6 reasons why your digital marketing campaigns fail

 We know the struggles of creating and launching a digital marketing strategy and, finally, when you have your digital marketing campaigns off the ground you run into issues. Your digital marketing campaigns are not showing a positive ROI and you are wondering what the problem could possibly be. Have no fear, we know a thing or two about digital marketing and are here to guide you.

Here are 6 reasons why your digital marketing campaigns are failing.

1. You never effectively researched and defined your buyer personas

Your buyer persona is your ideal customer profile that is backed by in-depth audience research, data analysis and customer interviews. A buyer persona covers all the essentials of your ideal customer from their life story, demographics, job titles, business challenges and overall goals. It provides you with a solid idea of who you are marketing to and helps to identify customers based on client and market data.

When you understand what kinds of prospects and leads are the best fit for your company to sell and market to then you are on to digital marketing gold. However, if your persona development process is incomplete or lacks real and comprehensive data, you could be targeting the wrong people with your digital marketing campaigns.

2. You did not utilise realistic metrics for measuring success

Be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) when setting your goals and success metrics for digital marketing campaigns. Your goals and metrics need to be realistic and attainable before you even consider launching a campaign. Think about what your goals are. Do you want increased brand awareness, more quality leads, or a higher conversion rate?

When you identify your key metrics, you can start constraining your goal by turning it into a SMART goal by making it specific, assigning a measurable factor and setting a realistic time frame to achieve it. This is a strong groundwork for a successful digital marketing campaign. If you have not followed this process, you may need to re-examine your goals and success metrics.

3. Your messaging is all wrong for your target audience

Your marketing message and therefore content need to be tailored to your audience’s needs and pain points. If you choose a content format or tone that does not appeal to your audience demographic, you could potentially be looking at the downfall of your digital marketing campaigns.

The buyer persona determines how you speak to your audience. Your content and messaging need to keep that persona in mind always.

4. Content was not delivered at the right time during the buyer’s journey

Time is of the essence in the world of digital marketing. Your campaign messaging and content needs to be tailored for every stage of the buyer’s journey and delivered to your prospects and leads at the right time. This means you need to dig deep into your analytics data and identify your customers’ buying behaviour and trends with you across all digital channels.

Once you have data and can assign prospects and leads to different stages of the buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration and decision stages), then you can serve them your content and messaging.

5. Your campaigns do not have breathing room

It can be stressful when you see no positive results from your marketing campaigns. But in the digital marketing space, patience is indeed a virtue and we know investing money into a failing digital marketing campaign is not on your to-do list.

However, simultaneously, you need to give your campaigns some time to succeed. The best approach to this is to set defined goals as we have mentioned and assign timelines to your campaigns prior to launching.

6. Marketing and sales teams are not aligned

What is the state of communications between your marketing and sales departments? If they do not communicate properly, then they probably lack an understanding of each other’s activities and responsibilities. If there is a gap between your marketing and sales, you are not focused on the same common goals within your business or organisation. This is where “smarketing” comes into the picture. The process of “smarketing” aligns sales and marketing teams around common goals with a focus on improving revenue.

By following through with our recommendations, you will soon see a turnaround in your digital marketing campaigns. These measures and suggestions help to set you up for digital marketing success rather than failure with in-depth research, specific goals and metrics, and tailored content that speaks to your target audience.

For more information and insights on digital marketing, download our Digital Marketing 101 Whitepaper below.