5 Signs You Need to Improve Your Digital Marketing Campaign

U.S. businesses spend about 10 percent of their annual revenues on digital marketing. To put this into perspective, if your small business made $1 million in 2020, you’ll probably spend about $100,000 on digital marketing campaigns in 2021.

This isn’t some change. You’re spending big on digital marketing, and you expect to reap big rewards from your campaigns.

While internet marketing is known to be a low-cost, high-return strategy, it can be unsettling if you aren’t seeing the results you were expecting. The good news is with digital marketing it’s easy to tell when things aren’t shaping up and make changes as needed.

In this article, we’re sharing telltale signs your digital marketing campaign isn’t working and it’s high time you tweaked things around.

Read on!

1. Sales Numbers Are Not Trending Upwards

Let’s start with the obvious suspect.

The primary objective behind any marketing campaign is to increase sales. Whether you’re marketing on social media, search engines, email, or any other digital platform, at the end of the day you want your sales to increase.

So, if your sales are still flat after running a digital marketing campaign for more than a week, it’s clear something isn’t working as it is supposed to.

While stagnant sales will be an obvious indicator, a lot can be lost when sales are trending upwards. You might think that your campaign is delivering the results if your sales numbers are increasing. But what if they aren’t increasing at the correct rate?

When you start running an internet marketing campaign, you’ll have certain benchmarks. For example, you could expect $10,000 in sales for every $1,000 you spend on internet marketing (10X ROI). Keep in mind that this is for illustration purposes.

If you see that your sales aren’t catching up with your digital market spending, that’s another sign your campaign isn’t working effectively. It’s definitely working, but not at optimal performance.

Another sales-related indicator of an ineffective marketing campaign is when sales start accelerating at the expected rate for a while, only to taper off and stagnate. In such a situation, it’s clear that the strategy was working – until it didn’t!

Digital marketing is a fast-changing world. What works today might not work tomorrow. This is probably why a campaign can deliver the right results this week, only to falter in the next week.

2. Website Traffic Is Increasing But Sales Aren’t

Website traffic is a key performance indicator in most digital marketing campaigns, particularly those that heavily rely on SEO and SEM. (Search engine optimization and search engine marketing).

If you’re running an SEO campaign, you expect your website’s search engine rankings to climb. This will result in increased traffic. An SMM tactic like pay-per-click advertising should deliver almost instant traffic to your site.

The first scenario is your website traffic will increase as expected. But if the traffic isn’t resulting in more sales, the conclusion is the conversion rate is poor. The online marketing campaign isn’t great either.

The second scenario is when website traffic stays flat. You don’t need to be a digital marketing specialist to tell that the strategy you’re using isn’t working.

And if you’re a novice, you shouldn’t be deploying this strategy on your own. You need to outsource the job to the experts, like these here: https://direction.com/seo-san-jose-ca/.

3. No Upward Movement in Search Engine Rank

Your website’s search engine ranking isn’t going to move overnight. It can take several weeks or months before there’s some movement.

As such, consider this sign if you’re running a long-term SEO campaign (at least 6 months). However, if this period lapses and your website is still buried in the second page of search engine results, that SEO strategy needs an overhaul.

Sometimes your website’s search engine rank could even get worse. Perhaps you were ranked near-bottom on the first page but you’ve now slipped to the second page. When this happens, either your competitors have upped their SEO game while you’re doing nothing, or you’re using a strategy (possibly black hat SEO) that’s working against you.

4. Little to No Engagement on Social Media

Social media marketing is a key part of any digital marketing campaign.

The primary goal of SMM is to fire up engagement and widen the brand’s following and presence on social media.

It’s easy to tell whether your social media marketing strategy is doing well or failing. Is your page gaining more followers? Are there more comments and likes on your posts?

If the answer is “no” to either or both questions, it’s time to start auditing the social media component of your digital marketing campaign. Perhaps you’re posting content that doesn’t resonate with your target audience, or you’re targeting the wrong audience in the first place. Or maybe you’re focusing on the wrong social media channels.

5. You’re Not Sure Whether You’re Monitoring the Right Performance Metrics

The ability to monitor the performance of internet marketing campaigns is what gives digital channels an edge over traditional channels. However, performance monitoring is a science on its own. If you don’t know what to watch, it’s possible to miss the key details.

If you don’t know the performance metrics to monitor or you’re unable to interpret what they mean, that’s a sign your campaign isn’t properly designed. This is probably because you’ve taken the DIY approach, instead of letting experts do the job.

Keep an Eye on Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Digital marketing is a cost-effective and efficient way to promote your business or personal brand. However, it’s not foolproof. Digital marketing campaigns don’t always deliver positive results.

Knowing when a campaign isn’t performing can make the difference between marketing failure and success. If you’re seeing any of these telltale signs, your campaign probably needs an audit.