. Blogging is just one aspect of digital marketing. In fact, blogging is just a component of a digital marketing branch called the content marketing process.

Related: 10 Reasons Businesses Need Integrated Digital Marketing Services

A poorly designed digital marketing campaign is doomed to fail. Developing an effective digital marketing campaign requires experience, expertise, and commitment. You must dedicate time and resources to make your digital marketing campaign yield positive results.

2. Planning is Focused on Long-Term.

Entrepreneurs tend to plan 9 to 12 months down the road. This is because the traditional management school of thought prescribes breaking down targets into short-, medium-, and long-term goals.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that the business environment is no longer passive or predictable. The evolution of technology, the growth of the Internet, and the popularity of social media are factors that have made information highly accessible.

Markets have become increasingly dynamic; buyer personas can change and be influenced by a blog, a post, or an image. A marketing plan that is predicated on long-term goals will constantly find itself underperforming because variables identified as critical in 9 months can be obsolete after six months.

The Internet has more than 3 billion users every day. Think about that figure for a moment: 3 billion represents almost half of the world’s entire population! Of the 3 billion people that scour the Internet daily, 2 billion are on social media, 1.59 billion of which are on Facebook!

With more than half of the Internet’s daily population on social media, the amount of information, opinions, and ideas that are shared must be tremendous. This creates a very dynamic environment where you should not expect markets to remain static for a long time.

There are many influencers on social media. They use different avenues to distribute content. The content can influence your current market and the audience they come across. You should never assume the persona of your buyer or the demographics of your market to remain unchanged for long.

A long-term digital marketing plan assumes a static market where changes have an inconsequential effect on conditions. Digital technology, the Internet, and social media prove this assumption wrong in the worst and most painful way.

In this age of digital technology, your digital marketing campaign must focus less on strategy and more on implementation. It must be predicated on flexible and mobile provisions and not rigid, highly structured ones.

3. Using Too Many Online Tools at One Time.

Seasoned digital marketers know that their digital marketing toolbox must be packed with the right equipment to get the job done right. Their arsenal may include the following:

  • Search Engine Optimization or SEO
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Lead Generation Techniques
  • Content Marketing Process
  • Link Building Strategies
  • E-mail Marketing
  • Website Auditing and Redesign

Just like a surgeon, an experienced digital marketer knows which tools to utilize after dissecting the campaign and after developing a keen understanding of what needs to be done.

A new entrepreneur would leave nothing to chance. He would tend to use every online tool at his disposal. After all, the more tools you use, the greater opportunities you create right? Wrong!

These online tools have been proven effective in carrying out a digital marketing campaign. However, utilizing them requires a high level of understanding of the theories behind the concepts. Some of these tools, such as SEO, need specialized learning.

Social media is another effective online strategy, but not all communities function or behave the same way. LinkedIn is one of the most popular social media platforms. LinkedIn currently has 414 million members, which is one-fourth of Facebook’s entire community.

However, unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is used primarily as a platform to build connections and find business opportunities. You will not find anyone posting a picture of his or her lunch on LinkedIn!

Using all of these online tools without a proper understanding of their functions will only serve to disrupt the message of your digital marketing campaign.

4. Lack of Comprehensive Research.

When you receive a flyer from a restaurant inside a mall, what are the chances that you will patronize this establishment? How many times have you thrown a flyer inside a trash receptacle?

The problem with traditional marketing methods is that the content is generalized, and the distribution is random and often poorly executed. Digital marketing effectively addresses These flaws. Campaigns are directed at identified buyer personas.

To identify the buyer persona, you have to conduct research. Many entrepreneurs do not allocate enough time to conduct comprehensive research because this can be quite exhaustive.

Digital marketing research seeks to do a deep dive into the personas of the prospective market. It not only involves acquiring information on who they are but also solicits input on their ideas, viewpoints, and perspectives on current concerns, issues, and areas that pique interest.

Methodologies can range from conducting online research, surveys, interviews, and old-school legwork to attending focus groups, seminars, and trade shows.

The study is condensed in a document called “The Creative Brief,” which outlines the strategy to move the persona from acquisition to lead to a sale.

Without The Creative Brief, your digital marketing campaign may lack focus. Your delivery and content distribution channels will be inefficient. For the most part, it will be a hit or miss.

5. Insufficient Funding.

A digital marketing campaign may be more efficient and more effective than a traditional marketing campaign, but it doesn’t mean that you should not invest enough funds in it.

One of the key aspects of a digital marketing campaign is that it can be tweaked and revised when needed. This aspect is important because markets are very unpredictable; tastes, preferences, and demand patterns can change without notice.

Digital marketing techniques, such as SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing, constantly evolve. Marketers find new ways to optimize these processes to stay ahead of the curve and to present innovative strategies.

You have to regularly set aside sufficient funding to keep your digital marketing program on course.

Let’s take websites for example. In 2013, industry analysts were already foreshadowing the fall of desktops and the dominance of mobile technology. By 2014, 60% of all online traffic originated from mobile gadgets. The rise of smartphones coincided with the consistent fall in sales of PCs.

However, as of 2015, studies have shown that only 11.8% of websites are mobile responsive. If your website is not mobile responsive, you can be losing 25% of potential sales. A transition from a desktop-responsive website to a mobile-responsive one carries a cost, but it is an investment that you should take if you want your digital marketing campaign to yield dividends.

