New products in every category are launching every day. This means new marketing campaigns are created to go with them. With the abundance of marketing plans and strategies, some are bound to underperform. There are a lot of reasons that these marketing plans can fail, regardless of the sheer number of competitors out there. If you’re at a loss about your underperforming digital marketing, consider these points. 

Why your Marketing is ineffective

  • You have set the wrong target audience for your product. 
    • Problem: Target audience identification is one of the most important first steps in creating a marketing plan. Market research is often conducted to focus in on a specific audience for a product. While this research can be very effective, it isn’t always perfect. Each market research method can yield very different results, so it’s a good idea to conduct multiple in order to see if there is any overlap in target audience.  
    • How to fix it: If you believe your target audience is incorrect, consider retargeting towards another group. This could have a huge effect on the performance of your digital marketing campaign and is a good learning experience for future situations. If retargeting doesn’t work, look at which market research methods you haven’t used yet and try them out. 
  • You are getting website traffic but no purchases due to internal errors. 
    • Problem: Depending on what product you are marketing, gaining website traffic can be considered a success. But if your product involves leading customers to a website to purchase something and they aren’t purchasing it, that is a problem. These missed sales opportunities can be due to many factors including incorrect target audience, bad copy on the website, and inconsistent messaging.  
    • How to fix it: As mentioned above, target audiences can be identified by conducting market research. The copy on a website is also very important because it will push customers away if it is bad. It is important to have effective copy because that is the first thing that a potential buyer sees. You want to leave a good impression. Inconsistent messaging can also be a big problem but can be fixed by evaluating each place that your messaging comes from. Customers don’t want to be confused and it’ll make you look bad if you are conveying inconsistent things in different places. Choose one voice and write your copy from that voice as to stay on the same page.  

More insight

  • You are marketing in the wrong ways for your target audience.  
    • Problem: Let’s say you’ve finally got your target audience down and you’re sure of it. You roll out your latest campaign to the masses, but your target audience isn’t engaging at all. What did you do wrong? You may be using the wrong methods to market towards your key audience. Not all audiences use every social media platform or every media tool. This is one of the most frustrating parts of underperforming digital marketing.
    • How to fix it: This problem reiterates the point that it is very important to do in-depth market research. And, take the results into consideration before choosing a specific marketing approach. If your target is 60-70 year old men, you may not want to invest time and money into creating an Instagram campaign. Know your audience and play to their preferences and your campaigns will do better. 
  • You’ve set your expectations unrealistically high. 
    • Problem: It is understandable that you will always want the most success for your business and marketing campaigns, but accurately setting your expectations is important. For a small business, it wouldn’t be the best idea to start a new marketing campaign and expect it to make $1 million dollars. If it doesn’t hit that goal, you will be disappointed. This can be alleviated by setting realistic expectations for your marketing campaigns.  
    • How to fix it: In order to lower potential frustration and disappointment, it may be better to set low expectations near the beginning of a marketing campaign. Marketing isn’t always something that will blow up overnight, it’s a waiting game. Time and resources will be more effectively invested if expectations are set realistically.     

Digital marketing improvements 

Marketing can be a tricky thing to master, but practice makes perfect. With these tips, you’ll be able to create marketing campaigns that will meet your expectations and perform well. Underperforming digital marketing will soon be a thing of the past for your company. Frustration will be lowered as you begin to see results slowly but surely and you’ll know that you’ve got it right this time. If you’re still struggling, we can help! Contact us for a no-obligation consultation.