Online marketing is bursting into the scene in Bangladesh. Many brands are slowly shifting their budgets to online, mainly through social media channels and predominantly, to Facebook. But we are missing some key points which can make these marketing efforts much more effective.
1. Defined Strategy
Not defining clear goals, expectations and budgets is a recipe for disaster. Many brands are not incorporating a digital strategy into their marketing plan. They are still treating online as just an extension of offline marketing, thus not putting sufficient thought into digital.
2. Engaging With Users
Many brands are exclusively focusing on acquiring ‘followers’ through ads, often forgetting to listen to their users and trigger conversations. The power of social media allows brands to be responsive and interactive, warm and friendly, vocal and accommodating; not leveraging such features of social media is a shame.
3. Focus on User Experience
Many brands are using social media as just another platform to push their ads through one-way communications – this defeats the purpose of going “social”. Moreover, ads are often directed towards wrong audience, and disregards user experience in design and copy.
4. Visibility on Search Engines
Exclusively Facebook-focused marketing makes it difficult for search engines to index and rank local content. Moreover, at WebAble, we feel brands should start with a website, optimize their contents in search engines, set-up search marketing and then go for social ads to drive traffic back to site.
5. Content Optimization
Brands are not getting the best out of their content due to lack of effective copywriting, optimization and distribution. The practice of content marketing is quite non-existent as brands are mostly focused on ads. However, creating great content which adds value to target audience is priceless.
6. Funnels & Data
Very few companies are directing their online traffic through a systematic flow to capture and use data for follow-ups. Companies can use all social channels to drive traffic to their website, land them on desired pages, present offers, get users to sign up with e-mail addresses or phone numbers, build lists and follow up through tools like email marketing and retargeting.
7. Measuring the Impact on Bottom Line
ROI of digital marketing is rarely measured (mainly because KPIs are not set initially) and compared to offline media, thus limiting objective assessment of impact on brand’s bottom-line. There are lots of free analytics tools available to us, Facebook Page Insights and Google Analytics being the two most obvious ones.
8. Losing Customers in the Clutter
Many brands can’t break through the clutter due to mediocre content and ‘pushy’ ads. By “mediocre” we mean not well thought out, third party content with copyright issues, wrong sizes, etc. Best approach is to create original contents for blogs and promote them through social channels or just create original, branded contents for the social media.
9. Rapidly Changing Dynamics of Platforms
While it is evolving everyday, digital space is still in its infancy. Many brands are struggling to keep-up with the rapidly changing dynamics of digital platforms. While it is actually very hard to keep up, brands may consider hiring digital agencies to be on the cutting edge and ahead of competition.