It’s 2024, and digital marketing has long since established itself as the dominant driving force influencing people’s purchasing decisions and lifestyles. Yet, the digital world’s dynamic nature means that what worked just a few months ago may hurt your brand today. Istanbul digital marketing experts emphasize that some marketing mistakes are a product of the times, while others are timeless.
Here, we explore eight mistakes you’ll want to avoid for your brand to remain relevant and respected in 2024 and beyond.
1. Going in Without a Plan
Marketing for its own sake doesn’t work, especially now that countless companies are vying for people’s increasingly shorter attention. Your campaigns need to have a more refined purpose than “driving sales.” Expanding your email list, hitting a certain number of shares, or getting x people to fill out a survey and sign up for your newsletter are all achievable goals you can more easily build a smaller yet highly effective marketing campaign around.
2. Ignoring Email
Social media is an important marketing channel, but focusing on it exclusively robs you of some of the best conversion opportunities. Email remains firmly in the lead when it comes to ROI, and email campaigns can adopt the level of personalization and engagement that today’s customers crave. Plus, careful planning makes it easier to keep your brand in recipients’ thoughts, whether through informative newsletters, knowledge sharing, or enticing promotions.
3. Ignoring or Not Having a Website
While they drive growth and popularity, email campaigns and an active social media presence aren’t a substitute for a dedicated website. Having one means you aren’t bound by other platforms’ rules, not to mention it’s a sign of business maturity and professionalism. A website lets you sell to customers directly, offers a rich visual experience with far fewer limitations, and can attract users organically if your SEO is on point.
4. Accidentally Sharing Too Much Private Info
Brands that hope to create a tight-knit community and intimate atmosphere run the risk of compromising their employees’ online safety.
On the one hand, followers may get annoyed if they’re bombarded with messages about how your brand ties into your life instead of receiving the occasional helpful tip or promotion. On the other hand, your pursuit of projecting transparency or empowerment can result in accidentally giving more info up about yourself or others than you intended.
Backtracking and deleting posts after such incidents doesn’t look good, but it’s necessary. In more severe cases, you may need to also use data removal services like Incogni or similar to keep the information from becoming part of data brokers’ databases and people search sites.
5. Not Engaging With Your Audience
The opposite can also be a problem! Engagement is part of the individualized experience audiences are after, and you’ll miss out on some exceptional opportunities if you neglect it. Monitor user posts on your content as well as mentions elsewhere. Make sure your responses are prompt, helpful, and consistent with your brand’s voice. Show you can relate to your audience and encourage a community where they can share tips, offer suggestions, and contribute content.
6. Leaving Your Accounts Unprotected
As the scale and sophistication of cyberattacks continue to ramp up, heightened security measures should be on every digital marketer’s mind. Losing your brand’s Facebook account to a misplaced password or phishing email should NOT be a thing in 2024, especially since password managers exist.
You don’t even need to install one since a password management tool for Mozilla Firefox or Chrome is enough to outfit all your accounts with unique, impregnable passwords and autofill login fields while keeping your credentials encrypted.
7. Relying Too Much on Automation
Various AI-powered automation tools have considerably boosted marketers’ productivity, from responding to users to simplifying content creation.
Even so, you should be wary of becoming overly reliant on such tools. Generative AI might be good for brainstorming ideas or creating mockups, but it isn’t a substitute for authenticity. As the internet becomes oversaturated with such content, authenticity and a humane approach to marketing will help distinguish quality-centric brands from the rest.
8. Lack of Experimentation
Immediate customer feedback and powerful analytics tools make it easier than ever to change course mid-campaign or try different approaches out on smaller groups and go with what seems to have the most positive impact. The last thing you want is to be perceived as boring, and stagnation is the fastest way of getting that label.