What is the biggest mistake digital marketers have ever made?
Take a look at a few of them below.
In 2006, BMW’s digital marketing agency used doorway pages to improve the company’s ranking. Consequently, Google penalized their website, and their rankings reduced drastically.
In 2007, the marketing team of Cartoon Network made the head of the company resign from his job. In an attempt to promote a cartoon character, the team placed LED signs across Boston. Unfortunately, the residents misunderstood the campaign as a terrorism scare and extracted $2 million as compensation.
In 2011, Timothy’s faced a terrible backlash on Facebook. Their marketing team rolled out a promotional campaign offering free coffee boxes to users who’d “like” their Facebook page. The stock didn’t last for more than three days, and the users stormed at the campaign with furious comments.
So, if you have decided to venture into the marketing landscape, look through the mistakes of these digital marketing agencies. They didn’t just cost their clients money but put their reputation in question.
Many creative agencies experiment with marketing strategies. And, there’s no harm in doing so unless you think it through.
Why do you think the blunders we mentioned above happened? Well, the digital marketing firms behind these brands made some money-losing mistakes.
Here’s how the strategies went wrong.
5 mistakes you shouldn’t make as a digital marketing agency
We have also mentioned examples where some blunders caused heavy losses to the clients’ business.
Mistake #1: Using cheap SEO tactics to rank your client’s website
If you don’t want to be one of those SEO companies that waste their clients’ money for short-term rankings, do not:
- try to trick Google’s algorithm with black hat SEO techniques,
- use unnatural links to rank the content,
- flood the website with spammy links, useless content, or artificial posts, and
- add doorway pages to redirect the traffic.
Ahrefs conducted a study on one billion pages from their content explorer. They found that even pages with 200+ referring domains did not get traffic. One of the reasons behind it is shady link building.
Besides, Overstock.com, an online retailer, traded discounts to colleges and universities in exchange for authority “.edu” links. As a result of Google’s penalty, the company faced revenue losses of $1.05 billion.
Mistake #2: Using inconsiderate emotional marketing strategies
Studies have proved that emotional connections help make people recall things.
However, it doesn’t mean you associate promotional activities with emotions such as a death experience.
The way you invoke feelings can either make or break your brand. Especially when you try to advertise your products alongside heart-wrenching incidents, it will backfire.
McDonald’s marketing team realized its mistake when people blamed the company for exploiting child bereavement through their ad.
The fast-food giant allegedly exploited a child’s feelings about his dead father to promote McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish. People termed this ad “disgusting” and “offensive,” and even manipulative for their bereaved children. Consequently, they had to remove the advert.
Adidas made the same mistake. After the tragic bomb blasts during the Boston Marathon, its marketing team sent an email campaign to their new subscribers. The email’s subject line was, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon.”
Although they were quick to send an apology email and a tweet, the mistake has been made.
Mistake #3: Underestimating the impact of social media campaigns
Timothy’s is not the only brand to undermine the influence of their social media promotion.
McDonald’s also ran out of stock while giving away their special Szechuan Sauce for free. The company’s marketing team rolled out the campaign for one day. But McDonald’s didn’t expect their customers to flood the restaurants in thousands.
People were disappointed, and the company had to apologize and offer more Szechuan Sauce across its locations.
So, if you’re strategizing social media campaigns for your clients, do not:
- forget to assess their offering capabilities,
- make promises for impractical demands, or
- even undermine the performance of campaigns.
Make thoughtful decisions while announcing discounts and offers. If your client doesn’t have an efficient system and staff in place, don’t risk their brand reputation.
Mistake #4: Normalizing human errors
To err is human. But when you are among the top digital marketing firms that manage hundreds of client accounts, you cannot afford to make human errors.
An employee’s accidental hit to a wrong email list forced The New York Times to apologize to their subscribers. The employee was supposed to send a discounted offer to 300 people who unsubscribed from The New York Times.
Instead, the email landed in the inbox of 8 million subscribers! For obvious reasons, the loyal subscribers felt undervalued as they didn’t receive a discount as lucrative as this one before.
Such human errors can even cost a fortune to your clients. For example, iFly lost more than 10,000 visitors within weeks due to a wrongly written line of code. The company’s SEO agency was irresponsible enough to neglect that line.
The code usually tells search engines not to index the pages on which it is placed. Guess what? Almost every page of iFly’s website had that line of code. No wonder their rankings touched the ground within a couple of days!
As a digital marketing agency, you will be accountable for all your team members’ errors. And, along with you, your client’s reputation and business will also be at stake. So, stop before you click on “Send” and revisit your messaging.
Mistake #5: Not A/B testing the campaigns
When you create marketing campaigns for your clients, keep two things in mind (apart from all other factors):
- their target market and audience and
- the audience’s likes and dislikes.
You may consider a feature or service useful for your client’s audience, but chances are, they might not want it in the first place.
What happened when Apple pushed their customers to listen to “The Edge.” Except for the new U2 album fans, Apple users were looking for hackers to remove it from their library!
Consequently, Apple lost more than $100 million due to the “promotional stunt.”
So, if you are not A/B testing your campaigns, your clients will eventually have to face similar losses.
Over to you!
You’ve got to be more sensible and responsible about your marketing strategies. As a digital marketing agency, you manage multiple business accounts. If you fail any one of these brands, chances are, other clients might lose their trust in you.
Simply follow these steps:
- study your clients’ target audience,
- research the audiences’ preference, demands, dislikes, etc.,
- be careful with emotional marketing,
- understand and value cultural beliefs,
- be aware of current events and their true sense,
- A/B test your campaigns before you launch them for good, and
- hire employees who pay attention to detail and are allergic to errors.
