It’s nearly always about the basics
What I’ve learned talking to 15,000 business owners
I’ve advised business owners on their digital marketing for 16 years, assisted close to 2,000 businesses across four countries, and talked with well over 15,000 business owners. You could say I’ve picked up a few things. If you asked me to tell you why a digital marketing campaign will succeed or fail, I don’t dwell on the technical – it’s not down to how the campaign is set up, the keywords, the brand or the landing page. What really matters is :
- The business owner’s understanding
- The strategy
- The measurement
So what can you do right now to make sure your next digital marketing efforts pay off?
Get clued-up on how digital marketing works
This is the single biggest factor in the success or failure of your digital marketing. That doesn’t mean you need to learn how to code, create a Facebook ad or run a campaign. It’s about getting a big-picture view of how the campaign is going to affect your business’s marketing and sales pipeline, and what else needs to happen to turn the flow of leads into paying customers.
It’s also crucial to have a realistic expectation of when this will happen and be able to judge if the campaign is on track. I’ve seen business owners, for example, expecting to see a certain result, and bailing out of a campaign while the pipeline is still building. That means lots of wasted money, effort and potential leads.
Invest in sound strategy
Marketing strategy that delivers on your business goals is critical. It gives you the roadmap to understanding how the marketing will play out, and offers you a long-term, sustainable path to success. Without one, you’ll be wasting money on advertising campaigns that go nowhere – or are growing your business in the wrong ways. A good strategy will dig into who you’re targeting, how to reach them, what messaging will influence them, and what will make them part with their hard-earned dollars. Even if you have the best product on the market, you still need to work out a strategy before you put any money into advertising.
Get clear on what you’re going to measure
Measurement isn’t just about giving you confidence in your marketing strategy, it also tells you where you can improve it. Going digital has made marketing more transparent than ever. Getting measurement right starts with understanding your marketing and sales funnels, so you know what success looks like at each point. Get the tools necessary to measure, and once your campaign starts, measure the time data.
When the results start flowing in, you’ll very quickly see what parts of your marketing are working and where the weak points are. That means you can try new things, tweak campaigns, and put more money behind the parts that are going well. Without this measurement, you’ll be leaving money on the table.
Let’s say you invest $1500/month into a Google ad campaign, and you measure the clicks on the ads and your revenue growth. That’s a good start, but there are many other points along the way that are still unclear – and that’s the information you need to bring the money in.
A few years ago, one client’s Google Ad campaign was performing brilliantly, but month after month, they weren’t seeing any increase in turnover. Something wasn’t connecting. With better measurement, we could see that the campaign was generating 271 phone calls a month – an outstanding result. The same tracking also showed the company only answered 11 of them. Without that information, the client wouldn’t have known what part in the process needed fixing – and they’d still be losing hundreds of warm leads.
Get the basics right
To make your digital marketing dollar go as far as it can, you have to get the basics right. Yes, the technical side of things is important, but it won’t work unless you gain an overall understanding of how digital marketing will affect your business. Then you know that your digital marketing strategy will be delivering on your business goals – and you’ll be able to see if it’s working with measurement tools that are looking at the right metrics. It’s about getting the groundwork sorted first, so you can build a digital marketing system that deliver the results you’re expecting – and more.
Need help with your digital marketing? Talk to the experts at Unleashing Potential today.
