Why Your Digital Marketing is Failing: A Guide to Improving Performance

Why Your Digital Marketing is Failing: A Guide to Improving Performance

Digital marketing is the key to unlocking increased traffic, leads, and conversions. But, what happens when your digital marketing is failing or, as in the image above, doesn’t meet your expectations? Well, it’s time to reevaluate your strategy to find out what’s working and what opportunities you’re missing that keeps you from reaching your goals.

Einstein is credited with saying, “Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results” and that goes for marketing as well as everything else. If you keep doing the same things, you’ll likely get the same results. If you want to improve your market performance, you must identify the source activities leading to subpar performance then changing those activities to improve performance. Therefore, the first step to success involves an audit of your marketing strategy.

Here are some of the common issues that might help explain why your digital marketing is failing, so this is the place to start in your audit.

Why your digital marketing is failing

Are you focusing on the right personas?

Personas, or their earlier variant, target markets, represent those members of the population most likely to purchase your products. For instance, Rogaine, a hair treatment designed to help men suffering from baldness regrow their hair, focuses on a target market of men over about 45. Building that into the more nuanced persona results in additional information such as their lifestyle, communication channels favored, and other insights into what makes this market tick. No matter how hard you try or how much you spend, you’ll never see substantial sales from members of the population outside this target market/ persona.

Members of the population must have the following to be a part of your target market/persona:

  • Need
  • Money
  • Authority
  • Desire

Folks missing even one of these characteristics removes them from your market and no amount of marketing effort will change your outcome.

Many companies do a great job of converting visitors to customers but waste time, effort, and money reaching too many folks who lack one or more of the criteria necessary for making a purchase. That’s why traditional advertising, especially TV advertising, is so wasteful. Yes, you reach a ton of people, but only a small fraction of those who hear your message care about solving whatever problem you solve. To go back to our Rogaine example, women and men who have a full head of hair could care less about your product regardless of how well you craft your message.

Why Your Digital Marketing is Failing: A Guide to Improving PerformanceDemographics based on PageViews/ visit

Targeting campaigns so that they only reach the right people (or mostly reach your target audience/ persona) goes a long way to boosting the cost per acquisition rate. In the graphic above, taken from Google Analytics, we can see the distribution of visits based on age and gender (we have more information like this available). We could also draw inferences from other data in Google Analytics regarding which genders and ages contribute most to our sales and sales value/ conversion. Armed with this information, we make better decisions regarding our digital marketing strategy.

Digital marketing stands head and shoulders over traditional media in allowing the selective reach of those members fitting your target profile in terms of age, gender, geographic location, position, education, and even interests. A PPC agency helps determine the most fruitful targets for your advertising then helps craft a message designed to resonate with that group to drive visits to your website. In turn, this helps your budget work much harder to send success through the roof.

Are you easing the decision-making process?

It’s one thing to gain interest from a potential lead, but it counts for little if it doesn’t bring a sale.

Creating a sales funnel of emails and other marketing tools helps edge visitors towards a sale and vastly improves market performance. Using tools that capitalize on exit intent, remarketing to prior visitors in your digital marketing efforts, and reaching out to customers who abandoned their shopping carts takes prospects who already raised their hands to signify interest down the funnel, which is much easier and more effective than starting over from scratch with new prospects.

Why Your Digital Marketing is Failing: A Guide to Improving Performance

Adding a timed promotion or discount helps encourage prospects to buy. Some won’t, but you should find that a significant number make a purchase after a sustained outreach effort — something marketers call lead nurturing.

Are you where your market is?

The perfect content is only perfect if it shows up in the right places. On social media, for example, different audiences prefer different platforms, for instance, Instagram users tend to be younger, Pinterest users are more likely women, and LinkedIn attracts mostly white-collar workers.

Likewise, the ideas that work on some platforms might not work on others. Accepting where and when you share content results in far higher engagement levels. Conversely, if you spend time and money on creating TikToks to sell products aimed at retired users, you’ll find few takers since seniors are only a small percentage of TikTok users.

Similarly, share content when your target audience is likely checking platforms and that’s especially true for email marketing where the timing is critical to open rates. Sending email over the weekend, when few working folks check their work email means your email gets buried in the accumulation workers must sift through on Monday morning and open rates plummet.

Are you authentic?

Why Your Digital Marketing is Failing: A Guide to Improving Performance

Consumers are increasingly interested in the brand, which includes the people behind it. So, it’s vital that you create an authentic brand personality that resonates with your audience. For instance, eco-friendly packaging services are great for firms that want to promote their responsible habits, while grands like Disney create a personality emphasizing family fun. Likewise, supporting worthy causes or showing a sense of humor that matches the client’s has a big impact. Be sure to create consistency across the team too.

Don’t stop at the sale

When you complete make a sale, you may feel that your work is done. It isn’t. Retaining clients to increase their lifetime value to the brand takes the company to new heights in terms of market performance. Marketing to people who already love the brand is far more effective and cheaper than reaching new clients, studies suggest existing customers provide a 5X multiple over finding new customers.

People like to feel valued and as though they are a part of the brand movement. Ignore them at your peril.

Fixing issues uncovered when your digital marketing is failing

This post provides an overview of the most impactful factors to consider when your digital marketing is failing. Completing an audit of these factors using data provides insights into which of the factors contribute to your failed or lower performance. Once you know which factors offer the most potential for improving market performance, focus on ways to build out your strategy, update your tactics, and improve performance.

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Author: Angela Hausman, PhD

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