5 Things To Avoid in 2020 From Looking at Online Marketing in 2019

“Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before.” - Surprised why we have started our discussion with this quote?

Well, if you search for the best online marketing trends of 2020, you’ll get hundreds of search results. But, what if you ask what online marketing strategies you should avoid in 2020? Unfortunately, the number of relevant search results is considerably lower than the previous one. So, we have decided to turn that side of the coin.

Here in this blog, we will point out the online marketing mistakes we observed in 2019, and what we should learn from these.

1. Reaching The Mass, But Not The Targeted

Believe it or not, the greatest mistake marketers made in 2019, is not to identify the target audience and not establishing an effective digital marketing plan.

Various market surveys have found that the target audience yet feels that the content they are receiving from a particular brand of their interest is not relevant to their inquiries. And this prevents them from reading content from the brand entirely.

Hence, you must recognize your target audience. Instead of reaching the mass, once you know your target audience, you're half done with your marketing goals.

What happens usually is the businesses tend to jump into presenting their products and services to a wide range of buyers without knowing the exact demands of the product and service. Thus, it makes the entire online marketing efforts extremely challenging to pull traffic to the business.

Realization: So, for 2020 our resolution is to send more targeted content and to target the specific audience.

2. Overlooking the Potency of a Smart SEO

Do you know even today, a lot of businesses don’t understand the rules and the effectiveness of search engine optimization (SEO)? Does it sound cliche? But it's the revelation of 2019 marketing mistakes.

Still, many online businesses create duplicate content, target exact match search queries, and stuff keywords in their landing page content. And as a result, the website faces Google Penalty.

How does it affect your business? Google penalties repress your business from profiting on black-hat SEO tactics to enhance the traffic and lead conversions to your websites.

If you want to improve your website ranking through white-hat SEO that is Google approved, you need to put a lot of effort. You can also hire a top digital marketing company in India for professional marketing support.

Realization: Even the smallest ignorance can become the biggest blunder for your marketing strategy. It's vital to set up a clear marketing goal, identifying the target audience and investing in a smart SEO strategy, which help you achieve the best results in terms of increased traffic, improved lead generation and conversions, higher user engagement, and more sales.

3. Not Prioritizing Quality and Consistency

Content holds a huge role in smart SEO, and both quality and consistency are the winners. If your website content, as well as other online content, are not valued and lack relevancy, even all the best SEO practices combined will fail to bring traffic and boost conversion.

Though there is no steadfast rule to generate quality content, Google offers the primary instructions to guide you. Further, while producing appealing content, keep these SEO factors in mind -

1. Do thorough Keyword Research
2. Include Long-Tail Keywords in the Content
3. Optimize Images and Videos
4. Create an engaging Meta Description
5. Include Multimedia, like, GIF, Short Video, Meme, etc.

Once you manage the content quality, next comes the consistency. In SEO Content Marketing, you need to maintain a specific content structure, media, design, and color palette throughout your website and other online presence. It helps your audience to identify your brand and creates a brand impression.

Realization: Though trying new things is always welcome in marketing, maintaining consistency is equally essential for holding the brand impression. And, also no compromise with quality.

4. Not Counting Social Media

If we take the words of Google, SEO has no direct connection with social media optimization (SMO). But indirectly, it has!

How? Though Social Media is not a ranking factor for Google, a brand's social profiles can improve the ranking factors that Google considers. Social Media influences SEO as all of the social sharing of your content ultimately adds up to more visibility for your content.

There are now more than 3.5 billion social media users around the world, representing roughly 46% of the world's total population. And almost every business, from small to midsize to large, has a prominent social media presence. So, you just miss the benefit of social media content marketing by not counting it as a part of your smart SEO tactics for 2020.

Realization: Leverage SMO to assist SEO like a pro with these tips. These tips might be helpful:

1. Post content on particular social platforms that are relevant to your audience
2. Optimize content exclusively for every social network
3. Again maintain consistency with content quality & calendar
4. Involve influencers and followers more
5. Analyze content marketing metrics routinely

5. Not Paying Attention to Sales Process & Content Promotion

Another big mistake, even some leading businesses made last year, is not creating enough content throughout their sales process. They are often ignorant of the factor that your target audience in the prospecting stage and those in the after-sales stage demand a different approach and relevant content. Further, they neglected the content promotion part as well. While the common SEO rule is to spend 20% of your time and resources in content creation and 80% in promoting them, most of the businesses overlook both.

Realization: Get that you are competing against a lot of brands with more aggressive marketing strategies. If everyone else is producing high-quality and consistent content, only a compelling sales process and vigorous promotions will raise your game.

Wrapping Up

With the learnings from the 2019 marketing failures, stop making the same mistakes in 2020. Let's start taking smart SEO seriously, better recognize your audience, prioritize quality and consistency of content, and never forget the power of social media.

If you find these things difficult for you or your in-house team, consider hiring a digital marketing company that could help you with the right digital marketing strategies for 2020 and beyond.

Cheers for 2020!