Why Marketing Campaigns Fail & Where Most Agencies Fall Short
Marketing is the heart of your organization. A healthy heartbeat is slow, steady, and it never stops. Hiring a marketing agency that understands the pulse of your business can give you the chance to achieve sustainable growth and increase your bottom line.
There are many reasons why marketers fail to give clients a positive ROI. Things are often overlooked, ignored, or put off until it’s too late.
Here are some of the most common reasons marketing campaigns fail:
The rules are always changing, yet there are things that marketers should absolutely always do and some things they definitely should not do.
Read on if you’ve ever asked “What do digital marketing agencies do?” and for an insider’s view of why marketing campaigns fail and how to choose the right digital marketing agency.
Let’s get to it!
We’re sure you’ve heard the saying, “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” That is certainly the case with marketing.
Most of us can’t afford abject failure when it comes to marketing. That’s why successful agencies plan, plan, and plan again. Without extensive research, it’s near impossible to set primary and secondary goals.
Great marketing strategies don’t happen overnight. Real success is a result of making a plan and executing it. Too many agencies launch marketing campaigns without a thorough understanding of the market their clients are in. Without proper market research, you’ll be guessing who your potential customers are.
Another essential part of planning is to create a robust timeline. It needs to be flexible enough to make instant changes if you need to go another direction. Fine-tuning your plan and making adjustments is an ongoing process.
Hiring a marketing agency that does in-depth research and planning will help solidify your position. Understanding your audience and the when, where, and how to engage them will produce results. And a good marketer knows how to make offers your customers can’t refuse. Turning prospects into repeat customers creates high-value relationships with sustainability and potential to grow your audience even further.
If you’ve ever been to the doctor’s office, you have probably experienced the frustration of a slow, inefficient process. How many hours of your life have you spent in the waiting room compared to the time you spent in the examination room?
As the old joke goes, “The doctor’s office had me make an appointment six weeks in advance. During the examination, they asked, ‘Why did you wait so long to see us?’”
A healthy business relationship is just like any other relationship. It’s built on trust and respect. You shouldn’t have to wait forever to get a response from your point of contact. When you’re considering how to choose the right marketing agency, look for agencies with a dedicated rep that is available to address your concerns and answer your questions.
Ineffective communication is another problem with bad marketers. Misunderstanding and miscommunication creates confusion, affects morale, and creates conflict.
It’s hard to build a successful business. If it was easy, everyone would do it. But wouldn’t you rather spend a few years building something that can last a lifetime rather than make a quick buck? Of course you would.
Don’t expect a huge spike in traffic at the beginning of a new campaign. If you’re hiring digital marketing help and someone promises you the moon, run for the hills. That’s not how digital marketing works.
This is an unrealistic goal unless you are a large company with a large pool of resources. Spikes are also unsustainable. Building growth that can be further built upon in the long run allows your company to adjust and improve with the customer. Keeping attention and retaining clients over time will produce more equity for your business than a single day with a traffic bump.
Effective digital marketing agencies focus on the long game. It’s all about making a series of smaller bets until you can find a consistent strategy.
One of the most difficult parts of an agency’s job is communicating results to clients.
Lame agencies love automated reports because it saves them time. But most of the time, all you get is a generic, default report that takes five minutes to generate. It’s not quite that easy.
These are often called “vanity metrics.” Vanity metrics can be impressive, but they don’t tell the whole story. Personalized reporting is different because it ties in with your bottom line. This type of analytical approach involves looking at your situation from all angles. Hiring a digital marketing agency that can connect the dots and turn data into actionable insights is the ROI proof you need. It shows that the agency understands your goals and how to reach them through digital marketing. It’s your business and their expertise, working together.
How do digital marketing agencies work without strong leadership? Not well.
Effective agency leadership is the key to fending off complacency and building high-performance teams. It’s at the core of every winning team. Better leaders inspire and mobilize their employees to do the best they can. Hands-off bosses usually let the staff handle your account.
They may even outsource the work to independent contractors with little expertise. They are essentially giving up control of the project, which can lead to poor results. Ineffective agency leaders may get away with this kind of behavior for a while but eventually it becomes obvious that something is going on. Understanding how your account will be handled is a key factor in choosing a digital marketing agency that will work for you.
The way some agencies run their operations can be detrimental to your business. HR is closely tied to management and plays a big role in company culture. Unhappy, underpaid, unmotivated workers are unproductive.
Limited resources mean lower quality if a company attempts to operate beyond the scale. It indicates that management doesn’t have the skills needed to properly allocate resources.
If human resources are mismanaged, a decline in productivity is sure to follow. When you hire a digital marketing agency, pay attention to how they treat their employees.
At the end of the day, results are the most important thing. A less-than-stellar digital marketing agency might just slap a theme on your website, generate a high volume of low-quality content, and hope for the best.
This kind of strategy is asking for failure.
Any worthwhile agency should give you a positive ROI. A holistic approach aligns with your business plan. Look for this when you’re choosing the right marketing agency because it’s the best way to nurture relationships with your customers and maintain visibility.
Some marketers rely on sneaky tactics to give you a false sense of security. Don’t be fooled by confusing jargon and vanity metrics. They should be able to summarize a basic strategy and communicate expectations in a clear and concise way.
Lack of accountability is another red flag. Sometimes we don’t always accomplish our goals. It may be because they were unrealistic in the first place. Some signs of a lack of accountability include:
As we come to a close, we’d like to thank you for stopping by. There’s an ocean of opportunities for businesses online, regardless of your situation.
We’re not going to lie: it isn’t easy and the water is full of sharks, but we can help you navigate your way toward your marketing goals.
Parting is such sweet sorrow. But it doesn’t have to end here. Now that you’ve learned a bit about how to choose a digital marketing agency by knowing what to look for, we want to share more about how digital marketing works. If you are ready to hire a creative digital marketing agency with wisdom, heart, and brains, we’d love to connect.
