Despite digital marketing being\u00a0nothing new, there is still a lot of shiny object chasing going on. And it is dangerous because it distracts you from achieving any sort of real outcomes from your activities.<\/p>\n
If you hear a company or consultancy chasing any of these 5 things, they\u2019re doing it wrong.\u00a0They may have been manipulated to focus on the wrong thing by someone else, or simply not willing to actually put in the work required to dominate their category online.<\/p>\n
1. Always looking for \u201cthe next big thing\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s clueless to always chase the next big thing in\u00a0digital marketing. Those people, brands or start-ups that emerge as the next big thing didn\u2019t suddenly flip a switch and become that way overnight. They put in the work. Creating\u00a0increasing returns\u00a0isn\u2019t the result of some magical tactics. It\u2019s about trending to success\u00a0inch by inch. You either start now, create recurring tactics and execute \/\u00a0iterate\u00a0or you never succeed.<\/p>\n 2. Wanting new, big ideas, but failing to execute on tools and tactics already in place<\/strong><\/p>\n Imagine a company who already has the correct tools in place to accomplish their objectives. But they\u2019re not using them, and yet want new big, creative ideas. They\u2019re basically setting themselves up for failure.\u00a0Buzz is essential\u00a0for digital marketing success, but you need to be executing right on a core mix of tactics first. The order here\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0matters. In fact, I would rather a company\u00a0just<\/em>\u00a0do\u00a0the stuff in between\u00a0and skip the big ideas. I have managed programs and developed strategies\u00a0a lot<\/em>\u00a0of \u00a0brands and let me tell you, this is what matters most. You need to reach a level of maturity in your online marketing before you start chasing things like\u00a0viral content. If you are wondering whether your company is ready, you\u2019re probably not.<\/p>\n 3. Chasing social media analytics\u00a0before<\/em>\u00a0effectively using web analytics<\/strong><\/p>\n As I shared in previous posts discussing\u00a0web analytics for PR, you have no business chasing analytics from sites you do not own until you are fluently using your own site analytics to make data driven decisions.\u00a0More<\/em>\u00a0metrics is not a good thing, you likely already have all the tools you need to get all the way to conversion (and back out the right KPIs) in a marketing dashboard. Stop chasing more metrics, there is elegance and better decision making in\u00a0the critical few.<\/p>\n 4. More Twitter followers or Facebook likes<\/strong><\/p>\n Followers and likes are a KPI and not an outcome or objective metric. Learn the difference. Perhaps your objective is more sales leads or more media inquiries. But think with outcomes in mind and don\u2019t chase bloated followings within stream-based platforms for the sake of bigger numbers. If your goal is specifically to grow a community, great but focus\u00a0opt-in at the source. Get people to subscribe to your messages external of the stream where you control the signal to noise ratio. You\u2019ll build a much stronger, platform agnostic community that will\u00a0propagate\u00a0itself instead of just being tied to other people\u2019s platforms and lost in the noise of real-time.<\/p>\n 5. Ego phrases in the SERPs<\/strong><\/p>\n If your brand is obsessed with one or two specific phrases in the SERPs just because an executive is interested in ranking for them (but there isn\u2019t even any search demand behind them) you\u2019re doing it wrong. Not that anyone sees the same results in the search engines anymore anyway, but it\u2019s just a waste of time. Having a keyword glossary is vital, but never obsess over ego phrases. Instead, you should be fleshing out consistent, useful and unique content to scale the size of your site monthly. That\u2019s how you\u2019ll really increase search traffic.<\/p>\n This is of course a shortlist \u2013 what other items do you see companies, consultants or marketers chase that don\u2019t really help them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite digital marketing being\u00a0nothing new, there is still a lot of shiny object chasing going on. And it is dangerous … <\/p>\n