The four biggest mistakes online marketers make

You most likely make one of these mistakes if you’re an online marketer. And this has nothing to do with whether you have been in the industry for years or you’re just starting.

And by an online marketer, I don’t only mean someone who runs ads. If you’re creating content and you’re looking at growing an online audience around it or for it, you’re an online marketer. It could be a YouTube Channel, a podcast channel, a blog, photography, a conversation, … whatever it is that you’re pushing to an audience, you’re an online marketer. And you could have made one of these mistakes.

The failure to grab attention

Attention is the currency on the internet. It is that gold everyone is mining for — both big and small brands. It is why companies spend millions of dollars in creating ads for their products.

However, attention is a scarce commodity. The average human has an attention span of 7 seconds. Attention is why you will give some seconds to a Facebook ad while you ignore others. It is that element that makes you click to ‘learn more’.

Attention is what makes you click on a video out of the many YouTube recommended to you. Attention is also that element that makes you open some emails while you ignore others.

If you fail to get attention, you have wasted 80% of your marketing spend, no matter how high it is.

In my Complete Copywriting Toolkit, I noted something very vital in getting attention. That’s making a connection.

A stunning graphic design is enough to keep you staring at it for about three seconds, but you’re not going to click if you don’t connect with the offering or copy on it. For instance, if I don’t have a pet cat and there is an attractive Facebook ad talking about cat food, I’m not going to click even if they’re offering a 99.99999% discount. I don’t feel like I need it.

The funny and ironic thing about this is that this can also be the case even when the prospect is right. Yes, I have a cat, and this is an ad for cat food. However, all I can see on it is a stunning image, but nothing that connects to me.

Everybody needs something, and it is your job as a marketer to align your offering as a solution to that need. That’s how you connect with your audience and grab their attention.

I run ads on Facebook for less than 0.03 per click. It can be that cheap. And these are not to third-world countries where clicks are very cheap, these are to the US, UK, Canada, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and then to other countries like Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

You can be sure that with a 5 dollar Facebook ad campaign, you’re going to get, at least, 5000 impressions. You have to maximize the impressions. Don’t be the ignored ad, be the one with a stunning image, the attractive YouTube thumbnail, the connecting headline copy.

The headline part is so vital, I had to create a toolkit on it. It is where you make your promise — your value proposition. Miss it, and you’ve missed everything.

The Headline Blackbox is the complete material on headlines and subjects. It contains templates, analysis, examples, and a lot more to help you. It is almost 30 pages. And you can get it for free here.

The failure to ignite curiosity

Now that you have gotten their attention, what are you doing with it? Facebook, Google, Bing, YouTube, LinkedIn, and any other audience platform you’re using will charge you for the click. That cost you something. The question now is: what are you going to do with it?

What you do in the first ten seconds will determine if they’re going to move on or not. Igniting curiosity is a core aspect of the Complete Copywriting Toolkit. And one thing I stressed is the importance of introductions.

YouTube forces us to see ads for 7 seconds before we can skip them. The funny thing is that some ads can be as long as 5 minutes and because they got your attention and ignited a curiosity to know more, you would find yourself glued to the screen for the whole five minutes and even clicking to see the offering.

What about the video you wanted to see? Now, it’s not that important. You could get back to it.

That happened because they ignited your curiosity. However, for most of the YouTube ads we see, we are so in a hurry to click ‘skip’. Even for those that belong to YouTube.

Your opening statement matters a lot.

The failure to sustain (or even heighten) the curiosity

You have grabbed their attention and ignited their curiosity, the next step is to sustain that curiosity. You want to keep them glued. And you can do this with testimonials, facts, numbers — quick fact: numbers are brain candy. The human brain likes them.

For instance, my company, Woken Digital, works with startups. We help them connect with their online audience. And to help them, we create helpful guides and materials. Now, in our marketing, we can decide to give one of these materials away. In doing this, we let the prospect know that this is one of the materials or the number one material we give to CEOs to help them connect with their audience.

Now, that heightens your curiosity. You want to get that material. All we had to do was just tell you something about it — a fact.

You need to do this right because this is the stage before your call-to-action. You want to make them want it more.

Poor call-to-action

You don’t want to get this wrong. Your call-to-action must be direct, straight to the point, clear, and easy to spot. And if it is an email or a landing page, you want to make it appear more than once.

Why should it appear more than once?

The first call-to-action normally comes after the features and testimonials. However, at that point, the prospect is still wondering whether to go for your product or not. So, after this call-to-action, you state what they stand to gain by taking your offer.

After the second call-to-action, you can reiterate what they’d miss like a limited-time discount, a special offer, a timer, …, and any other thing that will make them not want to miss out. And then the last call-to-action.

Your call-to-action button must have a contrasting color to the background color of that page. So, if the background color is black, you want a light red, light blue, … something that sharply contrasts.

More, you can state your offer again on the call-to-action button. For instance, something like:

Buy Now for 75% Off

That’s direct, straight to the point, and clear enough. You can also use stuff like

‘SEND IT TO ME’, ‘I WANT THIS’

All these things may seem hilarious, but they send psychological messages to your prospects.

Finally…

You can get more leads and expand your audience, but you’ve got to do it right. These are fundamental mistakes you don’t want to make. That’s why I compiled the Complete Copywriting Toolkit. It is just $7 and you can 10x your marketing with it. Get it today here.