Biggest Marketing Mistake I Ever Made, But You Shouldn’t

As an online marketer, you might have made many mistakes in your marketing journey and the good thing about online marketing is: you can always learn from your mistakes, rectify your errors, and always move on after analyzing what’s wrong with your marketing strategies and what needs to be done instead.

I myself have made many mistakes during the past several years but I still regret one of the biggest mistakes I made years back that never allowed my online business to grow as expected. But when I see other online marketers making the same mistake, I feel very bad for them.

If you are wondering what’s the biggest marketing mistake I’m talking about, then keep listening, because that’s something coming up in this episode.

Hey Digital Learners! Welcome back to another episode of Digital Marketing Made Easy podcast. I’m your host Rahul and I blog at LearnDigitalwithRahul.com.

In this episode of Digital Marketing Made Easy podcast, I’m going to talk about the biggest marketing mistake I have ever made.

And the reason why this episode is very crucial is: you can learn from my mistake and take actions right now so that you may avoid making the same mistakes I made earlier or many others are still making.

So let’s get started! But before that let me tell you a story. Do you like stories? Well, I don’t know about you, but I like stories very much. Anyways, let’s get started.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who started a blog from scratch and turned that blog from a blank WordPress installation to a cash pumping asset.

He was good at writing, but that’s all he was good at. He learned various marketing strategies, Search Engine Optimization being the prominent one.

Once he learned the SEO tactics, he started experimenting, and fortunately, his hard work paid off and his blog soon started getting over 1 million page views every month. Things were running quite smoothly. And then suddenly, he lost everything.

How sad…!

Yes, that was very sad. But how do I know that? I know that because this is my story. And the biggest marketing mistake I have ever made is: not building an email list of engaged audiences.

When I had a blog with over a million page views per month, I could easily build an email list of tens of thousands of people. In fact, many people suggested me to start collecting emails from my blog visitors.

But I was completely unknown from the benefits of having an email list of engaged audiences.

Being an SEO guy, I could easily find an easy keyword and create content to rank for that keyword in the search results of search engines like Google, Bing etcetera.

Back then it was so easy to rank in Google and other search engines. But later, when competition increased, Google changed its algorithms to make it much harder for the SEOs.

No doubt, you can still rank for your target keywords and get tons of free organic traffic, but keep in mind, you must start collecting emails from people who visit your blog.

Why?

It’s because businesses don’t run without customers. And if you are relying on a single platform to get customers for your business, you are doing harm to your business.

Because in online marketing space, everything is changing very rapidly. What’s working today, might not work next year. And this is not a random prediction from me, I know this because I can see that what used to work 5 years back, is no longer working now.

For example, one of my friends recently told me that his Facebook page has over 20,000 followers but if he posts anything, his post hardly shows up to even 50 people.

And for me, that’s not surprising. Facebook has limited down the organic reach of Facebook pages to a great extent recently and you shouldn’t be worried about that.

Because that’s not the case with my friend only, it’s the same for my Facebook pages and everyone else who has a Facebook page.

You need to understand that Google, Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform exist for business. If they start promoting our post organically, everyone will be able to get leads and customers without spending on ads.

So, that way, they won’t do any business, and finally, go bankrupt. In order to avoid bankruptcy and grow their business, they want us to pay them to promote our social post. That is why they keep making changes to their algorithms, thus making it even harder for us.

So what’s the takeaway?

Whether you are using blogging as a tool to get leads and sales, using video marketing to grow your business, or doing the audible form of marketing, whatever marketing strategies you choose, start collecting emails from your audience to build an engaged email list, so that you never have to rely on a platform that’s not under your control.

The beauty of having an email list is: you can access your audience at your own disposal whenever you want and for whatever purpose you want. And the best thing is: you don’t even have to rely on Google, Facebook, or any other platforms.

For example, when someone visits my landing pages, I ask for their contact email in return for some freebies like PDF, Ebook, cheatsheet, or tutorials on my blog, YouTube channel, or even this Digital Marketing Made Easy podcast.

