Inbound marketing is fundamental to a business’s success and a few mistakes can lead to major consequences. I have compiled a list of the most common inbound marketing errors and ways to prevent them from occurring.
Customer Testimonials & Reviews
Contents
Testimonials posted directly on your business website by customers often times will be very positive and almost seem to good too be true. Visitors may see these reviews as being posted by the website owner or as paid reviews. Almost all marketers encourage reviews, but having a review that is too good often seem fake and can make the entire site look fake. Unbiased reviews that are fair and impartial are the best.
The best way to handle these reviews is to promote the reviews that do not look overly fake at the top of the page and push the overly complement reviews to the bottom. I am not saying to hide these reviews and you should never delete negative reviews. Always respond to the reviewer to see what happened and to find a way to fix the problem. This will show new clients your openness to fix problems with complete transparency.
Junk Content:
It used to be common practice and acceptable by Google to put up as much content on our website in hopes that each page can rank in Google. This used to work a few years ago, but today it is frowned upon and looked at as SPAM. Websites would put large font text at the top of the page bragging about the company and a bunch of keyword rich junk in the body of the page in hopes of it ranking. Not only does all the added content make the website look sloppy to the end user, but it can also negatively impact your rankings in the search engines. In the end you lose control of the content on your website and it becomes a mess.
An effective way to counter this effect is to build individual inbound pages and websites that can be used for SEO, while the main site is used to communicate with the customers. Of course there needs to be some sort of balance between the two, but remember who is making the purchase, Google or a human?
Press Release’s
Make sure that when drafting a company press release always make sure the content is newsworthy and worth mentioning. Writing a proper press release can be tricky, but once you get the hang of writing them it gets easier. Do not repeat the same information that you have posted elsewhere in your PR’s. Use a professional writer if you are not the best at writing. This will ensure that it is formatted and written the way to maximize exposure.
Services & Products Section
A page on your site promoting what you sell, either a product or service, should help potential customers become accompanied with your companies offerings. If a visitor cannot navigate through your site and find what they are looking for then you are not accomplishing what your site was built to do. The visitor may bounce from your page to look at a competitor’s site.
To keep visitors interactive on your site you must constantly update your business products and services page as well as staring a newsletter where you can engage with visitors. Social media has really changed the way marketing works and allows for customers to really get to know your company on a more personal basis.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing mistakes are sometimes easy to find and fix whereas others can cause distress. The key point to remember is that you can always make changes and adjustments to your site so this does not occur.
About Brandon Leibowitz
