7 Bad Marketing Habits to Break in 2015

I don't know about you, but it feels like 2014 flew by. It seems like it was yesterday that I was at the pool with my kids and then BAM school started and then BAM Thanksgiving and Christmas happened and now - yikes! - it's the year 2015.

Where has the time gone?

As I get back into the groove after some time off over the holidays, I find myself fielding questions from clients about their plans for the year ahead. This is the time of year when we're working on reviewing their marketing performance, updating their inbound marketing strategies, reviewing their business goals, and brainstorming new campaigns and ideas. While many people use the new year as a time to set goals and start doing new things, it's also a great time to stop doing things that aren't working.

If you're looking to cut some fat from your marketing budget next year, consider dropping these seven things that, in my experience, just don't yield results.

1. YOUR WEBSITE IS ALL ABOUT YOU

If I visited your website homepage right now and counted how many of the pronouns are in the first person (ie. "I" and "We"), what would I find? Do you talk about yourself, the products and services you sell, and the people who work for you, or do you talk about your customers and prospects, their problems and pain points, and their questions? If you're like most organizations, the answer is most likely the former.

Stop making it all about you and start speaking directly to your audience. Tap into what matters most to them and they will immediately feel a connection. This is an easy fix that you can do in under an hour. Really! Just go to your homepage and start counting those pronouns and everywhere you see an "I" or a "We", change it to a you and rephrase your statement.

2. YOUR OFFERS ARE BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL

Most people that visit your website or interact with you online - whether on your site or via your social media channels, etc. - are not ready to buy. In fact, most people get about 70% of the way through the buying process before they are willing to talk to a salesperson. Why? The answer is simple - they don't want to be sold to. Think about it. If you were interested in buying a car, would you spend the day wandering from dealer to dealer without having done any research? No way! That puts you at the mercy of the car salesperson and you will spend needless time getting sales pitch after sales pitch. These days, most people go online and narrow down their choices and then visit the dealer armed with research on the make, model, trim package, pricing, and availability of the exact car they want.

Your buyer is no different. I don't care if you're selling widgets or consulting services, the people who buy from you don't want to be sold to until they are actually ready to buy.

Go to your website again and count how many calls to action you have. These include "contact us" forms, buttons with messages like "ready to get started?" or "sign up now." Then count how many of these are sales oriented, meaning that they will result in the person who responds to them getting contacted by your company. These are bottom of the funnel offers and only a very small percentage of your website visitors will be ready to convert on them. The rest are looking for helpful information that will solve their problems or answer their questions.

The bottom line is that you'll get more leads and see a higher conversion rate if your CTAs (that's "call to action" for short) target visitors at the top and the middle of the funnel when they're in the process of researching what they want to buy.

3. YOU'RE PURCHASING LISTS

I've got news for you. If you're purchasing email lists and sending email blasts out to the people on them, you're a SPAMMER. Seriously. Because you are SPAMming people with your emails, this increases the likelihood that the recipients of your email will opt out or report your emails as SPAM. When a large number of people do this, your email domain can get blacklisted and that makes it really hard to get any email - SPAM or not - to your audience.

A better approach is to grow your list organically by giving people a reason to opt IN to your email (rather than opt OUT). Add an email newsletter subscription box to your website, promote it through your social channels and your blog, and create great content that your audience will want to receive in their inbox. Do these things, and you won't need to purchase lists anymore.

4. YOU'RE MEASURING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS BY "LIKES" AND FOLLOWS

While it feels nice to have lots of followers and fans, the reality is that these measurements no longer mean much. Five years ago, most companies were jumping on Facebook with the sole goal of boosting their fans. The thinking was that anyone who "liked" your business page would see your updates and it would keep you top of mind. Plus, having more fans than your competitors seemed like a big win. Unfortunately, Facebook has made some changes to the way posts show up in our news feed and now most of your page fans don't actually see the things you post unless you pay to "boost" them. Yup, you heard me - Facebook is now "pay to play." This means that all your likes, fans and followers are meaningless.

When you think about it, who cares if people see your Facebook updates if it doesn't result in you getting some business? At the end of the day, that's why businesses get on social media. If customer acquisition or sales is your goal, then you need to begin measuring your social media success in those terms. How can you do that? You've got to drive people back to your website or give them a reason to call you. This means that in between the funny memes and interesting articles you post, you should also offer your fans and followers some educational content (ask them to fill out a conversion form on your website in order to get it!), a discount or coupon, or an invitation to a webinar, special event, or meeting. These are all great ways to get your social media followers to come back to your site and convert into leads, which you can then continue to nurture in other ways.

5. YOU'VE GOT MULTIPLE SLIDER IMAGES ON YOUR WEBSITE

People have short attention spans. We live in the age of Twitter (which limits you to 140 characters), Vine (videos that last less than 6 seconds), and Snapchat (photo texts that auto-destruct in a matter of seconds). Websites are no different. There is plenty of research to suggest that you have about 3 seconds to grab a visitor's attention before they move on or leave your site.

If your website uses a slider - a large, rotating image at the top of the homepage - you're wasting valuable real estate. Very few people (I'm talking a fraction of a percent) will sit there and watch multiple slider images as they scroll. This means that the FIRST image in your slider is the one that counts and it's the reason that many web designers are moving away from sliders to "hero images" - a single, static image where the slider used to be. In addition to sticking to one image, its a good idea to incorporate a strong call to action right there within your hero image so that your visitor is immediately hit with an opportunity to convert when they land on your site.

6. YOU'RE FOCUSED ON QUANTITY OVER QUALITY

Do you get excited when your website visitor numbers and lead conversions increase? Everyone loves to see the needle move in the right direction, but growth in these areas doesn't always mean you will see results in terms of revenue. To put it another way, not every lead is a good lead. We recently worked with a client that was seeing a huge increase in the number of visitors to their site and the number of leads that were converting, but their customer acquisition was declining. It took some digging, but we eventually discovered that they had a specific offer on their site that was driving the spike in visitors and leads and that offer was attracting the wrong type of lead.

There are couple of ways to measure whether the leads you're getting are good ones. Start by developing detailed buyer personas for your ideal client. Going through this exercise will force you to think about what exactly makes a great customer. Is it their budget? Their geographic location? Their attitude? Their job title? Why do you like to work with this type of person? Answering that question will help you figure out who you want to attract.

Once you've developed buyer personas, you can then develop a formula for lead scoring. Basically, lead scoring assigns a point value to specific criteria that you determine to be important. When a contact reaches the score - or threshhold - that you believe makes them worth following up on, they are considered to be a "marketing qualified" lead or MQL. Measuring the number of MQLs you have is a much better way to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing then simply measuring visitors or leads.

7. YOU HAVE MULTIPLE WEBSITES

Don't get me started on this one. Last year, I actually wrote a blog for HubSpot called "4 Reasons Why Having Multiple Websites is Killing Your Business." You can find really detailed information on why this is such a bad idea by reading the post, but the long story short is that it takes way too much time and effort to maintain multiple sites, duplicate content across your sites will hurt your search engine rankings, and you may be confusing your customers.

Seriously, stop the madness. You're better off having just one website for your business and pouring all of your time and energy into that one than spreading it across a slew of domains.

DO ANY OF THESE SOUND FAMILIAR?

Are you guilty of any of these bad marketing habits? If so, you're not alone. The good news is that each of these is really easy to fix - and fixing them will improve the results you're getting from your marketing. Why not make that your new year's resolution?

I'm sure I didn't get every bad marketing habit. If you've seen others, share them with me in the comments? You never know - your idea may wind up getting featured in our next ebook!