I wanted to share with you a list of things that you shouldn’t do in digital marketing, even though some of the items listed below might be recommended by other “experts”.

These insights are based on many digital marketing reviews and strategies I had the pleasure of analyzing throughout the years. I am aware that, for some of you, the below marketing techniques have worked in the past. However, the reason why they don’t work for many others trying the same approach is because there are other elements involved in the success of these techniques that you might not have considered.

Reposting (low) quality content on the same platform.

As a LinkedIn user, you must have noticed this already, Mr. X is posting an article called “Growth hacking tip #3 Give plants water” and this beautiful and pretty obvious tip is then re-appearing on your LinkedIn wall multiple times as it’s being reposted by the same person multiple times in different LinkedIn Groups.

Now this is one of those mastering LinkedIn self-made guru tips that Mr. X might have picked up somewhere but here is why you shouldn’t do it. First of all, your connections can see your mug shot appearing with that piece of (queue sarcastic tone) “quality content” and that’s the problem. If you see it too frequent you devalue the content even if you only read its headline, on top of that, you devalue the person as he pops up too frequently on your feed displaying this strange and annoying behavior.

Secondly, if the content does provide true value then other people would see its potential and want to share it among their network.

2.Buying into Going Viral

Buying “Going Viral” campaigns are not all they promise to be! Yes, a large amount of videos you are watching on the web right now have been created for their viral value but if you compare the successful videos next to the amount of videos/content created that didn’t make it, you might want to reconsider. Success with a “Going Viral” campaign is like winning a lottery ticket, and even then, it might not be the cash cow your business was hoping for. The real viral videos are those that are organically created, the accidents with no intent of going viral.

I got the chance to analyze some of the “viral” videos that where created for one of my clients. Although they did have a huge traffic jump on their YouTube account and website, the increase in business was far from amazing as Viral doesn’t target your particular consumer- it just lands on everyone’s desk. Now, those videos are still making the rounds on the web but overall it wasn’t a business changing experience.

3. Being defensive and then escalating

Everybody makes mistakes, and everyone thinks they are right. But on the web, you will have to deal with differences of opinions. This is especially important when you start creating content for its share-ability or clickbait factor. I’ve seen in the last couple of years a lot of Irish sites popping up providing articles like “12 things your puppy does before he goes to sleep” or the special “6 cleanest toilets in Dublin” articles.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of these types of clickbait websites since they are a nightmare for digital marketing advertising because they get a lot of low quality visitors that accidentally click ads, which could cost money.

That said, once in a while, I do get tricked into clicking into these articles myself, especially when they are around digital marketing (as this is one of my passions). Now, whenever I see an article that is rubbish and I start looking through the comments, I notice a lot of negative feedback. What then happens is that the person who managed to come up with this pile of rubbish decides to go in the defense stating personal opinions and even going as far as saying “We don’t want your kind here” to one of his/her critics.

The reason this is a big no-no is this: The internet is full of ones and zeros that will keep track of how you handled a situation in your past digital life. If you are proud of the content and disagree with your digital audience, so be it. But remember, the next time you are going for that job interview or a potential client is ready to go into business with you, they will Google your name. Make sure what they see and read about you and from you is a reflection of how you want to be seen in your professional network

4.Completely outsourcing digital marketing

When you outsource you can potentially save a lot of money. I personally outsource some of my standard development work as it takes too much time to do it cost effectively in Europe. But when it comes to Digital Marketing, I steer well away from outsourcing.

One of the main points against outsourcing is the disconnect between the product or service a company provides and the marketing an outsourced company can provide. Most outsourced marketing agencies have a standard run-book they use for all projects. To simplify this, let’s look at the analogy of buying a cake. You can go to Tesco or Marks & Spencer’s and by one of the pre-made cakes. These cakes are designed to match the tastes of a very wide audience but compared to a homemade/customized one, it doesn’t taste as good.

As a business, you know how your customers like their cake and you are in complete control of each ingredient you purchase and the amount of time you spend creating it. Now, I can understand that as a business owner you might not have the time or the necessary skillset to effectively translate your business requirements into a digital marketing campaign, but the outsourcing companies lack the understanding of your clients, your business and your corporate culture.

If you can’t do digital marketing in-house, the best method is to develop a close relationship with a local agency or consultant that provides the necessary training to your staff and delivers on your digital marketing strategy with complete transparency. Fulfilling this need is simply impossible with completely outsourced parties because a brief, a couple of e-mails back and forth and maybe the occasional skype call are just not enough

5.Direct sell on social media

The majority of people reading this article would have purchased a product online, so think about how the process went for you? An example that would fit most people’s experience could be something like this:

You see/hear about/want a product X

You research product X on Google, YouTube, Boards etc.

You ask friends who bought product X for their recommendation

You might visit a store to look at the product up close and maybe try it out

You search Amazon , PC World , Argos for the best price

You order the product and wait impatiently for the postman to drop off the little green slip to pick up your product at the post office.

Now, of course, the steps and the number of steps may vary depending on the product but you get my point. Now imagine this scenario:

You come home from a long day working

You login to Facebook to look at the latest updates of your friends and family

You are prompted with an Ad to buy Product X

You ignore the Ad and continue to look at the latest updates of your friends and family

When going through the two examples you can clearly see what’s wrong here. When looking to buy a product, you have a research phase that often takes a lot longer than the final decision making and buying phase. This is vital and a direct sell on social media skips those vital parts and “targets” you at the point of zero buying intent.

Your social media selling strategy should start at the first step of the purchase cycle by making the potential customer aware of a product or a feature by providing them with researchable elements. Let them discover the need to want your product by introducing them to benefits, case studies, and social pressure. Only when they have shown clear intent of wanting the product by visiting your website multiple times and/or spending a long enough period on your product pages can you do a direct sell through, for example, remarketing.

6.Starting without KPI’s and a strategy in mind

In the decade or so that I’ve been working with businesses in Ireland, I can say that over 90% of them didn’t have any real digital strategy in mind. The only thing all of them had in common was the end goal “Increasing ROI”. I’m all for increasing return on investment, but when I ask them how they intend to achieve this through digital marketing, they often draw a blank or provide very generic answers like through online advertising, building a new website or social media marketing.

What gets them going in the right direction is when I take the digital marketing out of the equation and as them “How does your business make money and don’t spare me the details”.

The passion for their business comes out and they explain the entire process from start to finish. Who they buy from, how their initial customers came on-board, what difficulties they had to face etc.

Now that’s the fundamentals for your strategy, as a business you have learned many lessons to reach a point of success and the successful digital strategy is translating this success to an online platform.

Step by step implementation with full measurement of all activities done online and the ability to do ad-hoc changes where required. Each platform you use like AdWords, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc should be seen as a new market your company is trying to penetrate. It’s not all “one” as each of the platforms require their own set of rules and methods to maximize return on investment.

Digital marketing can still be a mine field where wrong moves are rewarded with negative reputation, dramatic overspend or complete mishits. It's important you take your team and research the options before jumping in with both feet.

-- Antonie