Just as there are many things that you can get right when you're coming up with a digital marketing strategy, there's also a lot that can go wrong. The ability to sidestep some of the main issues can prove to be invaluable as it allows you to avoid the traps that your competitors have fallen into. There's always going to be more than a little bit of trial and error involved in a proper digital marketing strategy, but if you avoid some of the major mistakes, this is never going to be a bad thing. With this in mind, here are a few of the top errors that you should seek to avoid.

The problem that a lot of companies have is that they simply start digital marketing without having a clear vision of what they want to achieve. It could be that they put out an ad on Facebook or start a PPC campaign. While these are not negative steps to take on their own, it can be a problem if you are not building towards a wider goal that truly works for you. You can either come up with this strategy on your own or work alongside a digital marketing agency. Either way, it is certainly worth having this in place so that you have some measurables that you can see if you are delivering against.

The whole point of social media is that you are supposed to be social on it. However, if you are not updating it often enough, this can lead to a situation where you are not really growing your audience and you are also not engaging anyone either. To begin with, this should come back to your overall digital marketing strategy. Think about the types of posts that you are writing and measure how well they are doing. Before you even do this, you should think about the specific channels that you are going to be using. Some are more suitable than others. For example, if you run a particularly visual business, there is no doubt that Instagram is the way to go, but this may not be suitable for everyone.

The whole point of building up a brand identity is so that people can see your colour scheme and logo and will know exactly what you are all about straight away. However, if you are not using it consistently, you are not going to achieve the level of recognition that you are looking for in the first place. So, it is more than worth asking the question every single time that you put out a single piece of comms - is it obvious which business this is coming from? If not, it is going to be worth going back to the drawing board and starting all over again. Before you start your digital marketing strategy in full, you may even decide that this is the perfect opportunity to rebrand your business, but this should obviously be done with a great deal of care and attention rather than simply rushing in at the deep end.

Your website is the hub that you are going to draw people back to time and time again. However, if the design simply isn’t good enough, you are going to struggle to get people to stick around over an extended period of time. Again, this is why it is always going to be worth measuring engagement levels and how long people are actually staying on your site. If it is not long enough, you need to do something about it sooner rather than later.

Going right back to the start of the blog post and thinking about the strategy that you have in place, it is always going to be worth having one eye on your competitors at all times. This is largely down to the fact that they may be doing something that you need to be aware of. You also need to look at your own position in comparison to them and whether it is good enough for what you want to achieve.