3 clues that your marketing strategy is failing

We’re going to let you in on a secret: marketing doesn’t always work. The important thing is to recognise when a marketing strategy is failing and refocus your efforts before they are wasted. So how do you spot when things have gone wrong and, critically, how do you get them back on track?

Here are three clues that you need to rethink your marketing strategy:

1. You’re not meeting your marketing strategy objectives

Setting objectives is an important part of creating a marketing strategy. It will help you determine your success. But if your objectives are getting left behind you have to ask whether you have set the right ones?

Your marketing strategy’s objectives should be closely aligned with those in your business plan, they must be measurable and, most importantly, they must be realistic.

All too often small businesses embark on marketing activities without a clear plan of how they will measure and record their success.

The objectives you should be considering have to be specific, for example:

• Growing your newsletter subscription by 100 people a month
• Getting 1k more page views on your website compared to this time last year
• Increasing engagement on your social media channels to double impressions in the next quarter
• Generating 10 new leads a month.

All of these marketing outcomes will have an impact on sales. You may even want to quantify that in your targets so you can see the return on your investment.

Know what success looks like to you and set realistic objectives that can be achieved within a marketing strategy.

2. You’re attracting the wrong audience

If you’re getting engagement through your online marketing activities but it’s not driving sales then you may be attracting the wrong audience.

Google Analytics, Google Search Console and social media insights can give you useful information about who is interacting with your website and profiles based on their demographics. If these people don’t match your customer personas then it’s time to rethink your marketing strategy.

3. Your customers tell you

Your customers could be giving you important feedback that your marketing is not hitting the mark. Listen to them. It may be that the story you are telling with your marketing strategy isn’t relatable or you are using terminology than they don’t understand. Being authentic with your marketing is the key to success.

Ask your customers for their feedback before you start a marketing campaign. This will help you create a message that resonates with them. You’ll also save yourself time and money.

If you need help to meet your marketing objectives get in touch. Amplify PR is a Southampton-based PR and content marketing agency that helps clients put together marketing strategies that support their business success.