Marketing is part & parcel of an everyday business. We have arrived at an arena where digital marketing has become really important for building brands and generating sales. There are new technologies, options, resources, and tools that have been recently introduced and all of them seem like an untapped goldmine to a marketer. 

In such circumstances, it has become extremely crucial for a marketer to follow a sound marketing strategy and cut down on frivolous time-wasters. Time wasted is money lost. To grow a business, a marketer needs to identify the feasibility of the time that they are investing in their marketing efforts.

So here are 5 time-consuming marketing tactics that you should leave behind:

1. Trying to be active on every social media network

Social media has proven to be one of the most useful tools for marketing. Companies have started the practice of hiring personnel just to handle their social media presence and most companies have huge social media marketing budgets as well. And, why not? It is an astounding tool to generate brand awareness not only for well known, big-scale operations but also for local, small businesses.

Now, you might be thinking, “Where is the problem?” There are a couple of them. For example, companies tend to get on every social media bandwagon without researching if their target demographic is following suit. Growing your community on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram can take up a lot of resources and time. If you keep adding on to it, you are inevitably going to end up wasting a lot of time.

It’s better to identify one engaging community and invest in it. For example, if you are a strictly corporate business, well-maintained Facebook and LinkedIn profiles will serve you well. If, however, you are a small business that makes furniture, growing your business via Instagram will be your best bet.

It is up to you to understand the habits of your target audience and focus your time and energy on the platforms that are creating the most impact for you. So if you’re mindlessly spending a lot of your time and energy on each and every social media platform, take a step back and breathe. Focus your efforts on platforms that are viable for you and your business.

2. Creating multiple accounts for a single social media

If you are not as large a brand as Apple, you don’t need 10 distinct social media accounts on the same network. Let’s say you have 3 different accounts for three departments each on 3 of the basic social networks. This means you have to maintain an engaging presence on 9 different accounts. At the end of the day, it’s not even worth it.

However, having one account each for every social media will not only be easier to pull off but it will also help you utilize your time on tried and tested tactics to grow your business. If need be, you can give administrative access to people from different departments, eliminating the need for multiple accounts.

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos

3. Going only after numbers when procuring backlinks

Inbound links are required if you want to feature anywhere near the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs). This is one of the aspects by which Google ranks websites. If that’s the case, shouldn’t every website try to rack up as many backlinks as they can? The answer is no.

It doesn’t matter how many inbound links your website enjoys if the websites that are linking to your website are irrelevant with a poor website ranking. The fact is that quality speaks over quantity which is determined by the Domain Authority (DA) of the site linking to you.

You can use Moz to check the DA of websites. Knowing the DA of websites would help you approach only those websites that are authoritative and relevant to your target industry and demographic.

For example, if you are running a business blog, a single backlink from a website like Forbes with an almost perfect DA will serve you far better than many backlinks from small, unknown websites. This means that rather than wasting time on increasing the number of backlinks, focus on getting fewer but higher quality backlinks. You can achieve this by using tactics like guest posting and creating quality shareable content.

4. Playing the number game with blogs

Seeing that content marketing has become extremely prominent, marketers have started putting out blogs at the speed of light. Statistically, more blogs have proven to get more traffic to websites. Does this mean that posting more content is rewarding? Not really! 

Companies have been spreading their resources thin and compromising on the quality of their content in hopes of higher traffic without realizing that Google might penalize their content. So, rather than writing posts stuffed with keywords that don’t actually resonate with the content you are posting about, focus on delivering quality content to the reader. Aim for the numbers only when you have the resources to maintain the quality.

In short, create quality content that delivers value. Doing this will help you enhance your website visibility and traffic organically over time and it will also help you build authority in your functional industry. If you’re working with a small team or do not have the bandwidth, you can always hire expert content writers to create high quality content for your blog.

“Content Doesn’t Win. Optimized Content Wins.” – Liana Evans

5. Engaging with every message and comment

When you begin a blog or launch your website, traffic would trickle in slowly and the number of comments or messages would be minuscule. Engaging with everyone at this time will help build up your community and develop a core following. However, when you have achieved a good amount of followers, replying to everyone might prove to be counter-productive.

Find a balance between being actively engaging and wasting time. There’s a thin line between the two, and at times, it might get hard to distinguish between them. At the end of the day, marketing should not be too time-consuming if all it does is waste your time without giving you profitable dividends. If you engage with your audience, it should be worth it.

So here’s a word of advice: Find the interactions that will be worth your time and engage in those. 

Conclusion

Time is the most valuable currency for a marketer. It is important that you keep track of your activities, optimize processes, and eliminate those engagements which are yielding no results. You have to evolve and adapt to new trends.

Iterations to technologies and new marketing tactics land in the market every few days. To make it in the cut-throat world of digital media, you have to catch the momentum or you might be left behind. You can’t afford to waste time interacting with trolls or pushing out average content. Rather, keep your focus on effective strategies that will return your investment.

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