It can be hard to recognise when your marketing efforts are missing the mark, especially when you’re spending hours a day staring at your work. Being able to step back and assess the success of your marketing is key to ensuring you’re on the right track.
But how can you tell if your marketing is soaring or sinking?
In this blog post, we’ve pulled together 8 red flags that indicate if your marketing is in need of a revamp. If you’re identifying with many of these, then it’s time to make a change!
1. Your social media metrics are flopping
Keeping a finger on the pulse of your social media metrics gives you a clear picture of how well your socials are performing, and how well they’re performing will show you how well they’re resonating with your audience.
Unlike other areas in your marketing strategy, social media provides a direct channel for your customers and target audience to engage with you – through likes, comments and shares. The benefit of this is that you can analyse how well your content is landing, and work from there. The likes and comments are rolling in? Fantastic – you’re nailing it! But if they’re dwindling, and it feels like you’re just shouting into a void, then it’s time for a revamp.
Many businesses make the same mistakes such as joining every platform, posting inconsistently, and falling short on engagement. By half-heartedly using social media, you’ll never get the results you need, nor will your followers stick around.
2. You’ve not updated your marketing strategy in years
Times change and you need to change with it! If you haven’t updated your marketing strategy in years, it’s a glaring red flag that your efforts are likely outdated and ineffective. The marketing world evolves rapidly, with new platforms, technologies, and consumer behaviours emerging constantly. Think about other things that evolve – fashion, interior design, entertainment – what worked five years ago might be obsolete now. The problem with using an outdated strategy is that it’s potentially causing you to miss out on reaching your target audience effectively.
To stay competitive and relevant, it’s crucial to regularly review and refresh your marketing approach, ensuring it aligns with the latest industry standards and consumer expectations.
3. You’re being unfollowed or unsubscribed to
Have you noticed a trend in your follower count or number of subscribers going down? This decline often signals that your content is not resonating with your followers or providing the value they seek.
Consistent losses in your followers or subscriber base suggest that your messaging and strategy are out of sync with what your audience wants, making it crucial to re-evaluate and update your approach. Perhaps the content is repetitive, irrelevant, or overly promotional – these are the common mistakes! By refreshing your email and social content strategy to be more engaging, personalised, and aligned with your audience’s preferences, you can reignite their interest and loyalty. Soon, those numbers will be going back up.
4. You’ve not been considering mobile users
The stats don’t lie! 41.9% of people read emails on their mobile (according to TechReport) and over 80% of people use their mobiles for social media (according to QuayClick). So, if you’re not optimising your content for mobile users – as well as desktop and tablet users – you’ll be isolating a huge portion of your audience, and giving them a bad experience with your brand.
In today’s mobile-first world, ensuring that your marketing materials are accessible and appealing on all devices is essential. Updating your strategy to prioritise mobile users can enhance engagement, improve user satisfaction, and boost your overall marketing effectiveness.
5. You’re struggling to measure results
Effective marketing requires clear, quantifiable metrics to assess the success of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions. If you’re finding it difficult to track key performance indicators or understand the impact of your efforts, it likely means your strategy lacks the necessary tools or frameworks for proper analysis.
If you don’t know how your marketing is performing, you cannot improve on it. Similarly, if you can’t clearly see which content is performing well, you can’t replicate it and utilise that knowledge. By updating your strategy to include robust analytics and reporting mechanisms, you can gain valuable insights, optimise your campaigns, and achieve better outcomes.
6. Low ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is a way of measuring whether the money you’re putting into your marketing is creating revenue. So, the higher your ROI, the better. Therefore, a low ROI is a big red flag for marketing, as it’s a clear sign that something isn’t right.
Low ROI could be due to targeting the wrong audience, using outdated tactics, or not effectively using the right channels. It wastes your budget and slows down your growth – so the sooner you revamp your marketing efforts and improve it, the better.
7. Your website is outdated
When a potential customer is looking to find out more about your business, the first thing they’ll do is research you online. Here, they’ll be directed to your website. If that website is out of date with old messaging, old solutions, and a clunky, hard to use interface, the customer is likely to be driven away.
Businesses should be updating their websites regularly – with up-to-date information, solutions, blog posts, correct links, photographs etc. The goal is for your website to represent your brand, your ethos, your values, and your messaging perfectly. If yours doesn’t do that, it’s time for a change.
A test: show your website to someone who has no idea what your business is, and ask them to explain to you what you do and what impression the site gives. This will give you an inside scoop into how other people view your brand.
8. Traffic with no conversion
So, people are clicking on your website but no one is making any purchases. Something is wrong.
In this case, the red flag is showing you that your marketing is not converting. Sure, it’s sending your customers to the right places (a good CTA will do that), but it’s not convincing people to press the ‘buy’ button. This could be due to a number of reason – such as lack of information, not addressing the pain points, or simply a messy website – but the key is to recognise the issue and do something about it. Like…a revamp!
Go from sinking to soaring, with Octima.
We know a red flag when we see one, which is why we’re passionate about working with business to eliminate anything that’s getting in the way of the success of their marketing. Whether it’s low ROI, outdated information, or lack of analytics, we are here to help.
We pride ourselves on becoming one of the team with our clients and working harmoniously with them to achieve their goals, it’s all part of the Octima way. If you’re in need of a helping hand, get in touch and we’ll guide you on your journey.