You’ve finally done it. You have countless pages, beautiful graphics, site copy to rival Emerson, and all you have to do now is click “Publish” and watch your leads, conversions, and sales come pouring in like a beautiful monsoon. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, you get a whole bunch of clicks; aimless clicks to various pieces of your site, with plenty of people viewing, but not buying. (You might make a sale as sort of a consolation prize.)
What happened? Chances are, something isn’t quite right about your campaign, and it’s often difficult to see where exactly things went wrong. Rather than staring blankly at empty order screens and rueing the day you were born, why not read on to learn about some of the most common reasons marketing campaigns fail, and what you can do to fix them for good!
1. Your traffic isn’t going to the right place
Good campaigns depend on a series of pages or content, known as a funnel, to catch site visitors and take them down a path towards conversion. A good funnel needs a wide “top” to draw people in, and a simple homepage usually doesn’t cut it. If your site traffic is being directed to generic pages from targeted ads, they have no reason to keep exploring.
That’s why customized pages for each source of traffic are necessary. Using similar language, featuring imagery or product listings seen in the original social media post or advertisement, and other demographic-specific content on your landing pages will work wonders for drawing people into your funnel.
2. There’s no follow-up
Interested people on your site may not buy right away. Sometimes it takes a little extra encouragement, time to think, or a sweetening of the deal, for them to add something to their cart and check out. If you’re not capturing this rather large chunk of users who don’t make a purchase right away, you’re missing out on a great deal of potential conversions that aren’t very difficult to pick up.
Getting someone’s email address isn’t terribly difficult; offer a discount, access to hidden products, or even a free sample in exchange for a visitor’s email. After a few days, if your visitor hasn’t made a purchase, send them a gentle reminder and something for them to read. It can be a blog post, some information about your company, or a simple greeting. You’ll be capitalizing on the effect constant exposure has on our brains, making a brand seem more familiar and a product more enticing than when it’s first looked at. Chances are, you’ll see people in your email list return to your site and pick something up.
3. Campaigns don’t have the right level of urgency
Urgency in marketing is a touchy subject. Nobody likes feeling pressured into anything, and websites attempting to follow the used car salesman model see little success because visitors feel no guilt in clicking away from a page with an antagonizing sales model. At the same time, however, a site that appears static in its offerings doesn’t entice anyone to make a purchase then or the next day, so they might leave and forget all about your products, never to visit your page again.
A healthy balance of urgency is, therefore, a fundamental component of any marketing campaign. It’s achieved through the use of reasonable, albeit impending deadlines, such as the end of a sale in a week or a few days, limited-time products, or offers specific to the user, like birthday coupons or individual sales for groups like new and returning customers.
4. Funnels may become disconnected
One of the most frustrating things that can happen to an otherwise flawless campaign is a breakdown in the way it is executed over various services. Many people run their email campaigns on services specific to email, their site on a service specific to web hosting, and their online store on a platform only used for e-commerce. This method works if all of these services are operating in unison, but disaster can strike at any time due to miscommunication, an oversight, or a broken API.
In these situations, you’re ultimately the glue that is holding your campaign together. You’re forced to consider not only the myriad aspects of running a successful campaign, which is a lot on your plate to begin with, but also making sure that you take all the necessary steps yourself to ensure the right emails are being sent and your online store accepts the coupons you’ve offered. It’s not difficult to see where something might go wrong.
At Genesis Digital, we spent years struggling with the double-edged sword of running a campaign and making sure it doesn’t break at the same time. And, to be perfectly honest, we got sick of it. That’s why we developed Kartra, a synthesis of our marketing knowledge and powerful software to make everything happen under one roof. With Kartra, you get two things: Ready-to-roll marketing funnels that are proven to work, and a robust system for collecting data and running your campaign without the need for multiple different services. It’s the best of both worlds; campaigns that convert and the infrastructure to support them in one place.
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