It’s a jungle out there.

I don’t care what industry or niche our small business targets. It’s incredibly hard to break through the noise and capture someone’s attention.

Depending on our Social Media use, the average American sees between 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day!

It’s a daunting task, yet it’s something we all have to figure out. Depending on our marketing budget, we may be limited in how much we can invest in advertising.

But it’s not just about money. It’s also about making sure we’re not making common huge online mistakes that hurt our chances of being seen online.

Here are a few mistakes we may be making without ever knowing it and a few simple solutions so we can improve our internet presence.

We Overlook a Huge Portion of Our Customers

We never want to be seen as inaccessible. It’s the kiss of death for our online presence. We want every possible person to visit our website.

Yet, 14 million disabled Americans are limited in some way from accessing technology that most of us take for granted.

And there are very easy tactics to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that explains what it takes to meet the minimum standards for accessibility.

In 5 Reasons Why Web Accessibility Should be Your Priority in 2019, accessibility expert Pamela Pompas explains the problem of having a site that’s not compliant:

By ignoring the issue, accessibility can cut off your business from large swaths of potential customers. This means that you’d be turning your back on 20% of the world’s population—or 1.3 billion people—who experience any type of disability.

Site owners can follow the WCAG guidelines themselves or use a tool like accessiBe that only requires installing one JavaScript code on the site.

Either way, we just need to commit to making our sites as accessible as we possibly can to both avoid any legal issue and increase our overall customer base.

Our Social Media Posts Are Boring

Small businesses don’t have the same flashy draw as my favorite new Facebook group, Weird Secondhand Finds That Just Need To Be Shared.

Here is just one of the crazy things they share on a daily basis:

How can our boring salesy post compete?

The answer is, of course, that we can’t compete with Social media craziness.

Although shopping through social media platforms is becoming easier and more common, most people don’t spend hours scrolling through sales pages.

Ripl, a creative video marketing tool, explains that online video ads don’t need to be long and 15 – 30 seconds videos work fine adding:

Sometimes just using video from your phone’s camera of a cool business event is enough to interest your customer. Your audience appreciates getting an authentic glimpse into your real life.

Be authentic, engaging and enthusiastic. Tell a story about how a product was created or share an embarrassing story with a clever learning experience.

Just don’t be boring.

We Have No Hook

If our goal is to break through the crowded field, we have to create a strategy.

Providing a good service or selling a great product isn’t enough when everyone is doing / selling the same exact thing.

In Simple Ways to Nudge Our Niche Into Action I explained:

While our end game is to convert a social media follower to a customer, that generally doesn’t happen after seeing one post. Our goal is to provide content that engages users and nudges them to keep coming back until they finally buy something from us.

Our “hook” is what entices someone to pause on our content. TOMS was designed as a “buy one, give one” principle and allows customers to “Pick your stand”.

Budweiser’s commercials bring people to tears:

Jenny Lawson, a bestselling author, is obsessed with wacky taxidermied pets and putting them in crazy situations:

We’re all unique and our hook should represent that. Be fun, creative, or clever. We can support a worthy cause or share how a product was made.

Or we can be extremely personal or teach others how it’s done. Whatever we do, we need to be authentic, ourselves and engaging.

Fix What’s Fixable

It’s really easy to point back after we’ve achieved a certain level of success and say “This was the strategy that finally worked for us!”.

And it’s almost impossible to predict exactly what magic formula is the right one for our businesses.

Yet, there are clear mistakes that millions of business owners make every day.

Instead of blindly sending out another email or social media post, we should take a few minutes to think about what’s keeping our internet presence from standing out.

Because in the crazy jungle of business, we want to be the King of the lions not just another gazelle among the herd.

The post 3 Huge Online Mistakes You’re Making Right Now appeared first on GrowMap.