Avoid These Six Mistakes When Your Small Business Goes Digital

Running a local business takes a multitude of hours and hard work. You work night and day to get ahead of the competition, establish your brand and carve out a market share. And one of the trends that most businesses are riding on is going digital. Having an online presence is more important than ever and can have a huge positive impact on your business and your success before you take on the digital landscape, here are some of the mistakes you should avoid.

Your only metrics are “likes” and “followers.”

The number of likes and followers are not your only metrics when you’re on social media. Yes, having many followers and likes may look good as an accolade, but we should not stop there. These numbers must translate to conversion to know if we’re doing good on our digital efforts.

Conversions are actions from people close to making a purchase through your website or social media pages. These include page visitors signing up forms, calling your trunkline to seek support, setting meeting appointments, or making inquiries or requests.

You push for sales too much

When your brand is in social media, particularly on Facebook, you have to know your limits. Posting content that is too pushy may have the opposite effect and push your potential customers away. Keep in mind that one of the reasons why people are on Facebook is for their entertainment, not necessarily to actively look for products or services.

Facebook and Instagram may have the e-commerce tool to sell products, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Overall, social media platforms like Facebook and IG are about sharing personal experiences and connecting with family and friends. So our best advice: just go subtle. Think of ways to present your products and services that would relate and entertain your target audience. It’s all about soft-selling and brand recognition when it comes to social media. Portrait your product in a way that is desirable for people and support your channel with relevant content to keep people entertained and engaged with your brand.

You put your odds solely on organic traffic

When you signed up for a social media profile, posting great content is good, but sadly, not everyone will see that. If you have just started your online profile, automatically you’ll start from zero. You may have a few organic followers (mostly your friends and your staff), but that is not enough to push your brand to greater heights. Learn the tips and tricks of paid ads and grow your reach, engagement and conversion rate across the platform.

remember that paid ads are important because they drive valuable traffic, which gets you closer to your customers and increases your chances in converting leads and achieving your business goals.

You are not tracking your metrics

The numbers in your metrics are there for a reason. You should always take a look at the figures and analyse them. When you run your ads, it’s essential to track and measure your results. These numbers are your gauge to know if you are doing it right thing or missing the point. It will also help you build better strategies in place and to succeed in your digital marketing campaigns. A good way to create a better delivery of your adds is to do some A/B testing. Where you run the same add, but use different audiences, or alternatively use different adds/designs on the same audience. Once the campaigns are finished you can easily see what works better for your target audience, allowing you to further hone in on what your target market wants to see and how they want to interact.

Your audiences are total strangers

When you know who you’re talking to, you know how you would strike a conversation that’ll eventually lead to a deeper relationship. Some brands online go all out on social media without knowing the pulse of their target market. Researching your intended audience’s behaviours and creating a buyer’s persona would help you create an aligned and effective campaign. You usually have quite a few different buying personas to reflect different segments of your market.

You don’t draft a plan

When it comes to going online with your business, specific, concrete, and actionable plans are needed. ou need to see the whole picture so draft a plan on how you would run your monthly campaigns. As what the saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”