Know Your Marketing Mistakes – What's Working in Marketing?

Welcome back to another week of What's Working in Marketing, a weekly newsletter where we share what's working outside your own four walls across the digital marketing landscape so you can be more effective. If you enjoy reading this,?follow me on LinkedIn?or create a?FREE Insight Library account, our team is publishing tons of free research that you won't want to miss.

This week we're breaking down:

• The Highlights:?Unwrapping the best practices for an eCommerce landing page
• The Watercooler:?Are you making these common marketing mistakes?
• #MarketingTwitter:?Diving into three Tweets about marketing offer & angle positioning, the law of Performance vs Brand marketing and Snap's dual camera launch

NAIL YOUR LANDING PAGES WITH THE HOLIDAY SEASON APPROACHING

There are sometimes what feels like a million different ways to organize and sort a landing page. Usually the first contact some customers may have with your brand, it's important to take certain elements into consideration that could be helping or hindering user experience. OptiMonk analyzed 2,125 of the top eCommerce sites in the US to break down 20 elements that you could experiment with on your next landing page iteration.

You can check out all 20 best practices here. In the meantime, I'll break down the top 5 practices along with 3 other practices I think are worth testing.?

Top 5 Practices Found Across Sites

1. Public Customer Service Phone Number (92%): Simple enough, just show customers an easy way to get in touch with you that is low time & energy.?
2. Horizontal Category Menu (90%): The traditional horizontal primary navigation is still trending strong with top online retailers, seems to be working well for them & can for you too if you haven't adopted this method yet.?
3. "Guarantee" Communication (90%): People like to know what kind of guarantee you offer on your products. This is you as a brand saying you believe in your product?so?much that you'll back it 'til. the. end.
4. Technical Parameters (88%): Get down to the nitty-gritty. If these top 5 most used landing page features tell you anything, it's that people want to know as much as possible about your offerings.
5. Product Descriptions (81%): Include technical parameters to help guide the user in a more down-to-business way but use the product description to insert a bit of your brand voice. Skateboard brand Palace does this ironically with their products. The 'Rose Knit Vest' has a description that says "Rose up through the dirt like a parsnip".?

?3 Practices Worth Implementing

1. Autocomplete Suggestion Search (53%): Finish each other's sentences by adding an autocomplete suggestion to your search bar. Not only will your buyers feel like you get them?- they'll also discover options they may not have been originally looking for.?
2. Wish List (48%): Let buyers browse and save for later so that initial buying interests don't get completely lost.??
3. Estimated Shipping Date (41%): Transparency is key and so is managing expectations. Providing an estimated shipping date on a product page will help customers come to terms with what to expect rather than expect the impossible and be upset when that isn't delivered.

Are you making any of these common marketing strategy mistakes? ??

Mistake 1 - Not having clear marketing objectives

Without clear objectives, it's difficult to know what you're trying to achieve with your marketing efforts, and this can lead to a lot of wasted time and money. The best way to fix this issue is to sit down and clearly define your marketing objectives. What are you trying to achieve with your marketing? What are your goals and targets?

Mistake 2 - Making assumptions about your target audience

If you make assumptions about your target audience, I can almost guarantee that you will not be able to reach them effectively. People's preferences change all the time, so it is important to do your research. You need to know as much as possible about whom you are targeting with your marketing efforts so that you can give your brand a chance at success. Just because you've worked in an industry for a long time doesn't mean you can speak to your audience in the same way that you always have.

Mistake 3 - Focusing only on tactics instead of the linkage between tactics, strategy and objectives

While tactics are important, they will not be effective if they are not supported by a solid marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy provides a roadmap for your marketing efforts and helps you to stay focused on your objectives. Without a strategy, you will be more likely to chase shiny objects and new trends instead of staying focused on what is important.

Mistake 4 - Trying to do too many things at once

There's an old saying that goes "Jack of all trades, master of none." When it comes to marketing, this is definitely true. You're not going to be great at everything, especially when first starting out. In order to truly succeed with your marketing activities, you need to pick a few things that align with your objectives and focus your efforts there until you see success. Then you can move on to other areas of your marketing strategy.

Mistake 5 - Focusing on the wrong metrics or no metrics at all

Without any metrics, it is difficult to know if your marketing efforts are effective or not. And if you focus on the wrong metrics, you can end up wasting a lot of time and money on activities that don't produce results. The best way to fix this common mistake is to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts, and then develop metrics that align with those objectives.

Mistake 6 - Not taking advantage of competitive research to guide your strategy

Many brands make the mistake of not leveraging competitive research to inform their marketing strategy. This is a big mistake, as competitor research can help you to understand what is and isn't working for leaders in your space and can give you some ideas for how to improve your own marketing efforts.

Here are three Tweets you should check out this week:?

1. How to properly position an offer with an angle in marketing messaging

2. The law of Brand vs Performance marketing

3. Snap launches dual camera for users

If you're enjoying the newsletter so far, I want to encourage you to check out?The RightMetric Insight Library.

It's full of strategy tear-downs and examples from fast-growing brands that have already helped thousands of marketers?identify?content opportunities,?focus?on the right whitespace channels,?improve?their media strategies, and?benchmark?against competitors.

?? Thank You! ??

That's all for this week, I hope that you enjoyed it. If you found this valuable, I'd really appreciate it if you tagged someone who should read this in the comments.

I'll catch you next week. ???