Did you know the average American spends between 5 and 6 hours on their smartphone each day? Some of this time is spent doing work, but the bulk of it is spent on the internet.

With this in mind, your company can't afford to pass up on the chance to do digital marketing. Marketing businesses online has become more important than ever before for companies throughout the country and the world.

Your company needs to scrape together an online marketing budget and begin running online marketing campaigns. But you'll also need to avoid making any errors with online marketing campaigns.

Here are eight of the biggest errors companies sometimes make and what you can do to avoid them.

1. Failing to Set Goals

What is going to be the goal of an online marketing campaign you're putting together? That's the question you'll need to answer before doing anything else.

Do you want to attempt to improve your sales? Bring in more traffic to your website? Build up your brand recognition?

It doesn't matter what your actual goals are. What matters is that you write them down and set them in stone. It'll be the only surefire way to tell whether or not an online marketing campaign was a success when it's over.

2. Neglecting to Target a Specific Audience

There are billions of people who use the internet all across the globe these days. Which ones do you want to target?

Far too often, companies will say, "We want to target them all!" This would be great if you were able to come up with an online marketing campaign that could accomplish this goal. But even the best campaign in the world is only going to reach a very, very, very tiny fraction of the global population.

Because of this, you'll be better off targeting a specific audience with an online marketing campaign. You'll have a better chance of reaching this audience when you know who it consists of and where they're hanging out online.

3. Forgetting to Create a Definitive Plan

The beautiful thing about launching an online marketing campaign is that it can be almost anything you want it to be. There aren't any hard and fast rules about what you can and can't do when creating a campaign for the internet (within reason, of course!).

You'll be able to let your imagination run wild. But you'll also want to kick around a bunch of ideas and then pick one that you like the most.

By doing this, you'll be able to come up with a definitive plan for how you're going to try to target your preferred audience and reach the goals you've set.

4. Losing Track of an Online Marketing Budget

As we alluded to back at the beginning, you'll need to put an online marketing budget in place prior to launching a campaign. You'll also need to make it your mission to stick to this budget throughout your entire campaign.

An online marketing campaign isn't going to feel like a success, even if it was, if you broke the bank on it. You'll wish you had been a little more frugal during your campaign when this ends up being the case.

5. Using Weak Display Advertising

The display advertising you use to try to target your audience should be on point. It should capture people's attention right away and motivate them to want to know more about your company and the products and/or services you sell.

This blog offers some solid tips on display advertising and other online marketing strategies.

6. Directing People to an Outdated Website

Just before you launch an online marketing campaign, you should take a good, long look at your website and see if it needs to be updated. If it has seen better days, it'd be worth having it redesigned so that your online ads send people to a website you're proud of.

Your company's website will be one of your best digital marketing tools, so you should make it a point to update it all the time. You might also want to use search engine optimization to make your site more Google-friendly.

7. Struggling to Keep Up With Emails, Phone Calls, Etc.

In a perfect world, your online marketing campaign will work, and your company will start getting a whole bunch of calls, emails, direct messages, and other forms of communication from interested customers. You'll need to prepare for this onslaught of communication as best you can.

The last thing you want to do is have people demanding to know more about your company and you not have enough resources to get back to them. It could cost you dearly in the end.

8. Rushing Through the Online Marketing Process

The internet moves at the speed of light nowadays. But that doesn't mean your online marketing campaigns should move this quickly.

Take your time when you launch an online marketing campaign and let it play out for as long as you planned. Even if it's not as successful as you might have hoped right away, there is a chance it'll start to gain momentum over time.

One of the biggest errors with online marketing campaigns you can make is cutting a campaign short when it was just starting to generate some buzz. It'll make you wish you had taken a deep breath and allowed your campaign to keep going.

Don't Make These Errors With Online Marketing Campaigns

A successful online marketing campaign can work wonders for your business. It can put your company on the map and drive up interest in your products and/or services.

But if you make any of the errors with online marketing campaigns listed here, you could end up shooting yourself in the foot. You'll waste time and money and wonder what could have been once your campaign ends.

Get more marketing tips and tricks by checking out some of our other blog articles.