Overcoming Your Marketing Campaign Failures

Failure.

We’ve all experienced it. It can be discouraging when it keeps happening. This is especially true with your marketing: you invested a lot of time, effort, and money into researching, designing, and implementing what you believed to be a stellar marketing campaign. But, you come to find that you failed to reach whatever benchmark(s) you set. It’s even worse when you keep failing again...and again...and again….and again.

What can you do to turn things around?

Identify WHY Your Marketing Is Failing...

The first step in getting back on track is determining the reason or reasons why your marketing campaigns haven’t been successful. Here are some of the common reasons that campaigns fail:

• Your expectations were too high: You can’t expect to double the number of clients you have by the end of a single campaign. Set reasonable goals and benchmarks for the metrics that you’re measuring to determine whether or not your campaign was successful.
• You targeted the wrong audience: Your campaign may have been better suited towards a different industry vertical or towards an audience at a different point in the buying process.
• Your message was wrong: If the message you designed didn’t resonate with your audience, they’re likely not going to do what you wanted them to do. Maybe your call-to-action needed work, or you failed to explain the benefit of the offering that you were promoting in your campaign.
• Your design needs work: Your marketing materials could have been too bland, too busy, too wordy, or just plain ugly. Consider hiring a professional to help with the design of your campaign materials.
• Your budget was spread too thin: If you didn’t invest enough money into your campaign, it may have failed to live up to its potential.
• Your timing was off: You may have spaced out your campaign materials too far. Or, you could have rushed things in a way that made the recipient of your marketing materials feel as if you were bombarding them.
• You didn’t maintain your lists: If your list is filled with contacts that are no longer valid - your contact may have switched jobs, moved, or the company itself may have closed - the overall performance of your campaign is going to suffer.
• You failed to differentiate: You have to remember that your local competition has some of the same product and service offerings that you do, and are likely marketing them to your local area just like you are. If you don’t do enough to set yourself apart - and, above - them, recipients of your campaign materials may choose them over you if that recipient is on both of your lists.
• You need to rebrand: You may need to reevaluate the brand identity you have created through your marketing efforts and give it a facelift.
• You didn’t communicate frequently enough: For your marketing to be effective, you need to include multiple touches across multiple marketing communication methods. This includes email, social media, direct mail, your website, your blog, your newsletter, and maybe even a phone call. And, these touches need to continue as they move through the sales funnel. More often than not, the more touches that you include, the more successful your campaign will be.

Note that it may be any number of these reasons - even multiple - or, it may be something entirely different. It’s important to do your research and thoroughly evaluate all aspects of your campaign.

...And, Work To Make Things Better

A lot of marketing involves trial-and-error. And, what may work one day may not work the next. It’s important to be consistently evaluating your marketing efforts so that when things start not performing as well as they used to, you can make a change. You need to be diligent so that you can determine the areas that need improving. If you’re not sure, try A/B testing a couple of ideas to compare results. Or, have an outside party evaluate what you’re doing.

Also, don’t get discouraged. Not every marketing campaign that you run is going to be wildly successful. The big guys - Microsoft, Google, Apple - have all failed time and time again, and those businesses are doing pretty well for themselves. As have SMBs just like you: JoomConnect has failed to gain traction with some of our campaigns. But, we keep trying.

The important thing is to not give up marketing completely after multiple failed campaigns. It may seem easier to do that: you sunk all of that money into creating promotional content after all, and didn’t receive what you needed for that effort to seem like it was worth it. So, why bother spending that money on your marketing in the first place?

This mindset is an easy trap to fall into, but do your best to avoid it: sometimes, businesses just need time. They may not be ready to purchase from you now - they may not currently have the budget, don’t yet see the benefit of your service offering, or chose to go with one of your competitors instead. But, they might be ready for your offering in the future when things change. And, if you keep marketing to them, your company’s name should be fresh in their minds when they are ready and looking.

A Little Help Can Go A Long Way

JoomConnect can help turn your campaign luck around by designing your marketing campaign materials for you, and work with you to make a plan for continuous marketing throughout the year. Contact us today for help.