When it comes to launching a marketing campaign there’s no feeling quite like hitting the “go” button and then seeing fireworks, receiving the endless supply of rants and raves from customers, and watching your creative and copy go viral as calls and sales flood your business.
But what if none of that happens?
What if instead of seeing fireworks you hear crickets?
Or instead of an endless supply of rants and raves from customers you get silence.
Or instead of watching what you thought was going to be a successful campaign go viral, you barely even see a bump in your calls or website traffic.
Time for a Marketing Meltdown?
No!
Time to take a step back, analyze, understand what went wrong, and take back what’s yours! (Or what’s about to be yours very soon)
After analyzing and reviewing countless marketing campaigns I’ve found that the answer almost always (like 99% of the time) hides in one (or more) of the following 7 issues.
So if you’ve just run a less than stellar campaign, or you want to make sure to give your next one the highest likelihood of success, you’ll want to review, familiarize, study, and maybe even commit to memory the top 7 reasons most marketing campaigns fail to deliver.
7 Reasons Your Marketing Strategy Is Failing
1) You don’t truly understand your customers
This is the first and most fatal of all marketing flaws. A failure to fully understand your customers means your offer, message, media choice, hook, promotion… everything! Is likely to fall flat.
The better you know and understand your customer the better your business (and marketing) will be.
The best way to do this is to develop a customer avatar which will enable you to put yourself in your customers shoes, see how they think, feel, and act, and design your marketing accordingly.
Marketing wins not when your customer understands you, but when you customer feels understood by you.
2) Your strategy isn’t really a strategy at all
If you’ve clearly identified your customers and their wants, needs, fears, and desires and are still coming up short in the results department, it’s time to take another look at your “strategy”.
First, many “strategies” aren’t really strategies at all but are actually tools to help deliver the overall strategy (cough… social media).
So you need to take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes (ie are you using content marketing, relationship marketing, influencer outreach, word of mouth marketing, etc)
Next, how did you arrive at this strategy? (also known as “why are you doing that?”)
- Did you read about it in a blog (if you read it on this blog you’re safe)
- Was it suggested by a friend?
- Or was it based on solid facts about your business, message, and customers
The best strategies are ones that align with your business, vision, promise, product or service, and most importantly, your customers.
3) You didn’t give it enough time
Depending on what kind of marketing campaign you’re running it could take a bit of time before the results start showing up.
Search engine optimization can sometimes take 3-6 months for results to appear.
Content marketing can take 6-12 months to build up a large enough digital asset base.
And brand perception or repositioning campaigns may take years to change a customers views and opinions about a particular business or company.
This is why it’s important to first identify your strategy in order to determine the best campaign for your goals and objectives.
Need a short hit of cash?
Then you’ll likely want to dive straight into direct marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) online ads like Facebook or Google Adwords.
Have a little more time on your hands?
Then invest in content marketing to create a digital asset that will serve your business for years to come.
Or… do both! (Which you should really do)
The key is to be aware that different marketing tactics take different amounts of time.
4) You didn’t give it enough resources
When it comes to running an effective marketing campaign there is a point of “minimum viable investment” that you must reach if you hope to achieve any measurable form of results.
There is a point you need to reach for your campaign to be effective. (And the amount varies widely based on strategies, markets, and industries)
What this means is that depending on the platform, tactic, or strategy you use you’re going to need to invest at least a certain amount of time and money in order for it to work.
As an example, creating a single piece of content one afternoon and calling it content marketing simply isn’t going to work.
You need to feed the beast.
You can of course start small, but if this is the case you need to be aware that it’s going to take longer – sometimes a lot longer – to see results.
Like with all areas of business you need to be willing to commit.
5) You’re not trimming the fat
If you’ve ever run a marketing campaign before than you know that some ads and campaigns are simply going to perform better than others.
Whether we’re talking about completely different media (ie TV vs Google Adwords) or even different ads within the same campaign (ie different Facebook Ad images or messages selling the same product/service) there are winners, and there are losers.
And when this happens, you need to stand up and defend your marketing budget against the poor performing ads (losers) that are costing you money and not doing what they’re supposed to.
This in turn will allow you to funnel the budget towards the higher performing ads which means the same budget will get you a much better result and higher return on investment (ROI).
So if your marketing campaign is currently failing stop and take a look at what other campaigns you’ve run – benchmark their success – and redirect your resources accordingly.
6) You’re “stuck” in the past
There’s nothing worse than doing something simply because “it’s how it’s always been done”.
When your marketing is providing the results you were hoping for you need to get rid of anything that isn’t working and that you can’t justify or remember the strategy behind why you’re using it.
“Why” is the most important question you should ask about your marketing.
- Why are we doing that?
- Why aren’t we doing that?
- Why are using this?
- Why aren’t we using that?
Marketing needs to be accountable if you want to grow your business and “why” is the tool that will help make that happen.
7) You’re spread way too thin
If you’re not “trimming the fat” like we talked about in point #5 then you’re also likely to be spread way too thin.
This leads to dabbling in a bunch of different strategies and never committing to really mastering and investing in the 1 or 2 key tactics that will really help take your business to the next level.
This also means you automatically fall victim to point #4 because you’re simply unable to invest a sufficient amount of resources into what’s really working when 10 different tools are getting 10% of the budget each.
The key here is to double down on the 1 or 2 strategies that are most aligned with your business and are providing the best results.
Work on maximizing them before moving on and adding another piece to the puzzle and you’ll always have a solid and effective foundation to build on.
BONUS) You’re stuck in forest
Sometimes when you’re deeply involved in your business and dealing with the day-to-day fires, emergencies, and business of “getting stuff done” it can be hard to step back and look objectively at your marketing.
Also known as… not being able to see the forest for the trees.
If you’ve reached this stage the solution is likely not for you to be doing any more marketing, but time to get an outside option.
Whether it’s a colleague in a different business or industry, a trusted advisor, or a marketing consultant – getting an unbiased, objective, and 3rd party view of your marketing can make all the difference in the world.
Summary:
So there we have it, 7 reasons your marketing strategy is failing – and how to fix it so you can get back on track to building a better, more profitable, and more enjoyable business!
