We’ve all been there. You had such high hopes for a campaign. For weeks, you built your campaign from scratch. You had a theme, you created content, you built ads, landing pages, workflows, emails, and everything else.
And it failed.
That’s right. Your campaign crashed and burned. And now you’re in a meeting with your boss. She’s asking questions like, “What happened? How did you only get 15 leads out of the $15,000 you spent? And why did none of those leads turn into sales?!?”
Now you have to really analyze what happened. Why did your campaign fail and how can you avoid failure in the future?
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1. Campaigns for the sake of campaigns.
Too often, marketers run campaigns for the sake of running a campaign. Unfortunately, you can’t do something just so you can say you did it. This isn’t a strategy for long-term success.
Campaigns aren’t a one-off marketing effort.
Campaigns require extensive time, effort, and money. For instance, you need to identify a way your marketing can affect revenue, set definitive goals, and then build a campaign to accomplish those goals. Not only are you affecting revenue, but you’re more likely to show a positive ROI. And you’re not done yet.
In fact, that’s only the first part. For the entire length of a campaign, whether that be one month or one year, you need to pay attention to what’s happening. What are your analytics showing? Are you hitting your goals? Can you hit your goals? Do you need to make changes?
Blog: 5 Characteristics of Effective Marketing Campaigns
You, or someone on your staff, needs to keep an eye on your campaigns. That way, if changes need to be made, you can adjust your strategy to hit your goals.
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2. You don’t know your audience.
Before you start building and planning your campaign, you need to understand your audience. Try to answer some basic questions about them.
- What’s the average age?
- Are they predominantly male, female, or both?
- What do their media usage habits look like?
- What devices do they use?
Anecdotal evidence only tells you so much. In fact, you’re much more likely to get it wrong if you’re relying on your own assumptions to inform your campaign planning.
Blog: 3 Tips to Find Your Audience with EDA
By researching your audience, you can find out the information you need to make informed decisions in your campaign planning. This will help you find the best way to communicate and reach your audience.
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3. You went all in on a new marketing channel.
It’s fine to invest in a new marketing channel. At one point, banner ads, Facebook, and paid search were all new, and now, they’re each staples of digital advertising. But advertisers didn’t shift all their budget to something new at the snap of a finger.
Experimentation is an important part of scientific marketing, but that doesn’t mean you should invest everything before you know it works.
Blog: 3 Ways to Put a New Spin on “Old School” Marketing Channels
Before you invest your budget willy-nilly into new channels, look at your audience research. Their habits will tell you a lot about whether or not you will see success. If you think the channel has potential, try allocating a portion of your budget to test the waters.
Once you see how a channel performs, you can increase your allocations.
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4. You spread your budget too thin.
A big mistake that can ruin a campaign is to spread your budget too thin. Sure, there are a ton of awesome marketing channels you want to use. Facebook, YouTube, native advertising, and search engine marketing can be powerful tools to reach your audience, but if you’re only putting a small amount into each, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
That’s not to say you can’t see success with a small budget.
On the contrary, you can see amazing results with a small budget. The key is to invest an adequate amount in the resources most likely to help accomplish your goals. if you have a $500 budget, you probably shouldn’t invest in a bunch of channels. Instead, focusing on the best channels will increase your campaign ROI by maximizing results.
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5. You didn’t prepare for follow-up.
Executing a lead generating campaign sounds like a great idea, right? But if you’re not prepared for follow up, you’re flushing money down the drain.
Think about it like this: If you generate 1,000 leads for $1,000, you have a $1 cost-per-lead. That’s fantastic. However, a lead isn’t valuable in and of itself. Until those leads convert into sales, you’ve spent $1,000 without generating any revenue.
Blog: 4 Reasons Your Marketing Leads Are Terrible
No matter how you’re generating leads, you need to have a system in place to follow up. According to your campaign and the leads you’re generating, you may need to have sales reps who are assigned all incoming calls. On the other hand, you may need to have a process for distributing new lead information to the right sales rep.
Successful lead follow up can make or break a campaign.
At the end of the day, you’re still sitting in the office being grilled by your boss. You can’t really change that. However, now you’re identifying what went wrong and what you can do to improve your campaign strategy. Next time you decide to launch a campaign, you’ll be fully prepared to maximize your ROI.
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