Inbound marketing works exceptionally well when done right. But these common inbound marketing mistakes can undo all your hard work!
Mistake #1: Not having an inbound marketing strategy
Benjamin Franklin said: “If you don’t plan, you plan to fail. » In order to achieve your goals, it is important to have a clear marketing strategy. An inbound marketing strategy is part of your overall marketing strategy and goes well beyond just content creation. Without a strategy, you don’t know what results to look for. Your content will be chaotic and uncoordinated.
As tempting as it may be to post content at will and hope for the best, it doesn’t work that way. Many companies that have failed with their inbound marketing campaigns think that inbound marketing is just about publishing a few blog posts, sharing them on various social networks, and then waiting for the leads to roll in .
Another mistake in inbound marketing and another reason they fail is that they have absolutely no idea where to start. Inbound marketing is a global strategy that combines content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing. Each of these elements can help build brand awareness, generate leads, and convert leads into customers.
Mistake #2: Trying to do everything at once
Have you read all about inbound marketing and want to get started? Resist the urge to do everything at once. High expectations are definitely a good thing – you’re a go-getter, and that’s great! – but to be successful in inbound marketing, you need to take your marketing strategy incrementally over the months and go through each step one at a time. Otherwise you will spread too thin and see no results.
So instead of working on a little bit of everything every day — your blog, your social media, your website, and your messaging strategy — prioritize:
- Which channel performs best?
- Which task requires the most work?
- Which one can stay the same for a while while you work on the other missions?
Mistake #3: Not setting realistic and measurable goals
Without measurable goals, you won’t be able to work effectively or track your progress over time. It’s good to set high standards, but make sure your goals are realistic. So make sure you set your goals SMART. When you get there, you should continually review your analytics and adjust as necessary.
Mistake #4: Not considering your customers
Creating real value for customers is a key feature that differentiates inbound marketing from other advertising tools. To do this, you need to know your customers well, or everyone who wants to become one. Market research can help. But that’s not nearly enough, and sometimes it’s not even necessary. Because with inbound marketing, you have to try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. You then define each individual marketing activity from their point of view. You should always keep the expectations of your customers in mind. Give them a face for it. Think of one or more fictional characters who represent your typical customers.
Mistake #5: Short-term thinking
Do you want more customers and preferably now? That’s fine, but remember that your business should be built with long-term efforts. Your marketing should reflect this. Let me explain: when brands think short-term, they end up looking for quick fixes. Short-term marketing efforts result in short-term customers rather than long-term buyer relationships.
Next, Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy with an interesting impactt. Two months of content might not make a huge difference to your traffic, but a year or two will? You will see the powerful impact of inbound marketing.
Mistake #6: Offering content that doesn’t help your customers
Useful content is key to converting strangers, visitors, prospects, clients and customers into promoters of your business and your offering. Even if you already work with buyer personas and buyer journeys, it is always a new challenge to design each content in such a way that it really brings something to the reader. The reason for this is simple: when creating content, the user is the one who has no voice. Your client is neither involved in finding a topic nor in creating the content.
Companies outside of media struggle even more: They’re more likely to report on their own successes, like winning an award or entering a new market. However, such events are often very relevant for customers. And if they do, many companies forget to clearly emphasize the benefits for their customers in their communication.
Mistake #7: Skip video
It’s absolutely unthinkable that many companies still haven’t incorporated video into their content marketing strategy. For example, in 2021, an estimated 82% of internet traffic was video content. If you’re optimizing for a true inbound marketing strategy, then how can you ignore the second most used search engine: youtube ?
There are definitely many questions people have about your products and services that are just asking to have a video to answer them. If you have a video discussing a topic alongside written content, you can double that by embedding the video in the article. Then attack both traditional search engine results and video search results.
Some of the most important videos you can create reside within the pages of your website. Your homepage should have a video, your landing pages, your product pages, your service pages, your top performing blog posts all should have a video.
Mistake #8: Not placing a blog on your website
Surprisingly, many business owners blog on another platform or just don’t blog at all. While it’s true that your website’s blog is just one of many marketing channels you can use in your inbound marketing campaign, Not blogging on your own website can limit your inbound marketing success.
First of all, blogging on a third-party website or social network like LinkedIn means your content is subject to their terms and conditions. Yes, blogging on these platforms can help drive traffic to your website. But if the owners of these platforms decide to remove one of your articles or shut down your account entirely for any reason, you not only lose your content but also your ability to drive traffic to your site to generate leads that you can convert into customers .
Mistake #9: Using content as a direct selling tool
It’s understandable that many companies see their blogs as an opportunity to sing about their own products, but this is an inbound marketing mistake that will cost you dearly. Inbound marketing content, whether blog, podcast or videoHe always has something to give to the public. It can be education, inspiration or even entertainment. If you use your content to sell directly to customers, it’s not content, it’s advertising.
Mistake #10: Not regularly monitoring your metrics
This is where many companies that got off to a strong start with their inbound marketing strategy often miss their target. Although metrics on the progress of their inbound marketing campaign are fed daily, some marketers only review them after the campaign is over. In most cases, they find that not only did they not achieve the goal they set themselves, but that they could have achieved their goal if certain adjustments had been made during the campaign.
In this case, you need to determine which metrics you will monitor based on your inbound marketing strategy. That way, you’ll know exactly which ones to look at to see how well your inbound marketing campaign is doing, and make adjustments if necessary.
Mistake #11: Not having a truly dedicated content manager
This is easily one of the most dangerous inbound marketing mistakes out there. All too often, great marketing strategies go awry because the initiative owner has put on too many hats. Inbound marketing isn’t a side project you can do on your own time: it exists has many the work dedicated to him. Companies that believe they can a little here, a little theredown will never see the results of their efforts, and eventually they will give up altogether.
Successful companies are those that have been willing to invest in the right people in the right places. This means you need to hire a dedicated content manager. His job should be to focus on content creation, publishing, promotion and analysis. And while it sounds easy, there’s so much you need to do to complete these four tasks.
To maintain a well-oiled and effective inbound marketing strategy, just focus on the content. If your content manager does their job right, you’ll have a slick, clean content calendar filled with topics that matter to your audience.
Conclusion
By developing a clear strategy, setting goals, and understanding your audience, you’ll avoid some of the biggest mistakes in inbound marketing. By using targeted and useful content, your inbound marketing strategy will do its job. This will help you increase your brand visibility, increase traffic to your website and increase your sales. If you take a long-term perspective, you’ll find that your marketing results will increase over time.