Online marketing is a fairly new field and a very dynamic one. Channels appear and fade, user preference is constantly transforming and there is a fierce competition to attract and keep attention. Then there is the strive to get high conversion rates and make whatever one’s business is successful in this new and diverse virtual environment.
Very much of life itself has relocated online and this offers numerous venues for targeting audiences and exposing them to products and services.
Online marketing mistakes to avoid
There are a few online marketing experts and quite a lot of entrepreneurs doing their best to stay on top of what’s trending and harness the potential of promoting their stuff online. If you want to harness the power of online marketing to promote your online course, here are some mistakes to avoid.
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Aiming for traffic numbers alone
It’s a common misconception that if you get a lot of people to your site, the purchase numbers will look great. Generating views is a lot easier than achieving decent conversion rates so it’s crucial to have a well-designed conversion funnel.
Relation management is very important to social media marketing.
Creating relevant and engaging content to draw attention is only the first step.
The second one is to get them on a mailing list or subscribing to blog posts and news.
The essential one, however, is turning them from visitors to paying customers and that’s where your focus ought to be.
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Ignoring the importance of customer experience
You might think that this is mostly important in the case of well-established organizations or famous brands. It’s actually essential for every entity or individual looking to sell something online.
Great customer experience means being recommended.
Poor customer experience leads to negative reviews and they spread like wildfire on the world wide web.
Read more: 6 Awesome tips to get more customer reviews for your online course [INFOGRAPHIC]
Even if you can’t offer non-stop customer support, it’s important to respond to all queries and, above all, be consistent at every checkpoint.
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Overwhelming the reader
Attention spans are shrinking. Especially in the online environment, people tend to move quickly, only browse the information then scroll and click away.
Blog posts don’t need to be the size of comprehensive encyclopedia-type articles in order to be relevant and rank highest in the searches.
What’s important is for information to be easily accessible to the reader and in reasonable chunks. If it takes too much to go through, people will abandon it and move on soon enough.
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Neglecting the marketing side of content marketing
This happens especially in the case of people who are selling their own product or service. It’s natural that they are excited and have faith in the content itself and thus promote it through webinars, blog posts or podcasts.
Read more: How to create successful podcasts for your online course
It is, however, equally important to focus on the marketing goals. Some ideas of how to get more of the content are:
- Approach social media influencers and ask them to review your product or service;
- Link to other bloggers and cite them in your posts (they will surely reciprocate in kind);
- Appear as a guest author on other blogs or sites;
- Ask for customer reviews and shares;
- Use affiliate marketing;
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Ignoring social media automation
There is a common misconception that employing social media automation tools leads to a diminished sense of authenticity. It’s wise from a business point of view to be present on as many and as varied platforms as possible.
Juggling all them may prove a challenge, however. That’s why using social media tools to have both scheduled and real-time material in all venues where you are present not only makes sense but may prove highly lucrative.
Apart from managing publishing calendars and scheduling posts, you can use social listening tools to:
- Figure out what conversations that are going on online are most relevant to what you are selling and eventually join them;
- Find those conversations on all the networks they are happening on;
- Identify influencers on a certain topic or in a particular niche and connect with them.
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Underestimating the costs of online marketing
If the previous five mistakes to be aware of were about the way of doing online marketing, this one is about expectations of it. Even if you set about to use those tools that are free and don’t involve direct advertising costs, eventually you will need to spend a little in order to get a little more.
So, it is wise to have a little spot on your budget sheet for this, otherwise it’s like having a great car and no possibility to fill it with fuel to make it run.
All in all
Listed above are a few of the most common mistakes that occur in online marketing. It’s important to be aware and avoid them but it’s equally important to be gutsy in promoting your online course and focus on what you can do to get the best results.
