5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes Affecting Your Sales Funnel

• Date: 05 March 2021
• reading time: 3 Minutes
• Blogger: Victoria Hazel

Content has become the ultimate reigning factor for any marketing campaign of today. A lot of people confuse content with just textual format. When in fact, the content is of many formats that include texts, images, videos, voice or sound, user-generated, and more.  People spend so much time on social media. Today, integration with various platforms, devices, and tools – the landscape of content production mixed with creativity has truly transcended many limitations. Today, the sky is the limit. 

With all of the above in mind, we need to understand that content marketing, in particular, is an art and a skill. You cannot just wing it and expect to have desirable results. Content marketing has become the single most potent way of driving sales for eCommerce stores. For any business, content marketing plays an integral role in building brand awareness, generating and nurturing leads, and then solidifying conversions. 

Considering the billions of active users on popular social platforms, the window to make mistakes, big or small, has become relatively narrow. One small mistake, and you could lose your credibility along with your clients. One can say that social media has become quite unforgiving of mistakes and blunders that have resulted in brands losing their stronghold and reputation. 

So, before you start with your campaigns and posts, you should educate yourself on the DON'TS of social media marketing. There are plenty of case studies out there for you to take in. However, since those elaborate case studies are not everyone's cup of tea, I have curated a blog for you stating some of the things you should avoid at all costs. 

Mistakes to Avoid as a Digital Marketer: Are You in the Same Boat?

1. Lack of Any In-depth Planning

The fastest way to kill your brand or business is not to have any solid foundation in the form of planning laid down before execution. Social media, at a glance, looks like a clean canvas that you can throw any color on, and it will turn out to be perfect with many admirers. However, it may look that easy, but each post's process is elaborate and often has been planned weeks ahead of the actual posting date. 

To generate a proper sale funnel, you need to plan everything – each and every detail. From researching the trends, the format of each post, and when they will be posted. 

Consider making your content calendar, with all the details included. You can take the help of online tools. These days the online tools for content scheduling and posting have become readily available and are quite smart. Some even allow you to schedule posts on various platforms from a single tool. Also, these tools provide you with analytics to keep track of each post's progress on the respective social applications. 

2. Posting Poor Quality Content; Big Turn-off

In a time where 4K videos, 100x optical zoom, and flagship smartphones providing a DSLR camera quality, posting poor quality content is the ultimate death of your brand. You need to come up with the best quality content in terms of visuals and concept. Any inconsistencies, low pixels, and grammar mistakes can cost you a great sale funnel along with your reputation that will instantly be diminished through customer or visitors' banter and criticism for the world to see. 

More importantly, you need to know the kind of content your audience or customers would want in the first place. If you are unaware of their likes, interests, and habits of whatever that concerns your brand, then you are in for a surprise when the engagement levels are less to zero. 

Keeping the quality in check is essential because it shows that your brand has value and substance to offer and care about your customers. Meaning you want to serve them with the best, even in terms of content. 

So be careful before you hit that post button or schedule a post. Please go through it and do a thorough quality-control. 

3. Not Checking Your Competitors

You are not in the game to beat the competition; you are in it to rise above it and bring something entirely different. Something that gives you a certain edge against them. However, to know that you are providing your audience with what they haven't explored or interacted with before, you need to keep up with your competitors. 

So make sure you are keeping tabs on the content strategy they are following and ensuring you are not just another version or a low-quality imitation of an already established brand out there. 

4. Dictating Your Opinion On Customers

You cannot impose your ideas and opinions on your audience in times of sensitivity and inclusiveness. Many marketers make the mistake of leaving no choice for the audience, and it becomes a ''my way or the high way'' sort of situation. 

The customers have content that is straightforward and dictating what to buy and do. This is the most likely place you brand as pushy and come off as almost desperate. We do not want that now, do we? 

For this, you need to evoke the feelings of self-initiation and be smart in planting the seeds in their minds, hoping they come to the decision that you want them to by their own will. In other words, you call this ''influencing'' – where you highlight the benefits and potential of your product and leave it up to them to take the final plunge. 

Pro Tip: Show how your brand solves one or more of the target audience's pain points. Once the potential customers see that your product is a means to getting rid of their problem(s), they will then be tempted to decide whether to invest in your product or not. 

5. Not Making the Most Out of Online Marketing

Online marketing is a vast field with much to offer. Among those offerings, you get plenty of useful tools and integrations that enable you to generate better results. You cannot rely on one channel alone when your audience is scattered on numerous platforms. 

For example, just creating a website or social media pages isn't enough. You need to make use of most of the digital marketing tools available at your disposal. Meaning, add social media buttons on every social media page and promote the website on all social channels in return. 

Bonus Tip: Make sure you are amplifying the accessibility factor and working on providing the easiest access to the resources that you have to offer – which could be your service pages, your login/signup pages, so on, and so forth. 

Wrapping Up

These 5 mistakes have become familiar with many marketers complaining of low or declining sales funnel along with followership on their social media pages. If these can be avoided and rectified, you can regain that lost reputation and conversions. Remember, social media marketing isn't as simple or black and white as one thought. Moreover, it always requires a solid foundation of planning. Nothing can be successful if there isn't proper planning and research included. 

• Blogger: Victoria Hazel
• Digital Marketing Manager at NIEUW AMSTERDAM ADVISORS
• Victoria Hazel is the Digital Marketing Manager of Nieuw Amsterdam Advisors, a life sciences consulting firm and dabbles in content and copywriting. She believes in the power of words and strives to build brands with effective writing techniques.
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