Just like everything else in this world, customer behaviors, markets, and technology evolve over time. That said, “best practices” for marketing will be ever-changing as time goes by, meaning there will likely be no permanent marketing strategies for any business that wants to change with the times.
However, not every business seems to have gotten the memo, particularly those that are in desperate need of experienced CMO services. These businesses are the ones still using outdated marketing practices that, although effective once upon a time, no longer deserve the effort today.
Here are some examples of such practices or strategies:
1. Advertising through pop-up adverts
Fifteen or so years ago, pop-up adverts were all the rage. They were inexpensive, relatively effective, and were displayed on almost every website at that time. Luckily, we’ve come a long way from that type of ‘in-your-face’ marketing. And today, it’s safe to say that pop-up adverts no longer belong in the online sphere.
Businesses that have not caught up to this fact could be in trouble. Why? Because consumers are less tolerant of annoying and pushy ads that stop them from what they’re trying to look at. Moreover, browsers now have an option to block pop-ups to make the user experience spam-free, which means that almost no one is going to see pop-up ads anyway.
Today, digital ads have evolved into something a little less annoying than pop-up ads but still get in the way of what people are trying to see online. These are the ads that show up before or in the middle of videos on Youtube and various social media platforms. While in-video ads provide an effective way to get noticed, they often only have a few seconds (usually five) before a user skips it to get to what they want to watch. Any longer than five seconds, and most users often skip the video altogether unless they really want to watch it.
2. Waiting for customer input
Listening to what your customers say is one of the most effective ways to push your marketing, development, and sales strategies in the right direction. For this reason, collecting customer feedback frequently is imperative to a business’ growth and success. However, customers don’t have the ability to predict transformational events, nor can they pinpoint possible opportunities until it is presented.
With that in mind, it’s also just as important to tell customers what they might need instead of waiting for them to spell it out. Therefore, businesses must step up when it comes to studying the market, analyzing the demand, and generating new ideas from this information to allow customers to recognize what’s possible.
3. Purchasing social media followers
Having thousands or even millions of followers can make a brand look good, but people can easily tell if those followers are real or fake by taking a look at the brand’s engagement. For example, if a brand has a hundred thousand followers on Instagram but only gets around a hundred likes on each post, it’s obvious that a lot of those hundred thousand followers are fake or “ghost” followers that the brand has bought to make it look like they have a huge following.
The best approach is to build followers organically, through paid ads, or a combination of both. While this route will take a lot of grit and determination, it’s a thousand times better and more cost-effective than purchasing followers who might not even be real people.
4. Planning on a fixed schedule
Marketing trends come and go at an alarmingly fast rate. Customer behaviors change seemingly every quarter. And with the pandemic, it’s easy to see how everything can change in the blink of an eye. All things considered, planning shouldn’t be on a fixed schedule, although it may have worked really well in the past for some companies.
Instead, it should be a constant process, timed well with the changes that need new marketing strategies, employee behavior modifications, customer approaches, and many more.
5. Doing astroturfing
Astroturfing refers to the marketing practice of creating the impression that a brand, product, or cause has strong grassroots support when in fact, that support is not as strong as it is made out to be.
People are getting better at spotting this practice, which means they are warier of support messages that brands post on their pages. Consequently, astroturfing may no longer be as effective as it was when people were still not aware of this type of strategy.
Not only are these practices dead, but they can also be detrimental to a brand if they keep using them. That said, businesses must evolve along with everything else, including their customers, the market, and their industry.