Digital marketers will know just how much blood, sweat, and tears go into every campaign to have it deliver the results you want. But when those results turn out bleak, it can be extremely disheartening–not to mention wasteful company resources.
Perfection is often elusive and impossible to achieve when it comes to digital marketing. Sometimes, no matter how hard you work on a campaign, it turns out to be an unfortunate flop. However, should you pull the plug on the campaign entirely? How do you know if you need to start making changes to get the results you want?
Here are the signs that your digital marketing campaign isn’t working, and it’s time to ramp it up:
Low engagement
Engagement includes the number of likes, comments, mentions, retweets, and shares that you receive on a post. It is one of the best indicators of a digital marketing campaign’s success. So when your engagement is low, you can probably tell that your campaign is not heading in the right direction.
Should you panic right away? Not exactly. It can take some time before audiences naturally engage with your content, especially if you don’t pay for ads. The rise in engagement can be slow and understandably frustrating, but wait it out for a few more weeks. If, however, you go past the one-month point and see no increase in engagement, it may be time to call in a digital marketing agency for help.
There are a lot of reasons why your campaign is not getting enough engagement. Here are a few examples:
- Your content is uninteresting, unoriginal, or does not bring value to your audiences.
- You are posting at the wrong times.
- You’re not curating your post for every social media platform you use.
- Your content is being overshadowed by current events, competition, etc.
Few leads
One of the main goals of any digital marketing campaign is to generate new leads. Leads can lead to paying customers, which, of course, increases the business’ revenue. Hence, when the leads you’re getting are few and far between, it’s a clear sign that you’re doing something wrong.
But similar to engagement, don’t panic if it’s only been a few weeks. Customers tend to be elusive when a marketing campaign is new, especially if you are a relatively new business. But when it’s been three to four months since you launched your campaign and the number of leads see are still the same, that’s the time you should figure out what’s going on.
Wrong leads and target audience
You’re getting great engagement and a lot of leads–but it’s not from the people who are likely to do business with you. Most of the time, this happens when a company has no clearly defined target audience, has a poorly defined brand persona, or has a misalignment between marketing and sales. If your campaign is doing great in terms of metrics but not seeing nearly enough paying customers, your campaign strategy likely needs updating.
Excessive spending
No company wants to keep throwing money at a campaign that won’t fly. If you are already spending too much on your digital marketing campaign and not getting the results you want, it’s clear that something is amiss. Before the excessive spending starts to cause real damage to the business, it’s time to regroup and figure out what you’re doing wrong–or what you’re not doing enough of.
It can be difficult to figure out if and when you’re spending too much on a campaign. In this case, hire a marketing consultant who can tell you if you’re spending too much and what you can do to get a good ROI.
Vague objectives
When you start a marketing campaign, a set of objectives is the first thing you work on. However, if your objectives are unclear or vague, the success of your campaign may be affected.
For example, if one of your goals is to “increase traffic,” does that mean a 1% increase is good enough? Of course, not. Instead, set a specific goal that is measurable and attainable, like “increase website traffic in the next month by 10%”. Otherwise, you may not be able to measure your results accurately and move forward from there.
These goals can change as the campaign progresses, and you see what the initial response is like. Don’t set them in stone, as this can hinder your progress along the way.
Creating a successful digital marketing campaign is often a process of trial and error. That said, it can take some time before you see real results on your pages. But when you start noticing these signs, it’s time to update or maybe even redo your entire marketing plan.