I have properly set up and configured my sales funnels and email marketing software for email list building. So, I don’t have to do the manual work.

When people enter their email in the sign-up form of my landing page, they are automatically added to my email list in the email autoresponder software that I use.

Now I have their contact address, and I can contact them or followup whenever I wish.

It’s true, I work hard to maintain a healthy and engaged email list by educating them, entertaining them, and offering them useful pieces of advice to grow their business.

Although I treat my email list subscribers as real human friends, yet my email list is like my sales machine. If I need the traffic to my new blog post, YouTube video, or podcast episode, I would send an email to my email list subscribers, and boom…. I’ll get hundreds of readers, viewers, or listeners easily.

If I’m promoting an affiliate product, I can send an email from within my email marketing software and boom…. I’ll get a good number of sales within the first 24 hours of sending.

And this sales machine is so effective that during an affiliate promotion of a certain product, I recently got 46th rank in the global leaderboard of affiliates. Although not a huge deal, yet even being in the top 50 helps boost confidence a lot.

And the best part? My email list subscribers are the real people who follow me because they find my stuff valuable and now, I don’t even have to rely on Google, Facebook, YouTube or any other platform to access my audience.

Now, I have learned from mistakes and future proof my business from any algorithmic changes. But when I see other marketers making the same mistake, I feel very bad for them.

If you are making the same mistake, then you have got some homework here. You’ve to learn from my mistake and start collecting emails from your website visitors right now.

So here is the actionable step: Step #1: Visit LearnDigitalwithRahul.com/ConvertKit and Sign up for ConvertKit email marketing software. This is the same email autoresponder that I use for my email marketing automation.

By the way, if you use my link which is learndigitalwithrahul.com/convertkit, you can get 30-days of free-trial of ConvertKit, and that has become possible because I’m partnered with ConvertKit.

Step #2: Create an email sign-up form in ConvertKit and configure it to use on your blog. If you are using WordPress you can install their free plugin to display sign up forms on your blog.

However, if you are not using WordPress, you can copy and paste a few lines of script code.

Step #3: Create some freebies to offer your website visitors in exchange for their email. Be specific and create something that’s helpful and valuable for your audience, if they don’t find it valuable, why would they exchange their email for it?

Alright, now that you have your technical part ready, start sending visitors to your website, landing pages, or sales funnel. And that’s all you have to do, so you may keep your focus on bringing more traffic. Because the rest is done by the marketing automation you have already set up from step #1 to step #3.

By the way, a quick tip for you, when it comes to lead and conversions, landing pages or sales funnel tend to perform better than traditional web pages of websites or blogs. That’s why I prefer sending traffic to my sales funnels rather than traditional blog pages.

If you need more information about how I have created my sales funnels, I’ll leave a link to this and all other resources in the show notes below.

The show notes for this episode which happens to be the 2nd episode of Digital Marketing Made Easy podcast, can also be found on LearnDigitalwithRahul.com/002

So there you have it. You have got the idea of mistakes that every other online marketer is making, you have learned the takeaways from my mistakes, and you also have got your homework with the step by step action plan.

Now it’s time for action.

Well, that’s all for this episode. And before I sign off, time for the listener's shoutout.

Anup Pushpad says,

Rahul Bro is an awesome person, he helps me whenever it's needed, I appreciate his efforts which he is putting up in helping others.

What's the Biggest Marketing Mistake Every New Online Marketer is Making but You Shouldn't?

Well, thank you, Anup for kind words and appreciation. Your review and feedback mean a world for me.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode or you found any value out of this, be sure to take a screenshot and post it on Instagram tagging me @LearnDigitalwithRahul - I would love to reshare it and feature you on my profile.

Also, let me know your thoughts and suggestions about this podcast by rating and leaving an honest review on iTunes or other platforms wherever you are listening to it.

Your ratings and reviews will mean a world for me and in return, you’ll also get a listener shout out in my next episode or the next YouTube video.

With that being said, I’m Rahul signing off and I’ll talk to you in the next one, until then stay motivated, stay creative, and feel proud to be #DigitalLearner.