4 Marketing Practices that are Actually Detrimental to Businesses

When executed correctly, marketing techniques can help small businesses grow their brands, reach new leads, and generate more revenue. In general, the more a business invests in its marketing efforts, the higher returns it can expect to see. However, because digital marketing in particular is such a complex and quickly-evolving field, what produces results can change in a short period of time. In fact, some outdated and/or ill-founded marketing practices can actually prove detrimental to a company’s cause. With that in mind, today we’ll review four misguided marketing concepts that could cause more harm than good:

Black-Hat SEO

In the quest to optimize a website for performance on search engines, some companies simply go too far. Black-hat SEO involves a number of shady techniques meant to give a business website a boost by “gaming the system” as it currently exists. Black-hat SEO includes actions like keyword stuffing, link-building through unscrupulous channels, or creating invisible text. If your company is currently engaged in any of these practices, then you could face punishments from Google or other search engines as a result.

Plagiarism

Lots of companies produce similar pieces of content. However, there’s a massive difference between content that covers the same topic, and content that is exactly the same. Plagiarizing can be illegal if it infringes on an author’s intellectual property rights. What’s more, Google and other search engines look for plagiarized content and won’t hesitate to dock your SERP rankings accordingly.

Unneeded Rebrands

A rebrand can give a company a fresh start and enable greater customer outreach. Or, it can act to erode trust and diminish a company’s standing within an industry. A rebrand is a drastic step that can backfire tremendously under the wrong circumstances. Plus, rebrands can be extremely expensive! Before opting to redesign a logo, website, or marketing strategy, make sure to conduct plenty of customer research first. Thankfully, companies like Communications for Research can help you do so.

Spammy Email Campaigns

All exposure is good exposure, right? Wrong. The harsh truth is that companies that depend on email marketing to generate leads need to be very careful about how they craft email campaigns. Sending out lots of emails to consumers in a short period of time may annoy potential customers and force them to hit your address with a spam filter. When this happens over and over again, your spam score will rise and you’ll encounter serious difficulty connecting with leads through emails.

To conclude, investing in digital marketing efforts can lead to many positive returns –– provided your company manages to avoid these self-inflicted errors!

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.