6 Marketing Nightmares (And How to Avoid Them)

It’s nearly Halloween, so we’re setting the stage for some major chills in the form of marketing and PR nightmares. Warning: They could happen to you if you’re not properly prepared (cue the lightning flashes and creepy Vincent Price laugh).

Seriously, there are many marketing and PR ghost stories to tell—some based on our own experience, and some merely heard around the campfire. We’re sharing these tales and their respective fixes so you can best avoid these scares!

Enter at your own risk… if you dare.

Your Content Budget Got Slashed

We’re all in tough times, but how can marketers get leads for Sales if they have nothing to lure them with? The good news is that there are multiple ways to repurpose the great content you’ve already developed so that it can come back to life in other forms.

Gremlins Have Infested Your Social Pages

We’ve all seen them—grim reapers who want to air a grievance on a company’s social profile. Don’t ignore them, as it shows a lack of responsiveness, and, like Gremlins, DO NOT feed them by engaging in public discourse. Instead, courteously acknowledge their dissatisfaction in a posted reply and offer to discuss it further by DM or offline. Always remember that customer satisfaction wins!

Children of the Copyright Appear

You created a blog or social post, and you want to grab a cool image to use with it. But beware of just cutting and pasting an image you found via a Google search. It could be copyrighted, even when it doesn’t appear so, and you could be met with angry photographers or artists coming in from the cornfields. This is why it’s best to set up a paid account at places like Shutterstock to license images or rely on legit free sites such as Pexels.

Your New Campaign Bites

Hours went into planning, content is ready… and then even the werewolves’ howls are drowned out by chirping crickets. If things aren’t working, do not stay the course. Do NOT go down the stairs into that unlit cellar—instead, pivot to a different approach. This is why it’s a good idea to have performance benchmarks at various intervals, not just at the end of a campaign. Also, pre-testing certain tactics (think A/B testing for email campaigns) can help you learn in advance which variations have potential and which are likely to go full Zombie so that you can avoid the curse of poor performance.

Your Website is Being Ghosted

If it seems that a haunted house would be getting more traffic, it might be time to look into why your site isn’t attracting visitors, and why those that do land there run away screaming within a few clicks. Does it need SEO, better search keywords, or more valuable content to drive traffic? Better navigation, faster load speeds, or easier-to-digest copy? A website performance audit can be the first step in exorcising your demons.

The Apocalypse Occurs

Unexpected events can come in multiple scary shapes, from abrupt C-level resignations to employee layoffs to social media blunders. Savvy companies have a crisis communications plan ready for that moment when they find out the company headquarters is built on an old graveyard—and so should you.

We’ve had our spooky fun here, but hopefully, we’ve also given some tips to help you avoid being the next hapless victim of a marketing initiative gone wrong. Happy Halloween to all!