Digital marketing is a new method of reaching out to people. There are, after all, a lot of benefits to using this type of marketing. However there are also lots of methods that are being used that actually aren’t any good or aren’t a lot of help. So what are those things? You definitely don’t want to waste time on them after all.

Untargeted Social Networking Ads

• Targeting is the new way to reach out to the people who want what you have to offer. But you may need to sacrifice a little on the number of people you’re connecting with.
• This method of advertising allows you to send your ad to only a specified number of people who are linked based on something related to your business or some specific trait.
• You won’t reach as many people in total but you will reach more people that are interested in what you have to offer.

Mobile Apps

• Everyone probably told you that a mobile application was absolutely necessary if you wanted to succeed and they can be helpful but they aren’t necessary.
• If you can put together a better website in general you’ll be able to do much better than if you spend a lot of time on a mobile application.
• Most people don’t really use mobile apps more than once so you’ll be spending all that time for nothing when you could be improving your regular web presence.

Unnecessary Social Networks

• Social networking is a way to reach a lot of people and it’s definitely important. No one is going to tell you that you shouldn’t be on social networking sites. But the question is which ones should you be using?
• If you already have profiles on some social networking sites try to see how often you’re using them and how often a customer or potential customer interacts with you on them.
• The websites that get you a lot of business and really help should be kept. Anything that isn’t getting you enough business to be worth the time it takes to update should be ditched.

Over-Reporting

• Understanding how you’re doing as far as conversions and clickthroughs can be important to deciding what you need to change but it’s not important for you to be checking all of your numbers constantly.
• Find out what numbers represent the most important information for you. Most likely it’s not the entire thirty-page report you’ve been printing every day. It’s probably only a few numbers that you can easily check.

Web Redesigns

• Keeping your website updated and making it look better every now and then is important and you should definitely keep it up. But that doesn’t mean you need to completely redesign your website every month.
• Keep redesigns to a minimum and instead only update the things that need to be updated or make small changes over time rather than a complete makeover all at once.

Overloaded SEO

• SEO is no longer the best way to get higher rankings on search engines. What you  need now is better information, not more of it. You need to get your  customers happier because the better experience they have the better your ranking.
• The other things to focus on are the links that you have. Not links within your, website but links to other websites that can draw people in even more.

The Same Old Marketing Offers

• Some marketing offers work great. You put it out there and you get a lot of  great results so you keep putting it out there. And then you do it again and again. And before long the results aren’t as good because it’s not as special or good anymore.
• You need  to keep changing your marketing offers. If something works well then go  ahead and use it a couple times but then look for something else that will  work just as well. If you bring that offer back out later it will have good results again instead of getting old.

Press Releases

• If all  you’re looking to do is share some information about your company, then you can go ahead and post press releases.
• However,  if the purpose for which you’re writing a press release is to get links from other sites that will repost your press releases then you’re wasting your time. Assuming you do get reposts (which isn’t likely), they won’t be  anywhere a search engine is going to pick up and they won’t increase your  rank.

Too Many Microsites

• Getting links to websites outside of your own, and especially getting links from those sites back to you is an excellent way to increase your rating. The more outside links you can get the better your results.
• But if you’ve created a bunch of websites for yourself that all link to each  other then you’re just wasting your time trying to keep them all updated with good information. And they will only incrementally increase your ranking.
• You need to get other people and other websites to give you links. Don’t try  creating your own websites just to link to your own information.

Too Much Blogging

• Blogs are   a great way to share information with your customers and to get them to  share with you and each other. This is a way for everyone to communicate  and for you to give tutorials or tips or any other information.
• If you’re  ensuring that all of the content that you post is high quality and very  helpful or useful to your readers then by all means, keep blogging. You probably want to keep it to a maximum of once per day though.
• If you’re  trying to increase rankings based on the quantity of your blogging  however, then you should know that it’s not going to work. Your blog needs good content not just a lot of  content in order to increase in ranks.

By Candy Lowe