5 REASONS WHY YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGN FAILED
It can be really disheartening when a marketing campaign that you worked so hard on falls short of your expectations. Failure is inevitable and is something that all of us have to experience from time to time, but what’s important is how you respond to failure. With a failed marketing campaign, it’s important to take a step back and re-evaluate the campaign from an objective point of view, and ask yourself ‘what went wrong?’ in order to effectively move forward, and improve upon your mistakes for next time.
We’ve experienced our fair share of failed marketing campaigns and have put our heads together to pick out five common reasons why sometimes a campaign just isn’t successful.
1 .THE RESEARCH WAS LACKING
Creativity is crucial for a successful marketing campaign, but so is sufficient research. Without decent research to back up the creative concept, any campaign you produce will feel flimsy and its impact will be limited. You need to do thorough research into consumer trends, your target market, market trends, and identify a gap in the market that you can successfully fill.
Once you have this information, you can go on to create marketing campaigns that utilise what you found. This way, you’re showing that you can provide a solution to an issue, that your company aligns with your target market’s values, that you understand your audience, and more.
2. IT MISUNDERSTOOD ITS AUDIENCE
Misunderstanding your audience is one of the biggest mistakes you can make with a marketing campaign. It results in messaging that is way off the mark and will have little impact upon your target market simply because it won’t resonate with them.
This is a mistake that ties in with our first point. Often misunderstanding your audience comes down to insufficient research into who they are and what their values are. If you think that this may have been your downfall, start again by thoroughly researching who it is that you’re selling to, and building your campaign around what you find.
Take the 2017 Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner as an example. The brand woefully misunderstood their audience, and as a result the advert faced severe backlash and was ultimately pulled from all outlets. Even big brands get it wrong sometimes.
3. IT LACKED A PERSONAL TOUCH
Consumers like to know that there are real people working behind a company, and that they really believe in what they’re promoting. If your marketing campaign feels more automated than personal, it’s likely to generate less interest.
Adding a personal touch to your campaign can make it stand out from the crowd, and it’s the companies that stand out that are often the most memorable. Email marketing is a great example of this. How often do you receive a branded email that’s impersonal and generic? Chances are almost every day. Taking the time to make small changes such as adding a contact’s name to the copy or coming up with an engaging subject line can have a surprising impact on how many people open the email.
4. IT DIDN’T RUN FOR LONG ENOUGH
Marketing campaigns need time to be effective, so in order to generate real results they need to be running for more than a handful of weeks. Take SEO as an example. This is often a big part of marketing campaigns, and it can take months before you see any progress.
Mini goals and milestones need to be integrated into a campaign’s timeline ahead of its launch, as this means that not only do you ensure that the campaign will run for enough time to be effective, but that as a company you don’t become disheartened when progress isn’t as rapid as you might have hoped. These small goals and milestones will help you stay motivated and confident that the campaign is heading in the right direction, while you wait for the bigger payoff at the end of its run.
5. THE CALL TO ACTION WAS WEAK
One of the key components of a marketing campaign is a call to action, and if yours is weak or unclear, then the return on the campaign will be as well. Think of a call to action as an invitation for potential customers; if your campaign is missing a clear call to action, consumers won’t know what to do next and your rate of conversion of viewers to customers will be low.
By establishing a clear call to action that serves your company’s need – whether that’s suggesting they sign up to your newsletter, that they contact you regarding a specific service, or that they visit your website and browse your products – you’re likely to see results from your marketing campaign.
There might not be a cookie-cutter strategy for success when it comes to marketing, but keeping in mind what not to do can be incredibly useful for avoiding unnecessary failures in the future; understanding the common pitfalls for marketing campaigns will help you to avoid making the same mistakes yourself. Should you find yourself wondering what went wrong with a campaign, take a look at this list, critically review your campaign and its execution, and – most importantly – learn from any missteps. As clichéd as it might sound, failure is how we improve.
If you’re looking help with upcoming digital marketing campaigns, we’d love to hear from you! Follow this link to start a conversation today.
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