The Spookiest Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Happy Halloween! Whether you’re a fan of the spooky holiday or thrills and chills aren’t exactly your thing, there’s nothing truly scarier than marketing blunders that impact your brand’s reputation, identity, and success. 

While it’s true that we live in a fast-paced digital universe where trends seemingly change every moment and audiences are quick to move from one faux pas to another, people still notice mistakes – and they can spread like wildfire on social media. 

From polarizing content to more general spooks like ghosting your audience, we’ll go over the scariest marketing mistakes you can make for your brand. Let’s get started.

Creating Polarizing Content

Whether we want to admit it or not, we live in a polarized world and work in an environment where everything we post can quickly go viral through reshares and reposts. Many people are feeling frustrated and fired up about today’s issues – and who’s to blame them? With the upcoming election, people are particularly tense and more likely to be set off by content they see online.

While having an opinion on all the social, cultural, economic, and political things happening in our climate is natural and human, you should question whether your brand is in a position to take a side and potentially lose a huge chunk of its consumers. Ultimately, it’s up to you and your business whether to enter the arena and face the crowd, but keep in mind that doing so could bring short-term satisfaction at the cost of your brand’s long-term growth and success.

Ghosting Your Community

Many brands initially do a great job of building out and engaging with their community, only to disappear at critical moments of growth. What many marketers don’t realize is that maintaining engagement and excitement about your brand is a full-time job. Ghosting your audience at any point is a major marketing mistake you should try to avoid. Think about brands with great communities and how they communicate with this audience. When was the last time you got an email from them? When did they host a giveaway? When did they post on socials? Probably more recently than you think.

So how do you keep the momentum going? In addition to your go-to-market (GTM) plan, build out a go-to-community (GTC) plan for the entire year. Strategize on how to engage with your consumers at every point in their journey with your brand and especially focus on how to maintain those relationships to keep consumers coming back for more. At the start of each quarter, review your metrics to see how your strategy is playing out, and make adjustments where necessary. 

The bottom line? Don’t let your consumers forget about your brand. Find creative ways to stay relevant and continue building out your community.

Keeping the Lights Off

Many kids who are afraid of the dark are scared because they don’t know what’s lurking in the shadows. This is also a crucial mistake in marketing: keeping yourself in the dark by failing to track data and metrics to analyze if your strategy is working. If you don’t track it, how do you know if it’s working, or if it exists at all? 

At the start of the year, many brands detail their key performance indicators, only to forget about them in the coming months as things get busy and other parts of the business take priority. Keeping yourself in a world of data darkness can lead to missed opportunities to optimize campaigns, find new audiences, and ultimately grow your brand. 

Luckily, this is an easy mistake to avoid. With the amount of data tracking tools and platforms available, there’s no excuse not to consistently track your metrics and adjust your strategy as necessary.

Winging It

While there is a small chance that content you create spontaneously can go viral and change your life, it’s very unlikely. Study successful social media accounts and you’ll quickly see a trend – consistent posting, consistent identity, and consistent engagement. In one word: consistency. 

I know that creating a marketing content calendar upfront can seem like a lot of work and energy, but it’s one of the best ways to grow your account and build your brand’s community. When you start winging your content, you’re far less likely to post consistently – and the quality of your content may also be impacted. 

To avoid this marketing mistake, carve out time to strategize, create, and schedule content for the entire month. You can always supplement with an on-the-spot post, but at least you’ll have scheduled posts going out, keeping your brand on the minds of your consumers throughout the month. If you don’t have the time to manage and schedule a full content calendar, consider outsourcing. 

Conclusion

With spooky season coming to its grand finale on Halloween and creepy vibes swirling all around, as marketing professionals, we can probably agree that there’s nothing scarier than marketing mistakes that can be avoided. From avoiding extremely polarizing content to consistently posting and engaging with your community to tracking your data throughout the year, there are many things you can do to optimize your strategy and grow your brand’s presence intentionally and thoughtfully. Have a safe, happy Halloween filled with all treats (and no tricks!).