How to Know When to Kill a Digital Marketing Campaign

How to Know When to Kill a Digital Marketing Campaign

Or, at least, they think they know who their customers are. Research is a critical part of marketing, from the individual buyer personas to the market research necessary to know whether your campaign message and channels are appropriate. It’s important to track the right metrics for individual campaigns and make sure you’ve got realistic goals in place. There’s already been plenty of research into the best times to send emails. (Neils analytics – new and returning visitors on blog posts) This report in your analytics can yield useful information such as: The quality of your content The effectiveness of top-of-funnel content to acquire new customers The “stickiness” of content that keeps visitors coming back Track these metrics regularly to review the ongoing popularity and effectiveness of your content efforts. Cost per visitor (CPV) and revenue per visitor (RPV) These metrics offer broad measurement tools to help you calculate whether a particular marketing channel or campaign is bringing you profit. Individual conversions A key metric to monitor within your analytics is the individual conversions that take place. (Neil’s analytics – custom goals/events) Cost per conversion (CPC) There’s a cost to everything you do, both in acquiring and maintaining customer relationships. This is the metric. What do you use an indicator that it’s time to shut down a digital marketing campaign?

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Brands have never had so many options for digital marketing.

While it’s great to have such freedom when connecting with an audience, it can also create a few problems.

If you try to cover every channel, you could overload yourself.

Take into account traditional marketing methods along with digital:

  • SEO
  • Email
  • PPC
  • Social ads
  • Organic social
  • Content marketing
  • Influencer marketing

And that’s just off the top of my head.

The wheel of digital marketing is spinning pretty fast.

digitalmarketing

It’s easy to see how the abundance of opportunities could overwhelm even savvy marketers. The more you do, the more likely you are to create campaigns that don’t deliver the desired results.

You might even create a few that outright tank.

You’ll need to shut down those campaigns and reign in your efforts before your marketing spend gets out of hand.

Where campaigns can go wrong

Putting together a winning marketing campaign is a challenge — there are a lot of components involved. Getting it to work as part of your overall digital marketing strategy takes even more work.

Small mistakes, oversights, and omissions can dramatically hinder the performance and lead generation of campaigns.

What may have sounded great getting bounced around during ideation can perform miserably once executed.

Check out some of the most common causes of campaigns that go sideways — or that never quite gain enough speed to leave the runway.

Not targeting the right people

Marketers generally know who their customers are.

Or, at least, they think they know who their customers are.

buyer personas demographics 2

Anyone can develop a buyer persona based on assumptions. However, if those personas aren’t backed up by real data, you run the risk of targeting the wrong people.

You have to know who you’re targeting, the sweet-spot that gets them to convert and whether or not they’re the right customers for your business.

What kind of data do you need?

  • Customer challenges
  • Behavior patterns
  • Goals
  • Motivational data
  • Pain points

Demographics — including education, income, and employment — are just as important.

buyer personas demographics

Try to market to the wrong people, or to everyone, and you’ll have a tough time hitting those campaign goals.

Incomplete research

Marketers are a creative bunch.

When we hit on (what we think is) a terrific idea, sometimes we run with it full-tilt.

Unfortunately, that can mean research gets neglected.

Research is a critical part of marketing, from the individual buyer personas to the market research necessary to know whether your campaign message and channels are appropriate.

It’s incredibly easy to miss your mark – and even enrage your audience – when research isn’t completed. Just look at the popular slip McDonald’s made.

The company ran with a #McDStories hashtag on its official Twitter handle.

mcdtweet

But if the company took the time to understand its place in the market, it would know that people don’t eat McDonald’s for its fresh and wholesome ingredients. They eat it because it’s convenient and cheap.

So, the web took the hashtag and ran with it – but not the way McDonald’s had planned.

mcdstory

Wrong (or unrealistic) success metrics

If the right metrics aren’t aligned with your campaigns you could be misled by the data.

There are a lot of indicators of success when it comes to digital marketing, such as:

  • Boosts in brand recognition
  • Elevated sales
  • Improved conversions
  • More customer engagement

Just to name a few. There are a lot more for each marketing channel and individual campaign.

Email marketing alone has a laundry list of trackable metrics.

success metric email

Pick the wrong metrics, and it’s easy to chase the rabbit down the wrong hole.

Consider this: If you’re running a campaign that is dumping gobs of traffic into your funnel, you might feel like all that visibility for your site indicates a win.

But if conversation rates plummet, you could be losing more than you gain, even with more customers.

It’s important to track the right metrics for individual campaigns and make sure you’ve got realistic goals in place.

You got the message wrong

The success of your campaign depends largely on how your audience receives your message.

That can be scary if you don’t carefully craft the message of your campaign.

Have you ever upset a coworker, friend, or family member after sending an email or text message that got misinterpreted? Picture that snafu as it plays out across a wider audience of thousands.

That’s what happened with Huggies when it didn’t consider the angles on one of its campaigns.

huggies dads

Huggies had to pull an ad after stay-at-home dads got upset over the brand’s “dad test” campaign and the way in which it depicted dads as poor caregivers.

According to Adweek, client rep Joey Mooring says the intention was not to poke fun at dads, “but only feature real dads, with their own babies in real-life situations, putting our Huggies diapers and baby wipes to the test. We have learned that our intended message did not come through, and we have made changes.”

So, the company changed over to the “easy chair” campaign, which showed babies napping quietly in their dads’ laps in recliners.

huggies easy chair

It’s hard to recover from the wrong messaging though, especially when you upset your audience.

If you don’t have access to consumer panel testing for your marketing campaigns, then research is your next best choice to get your message on point.

Wrong content for that stage of the buyer’s journey

Content marketing is a powerful method for generating leads, building relationships, and growing your business in the digital space.

As long as you do it right.

You could be producing the best content in your market space, but if it lacks direction and is served at the wrong stage of the buyer journey, then you’ll struggle to reach your goals.

Directionless content does little to help your business.

Blog posts, white papers, and videos created without purpose or a call to action to move the customer forward provide little more than a takeaway for the customer.

directionless content

Truly effective content, served at the right stage in the funnel, serves to solve pain points for your audience.

It maps their path to a solution.

It nurtures them through every phase of the buyer’s journey as they progress through your marketing or sales funnel.

hs buyers journey

Poor timing

The web might be churning 24/7, but that doesn’t mean your customers are always attentive.

There’s already been plenty of research into the best times to send emails.

best time email

And even the best times to send a Tweet or post to Facebook for maximum engagement.

Buffer social media science study US popular times to tweet 639x800

It’s not just about when they’re watching,…

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