You woke up mid-scream, sweating and out of breath. Even as you look around your darkened room and hear the comforting hum of your furnace kick on, you’re still trying to figure out what’s going on –was that real?
In your mind, the images are fresh: flickering laptop screens where the images won’t fully load, visitors wandering on your website but never actually making a purchase and all around the corners of your field of vision, your logo hovers, in ever-so-slightly the wrong colors.
Did you just have a nightmare? Or are you living a nightmare of bad marketing?
We’re here to talk about the marketing mistakes that cause your company to feel like it’s existing in a nightmare, making you afraid to relax and going to sleep out of the question.
The Nightmare: Traffic That Goes Nowhere
Marketing strategies that prioritize an increase of traffic to your website through social media marketing or organic search are launched with good intentions.
It gets scary when visitors flood your website without a destination. They arrive, they wander, they disappear. It’s great to increase website traffic, but if your site isn’t designed to convert visitors into customers, it’s a wasted marketing effort to get them to your site.
You might think of this nightmare as a zombie situation; there are walkers wandering your site, hungry for something you have to offer, but they aren’t sure how to find it.
The Nightmare: A Slow-Loading Site
When was the last time you tested your site’s load speed? According to a 2025 Forbes report, visitors won’t wait more than two to three seconds for your site to load before they abandon it for one of your competitors.
Your site speed also affects your SEO ranking, so if your site has become sluggish with large image files or videos, you need to update it with a better design.
And yes, we’ve all grown a bit impatient. Life moves much faster now, and it’s possible that our nightmares even move faster. Our horror movie villains do, too. Can you imagine any of us becoming Michael Myers’ victim in 2026? We’d have left that slow-moving villain in the dust and found a more worthy opponent to chase us.
The Nightmare: Inconsistent, Unclear Branding
Did your logo just come to mind? That’s part of your branding, but there’s more to consider. What’s the tone and voice of your brand? And do you have a defined look for images and video?
When your brand is clearly defined, customers will recognize your social posts at a glance. But if your company has a history of being a bit loose with its color scheme or letting anyone post on the company Instagram account, this nightmare may be haunting you.
Think about Ghostface from the Scream movie franchise. What if, instead of that howling abyss of a mouth, the ghost sometimes had a bit of a concerned look or a grimace? It might be unsettling, but not terrifying. Ghostface knows the horror of a scream, and it’s his brand.
The Nightmare: Poorly Defined Targeting
Can you describe a member of your target audience, down to the clothes they might wear or the hobbies they pursue on the weekend? Could you give a specific buyer persona a name?
Often, if you’re not picturing a carefully defined, specific person when you’re creating content or crafting a post, you’re not defining your targeting. Companies that post for everyone connect with no one.
Your goal is engagement with potential customers, so when a member of your target audience reads a post, they should feel as if it’s speaking directly to them.
Imagine how hard it would be for one of those terrifying movie villains to frighten everyone at once. If Annabelle or Pennywise showed up at a college football game and tried to overtake the crowd, it would be over pretty fast. But when a creepy doll or a clown appears in a nearly empty house late at night, they’re defining the target.
The Nightmare: Missing CTAs
A common marketing mistake is failing to ask for the business. Including a call to action, or CTA, is an easy way to say, “Since you’re here, why not go for it?”
Adding a CTA is simply including a button or a link on your short-form video, blogs, social posts and email marketing that invites the audience to take the next step. It may not even be a sale; it could be subscribing to your YouTube channel or checking out your FAQs page.
When you create a point of contact with your audience, think about what you want them to do next. Maybe it’s going straight to your product page, but it may be something a bit more subtle.
Timing is important. After all, those horror movies wouldn’t be quite so horrific if the suspense weren’t drawn out for a good 50 minutes. There has to be some intrigue, then fear and finally absolute terror. Of course, it would be better if your audience never experienced fear or terror, but you get the picture. You want to keep the story going.
The Hero is Here
When you wake from a nightmare, it’s often because a spouse, roommate or sibling shook you awake, reminded you where you are and told you everything is okay. They may have even given you a hug (aww, sweet).
When it’s a marketing nightmare, SJC Marketing is here to help you get reality back on track and put those bad dreams away. You’re screaming, out of breath and kicking up a sweat, but SJC is here, ready to help you break free of the nightmare and invest in marketing that works. Contact us today and there will be nothing but sweet dreams tonight.