We all know digital advertising is a huge part of marketing and digital advertising mistakes are prevalent. In fact, many marketers make these mistakes without even realising it. That’s why I am writing this article to help you identify the digital advertising pitfalls that will lead to wasted spend in your budget. These digital ad mistakes include over-targeting, measuring the wrong metrics and using a poorly designed landing page (among other things). Let’s explore each mistake so you can avoid them when doing digital advertising for your company.

Stop Over Targeting

When marketers over-target or “Spray And Pray”, they face the risk of wasting your marketing budget on inefficient impressions. There are many ways digital marketers can make less intelligent decisions when targeting a demographic. There are consequences to that: sending ads to people who have no interest in the product or service being offered, using irrelevant keywords or paying too much attention to social media followers instead of customers.
Advertising to people who are not interested in what you offer is completely fruitless for both the marketer and the consumer.
When targeting a specific audience, it is important to pinpoint exactly the type of customer you are aiming at and what they want to get out of your service or product. Look at those customers already following your account and see what they like or dislike about the product or service offered by studying their social media profiles with tools such as Social Blade or the Offernet Touchpoint platform.
The digital advertising pitfall of using irrelevant search keywords in search campaigns is another mistake to avoid. Keyword and negative keyword research and selection is a very important part of digital ad campaigns since they determine the quality of traffic you receive from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
For example, suppose your digital ad campaign targets users searching for car insurance. In that case, it will be useless to use keywords such as ‘cheap windscreen repair’ because those people have no interest in what you’re offering at the moment. If they want cheap windscreen repair services, then they will seek them out, so doing this digital advertising mistake would be futile for both parties.

Know How To Measure Success

Social Media Marketing is important for any business, but if marketers do not know how to measure its effectiveness properly, they are better off spending their money elsewhere. One digital advertising pitfall marketers often make is focusing too much on follower numbers.
This digital marketing mistake means they are more concerned with growing their account numbers than converting social media followers into paying customers. Suppose a company creates an account for the sole purpose of digital advertising. In that case, this digital error will be obvious to users, who will then unfollow or mute the account and follow other pages that make their digital advertising experience better.
Focusing on follower numbers is a digital marketing risk because social media accounts with small amounts of followers can be very active without gaining many real customers. Follower counts are also highly affected by bots, which you don’t want to attract if digital advertising is the main purpose for having a social media account.

Improve Your Landing Page

Design your landing page in a way that meets the needs of the target group you want to reach. Ensure that every detail is relevant and useful for people who are looking for what you offer so they’ll be more likely to sign up or purchase, not get distracted by superfluous information, and experience frustration.
Mobile users now interact with websites more than desktop and tablet users combined. Advertisers should ensure all images and text are responsive and use call-to-action buttons that are TAP properly positioned and sized.
Re-market to past website visitors
Re-market to prospects who have visited their landing page and assessed the page but not converted. This will give a final chance to convert those visitors that have already interacted with the company’s branding for them to go through with the conversion after more thought.

If you’re digital advertising and marketing savvy, digital mistakes are less likely to happen. You should be aware of over-targeting, know how to measure success, improve the landing page and re-market past website visitors for conversion purposes. Preventing these digital marketing errors will lead your efforts in a better direction!

About JG Bezuidenhout

JG Bezuidenhout is a founding partner of the South African subsidiary of Offernet.net, the data technology company housed in London, United Kingdom. Although based in Cape Town, JG is the global head of Offernet's advisory and innovation hub and, as such, is responsible for the monitoring and implementation of cutting-edge solutions, particularly within the digital marketing environment. Using advanced technologies such as big data and machine learning, as well as their bespoke Touchpoint Analytics™ system, Offernet can accurately and dramatically improve their clients' returns on advertising spend (ROAS). Their comprehensive approach to marketing, which includes advisory services, data analytics, and media buying, makes Offernet a valuable partner. If you want to take your marketing to the next level to achieve far more measurable results and align yourself with the growth strategies of the entire C-suite (and the company as a whole), Offernet is a logical choice.

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