You may wish to consider the services of professionals that have built a solid reputation in helping websites deliver content efficiently.

Remember that you are not the only business that applies digital marketing. Many other businesses use digital marketing programs for their enterprises.

6. Poor Content Quality.

Another area in which entrepreneurs fall short is content quality. Search engines, such as Google, have strongly emphasized consistent delivery of great content to boost websites up the search rankings.

However, what qualifies as great content? It should be:

  • Fresh
  • Unique
  • Relevant
  • Engaging
  • Compelling

Poor content quality happens not because entrepreneurs cannot write or craft great content. Their problem is time. There are only 24 hours in a day, and 18 of these hours are spent awake managing myriad tasks and responsibilities for home and work.

Time and effort are necessary to craft great content. We have not even discussed the importance of frequency. Publishing great content is not enough. You have to frequently publish them on social media and other channels to boost your online presence.

Blogging is a very powerful tool to use in digital marketing. The statistics on the effectiveness of blogging are overwhelming. If you do not have the time or experience to write compelling blogs, you should hire someone who does.

7. Taking Shortcuts.

As mentioned previously, digital marketing techniques, such as SEO, require specialized instruction. SEO is a highly effective strategy to have your website found. However, it takes experience to get it done properly.

Entrepreneurs who have a working understanding of SEO may take shortcuts or may disregard acceptable protocols to get immediate results. In the last few years, advocates of SEO have been severely criticized for two practices:

  • Keyword usage
  • Link building

Keywords are a critical component of SEO. These are the most frequently used words by Internet users when making a query. SEO uses keywords when crafting content. In theory, if the content contains keywords, it will frequently appear in the search results.

Thus, some entrepreneurs resort to keyword stuffing, a practice wherein a blog is inundated with so many keywords that the content loses relevance, direction, and coherence.

Link building is a process designed to increase website visibility by linking to another website. By doing so, you increase exposure and enhance your reputation as a resource as new markets discover you.

However, some entrepreneurs build links that have no relevance to their content just to increase visibility. Imagine visiting a website for health and fitness, then clicking on a link that takes you to a website retailing cigarettes. There is no relevance. The only benefit is that the cigarette retailer gets increased viewers.

Entrepreneurs should not take shortcuts and remain mindful of digital marketing best practices.

8. Failure to Consistently Track and Measure Performance.

Another great feature of digital marketing is that it can be tracked and measured with online analytics.

As discussed, markets are dynamic; they can evolve, change, and render your current digital marketing plan useless and obsolete. Online Analytics enables you to track results and performance by having access to important data.

These data include the following:

  • Where your audience is coming from
  • What types of content interest them the most
  • Which types of content generate the highest levels of engagement
  • How long do visitors stay on your website
  • Which calls-to-action yield the best results

These are important because it gives you the basis to improve your digital marketing strategy. You’ll have an idea of the online behavior of your market. You can also effectively conceptualize strategies that conform to the wants and needs of your market.

9. Improper Use of Images and Videos.

It is easy to understand why entrepreneurs gravitate toward stock photos and images. These images are professionally done and are of good quality. Photography is a skill not all people have. Some have the gift to tell a story through images. This is enough reason to use these images on a blog post or as website content.

However, the problem is that these pictures and images are not original. The very same pictures you used for your blog page can very well be sitting on the blog page of the website of a competitor.

An option is to pursue customized images. These customized images represent you for who you are. These images can also give viewers an accurate description of what your business is all about. A customized image is unique content required by search engines for a high search ranking.

Some entrepreneurs also fail to capitalize on the value of a video. Consumers are always enticed by videos more than text or images. Zappos, one of the world’s biggest online retailers, claims that using videos increased its sales from 6% to 30%.

Invest in customized images and videos by contracting professionals to do the job. Again, if you want your digital marketing program to succeed, avoid taking shortcuts.

10. Overlooking the Value of Traditional Marketing Methods.

Throughout this article, it may seem that traditional marketing has been disparaged as a “dinosaur” or a “relic” in the world of marketing.

However, the truth is that traditional marketing still has a place in a marketing campaign. It remains effective because consumers are familiar with it. This is why you still see restaurants and sales-based businesses, such as real estate, continue to distribute flyers and spend on billboards, radio, print, and TV advertising.

If you have a limited budget, you should be selective. You should also approach your traditional marketing with a purpose. Instead of spending money on flyers, posters, banners, streamers, press releases, and advertorials, why not allocate a significant amount of money to marketing brochures?

Then, adopt traditional networking strategies, such as attending business forums, trade shows, networking events, roundtable discussions, and focus groups and joining relevant organizations. You will not only have venues to present your value proposition but also maximize the distribution of your marketing brochures.

Your marketing approach should be holistic. It should cover as much ground and markets as you can, but the bulk of the focus should remain on digital marketing.

Fix These Mistakes and Take Your Business to The Next Level.

There is no question that entrepreneurs who are desirous of taking their business to the next level should include digital marketing as part of their development plan.

However, entrepreneurs should also realize that digital marketing is a process that requires time to bear fruit. Time is a commodity not many entrepreneurs have in abundance. In the overall scheme of a business development plan, time is best allocated to functions that fit the strengths and competencies of entrepreneurs.

An entrepreneur can always learn and acquire the skills needed to implement a digital marketing campaign successfully. However, asking for assistance from a capable and experienced digital marketer is practical and effective while you learn the skills needed in digital marketing.