Have you ever been slowly drifting off to sleep, or you’re lounging in bed on a Sunday morning – when all of a sudden, your head jerks up from the pillow and your heart skips a beat!
You think to yourself “Did I schedule that campaign? Send that link? Change that subject line?” These tiny moments of terror and fear should be enough to remember to yourself, marketing is a complicated beast, even a relatively small mistake can reveal its dark side. It’s all chilling stuff but that darkness is avoidable, all of these mistakes are preventable with a few precautions!
- Dead-End Pages
If you’re a small business and have a website, you’re already doing better than the competition. But many small business websites that do already exist still don’t offer a way for visitors to engage with those businesses online. Having an informative website is great, but if you don’t provide your visitors’ a simple and direct way for them to immediately act on, then you’re wasting your time and theirs. Start to think about how you can actively create an ongoing relationship with visitors by creating at least one call to action that will spark that relationship on your landing page.
- Following the Wrong Metrics… Off a Cliff
It feels great creating something that gets a lot of traffic, and watching your social share count rise makes it even better. None of this does much good if very few of those visitors actually engage with your business any further. All those new leads could leak right out of your funnel if you can’t get them from there to your checkout page. Just remember that your page views, social stats and having a high conversion rate aren’t the end goal, they may not stand in direct relation to revenue and profit. So, watch your step.
- The Inconsistency Gremlin
Inconsistency is that annoying little gremlin that’ll throw a wrench in your entire marketing plans. Have you ever been to a webpage and the special price is $38, but the checkout says $38.99? These discrepancies may not put a huge dent in your conversion rate, but they’re likely to chip away at it over time. Inconsistent marketing can actually cost your business money. At the start of a new campaign, sit down and list your core value proposition, pricing structure, etc. Then, look back at that document every time you create a new piece of that campaign so that the inconsistency gremlin doesn’t come crawling out from the shadows.
- Bloodthirsty for Leads, Leads to Unsubscribes
It’s normal to be excited when you tap into a new source of leads. But, some marketers take that excitement and take it a little too far. They begin sending their new leads emails constantly, with messages that boil down to wanting them to BUY NOW! This is a perfect recipe for unsubscribes, you have to build trust. Do more than send emails to move those new relationships forward. Use thoughtful, respectful follow up sequences to give leads reasons to buy, rather than just telling them too.
Finally, it’s always important to protect your company with small business insurance which we can gladly help you with. Be sure to visit the Bullfrog Blog often for tips on marketing, liability insurance, productivity and risk mitigation.