Why your digital marketing isn’t converting
Digital marketing is getting increasingly more competitive. Although I’d love to blame the agency world as a whole for this, it’s honestly because of how low-cost online advertisements have become, how narrow targeting can become, and how good social media platforms themselves (and others) have gotten at gaining a large audience.
Hopefully what you are going through isn’t a tragedy (we are sorry if it is), and is instead you researching ways to convert your digital marketing efforts at a higher percentage for future reasons. BUT, if you are going through a somewhat hard time and are looking for answers, hopefully this blog helps you understand a few areas that are common problems in the industry (from my experience), and helps you understand what can be done to fix them.
I’m not a fan of making people scan through a poorly written introduction to a blog post, because why waste your time when the good stuff is below, so let’s dive right in.
There are problems on your website:
Problems on my website? How does that relate to my digital marketing?
Well, it does, and happens very often. Depending on where you are advertising on the Internet, you are probably wanting people to visit your website to maybe learn more about who you are and your brand, purchase a product they saw an advertisement for or subscribe to your newsletter.
Let’s think about this in a different way: In this situation, you are the customer someone is advertising to. You are interested in a product you saw on your newsfeed on Facebook, and decide to click on the ad to get redirected to their website to purchase the product. After 6 seconds of waiting, the website has yet to load. So, you click the “x” in the top right corner and decide to click the ad one more time, thinking it’s just a bug, but the same thing happens again. Probably not going to buy from that brand, right?
#1 The page loads way too slowly
You could’ve probably guessed this would be first on the list based on the example above, but website performance is one of the most important things that you can control about your website that can affect decision making. If your website or the landing page that you created for a digital advertisement takes more than 2-3 seconds to load, people are going to either hit the back arrow in their browser or close out of your website.
So how do you make sure your page loads quickly? I, for one, recommend running the landing page URL or your main website URL through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool will give you a score based on how fast the page loads (0-100, with 100 being the best) and will give you suggestions on how to make the page load faster. For reference, we won’t make a website live or show/send a website to a client should the page speed score be under 75. Having 100 isn’t a necessity, but being above 90 is a good indicator that people won’t bounce from your website or landing page on website performance alone.
#2 UI/UX Problems
Another aspect of your website or landing page that can be fixed that directly affects the way potential customers make decisions is your user interface (UI) and your user experience (UX). UI/UX has become a bit of a buzzword over the last few years, so we will try to stay away from generalizing anything or going down that path, but all in all both UI and UX are really important aspects of an app, website, or web page.
You want actions on your website to be as simple as possible, with also being as descriptive as possible. Some common issues that we find during user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) reviews for clients are broken links, buttons that don’t work or don’t submit information, and the web page itself isn’t mobile-friendly. Some UI/UX problems are easy fixes, and some aren’t. Some require code, some don’t. It really depends on what is going on with your app/website/landing page, so if possible consult a professional in the industry to do a UI/UX review and price out fixes to those problems. It’s worth it.
Targeting Problems:
Targeting the right people is one of the most important things that goes into any digital marketing effort. What we don’t want to do when we launch digital advertisements is to try to target absolutely everyone we can. Because why?
I know it sounds like a good idea in theory, but you want your targeting to narrow down the pool of potential customers to as little of a number as possible. We don’t want to waste your budget on people that have no intention of ever buying something from you, whether that is because their interests don’t generally align with your product, or because they aren’t ready to purchase right here and right now.
#1 Not the audience you want to target
Like I said in the paragraph above, we don’t want to target people that are customers you don’t want. If running digital ads were free, delivering your campaign to the newsfeed of every person on Facebook might be beneficial. But, nothing’s free, and as I’m sure you know, digital marketing and marketing, in general, can be expensive.
So, how do you make sure you are getting the right audience to view your ads?
2 words, create personas. You should have 3-6 personas that were found during the discovery and research portion of your engagement with your marketing agency, digital marketing agency, or whatever agency they are. For us at Delini, we put all target customer information into an easy-to-read document called a strategy document.
In short, personas highlight customers that you think of when someone says “Describe 5 people that are your current customers.” We want to know the first name, what they do, what their pain points are, their age, where they went to school, their income, anything that can help us narrow the field. If you aren’t currently targeting people this in-depth, try to create a few personas and fix your targeting a tad on your ads. This might make your conversion rate better if there are no other underlying problems with the creative, copy, landing page, or way the ad is set-up on the ad platform itself.
#2 Target audience might be on another platform in higher numbers
Ever have that feeling when you are thinking about a word to use in a blog or in a text and the word is on the ‘tip of your tongue’ but you can’t figure out what it is? Us too, so let’s relate that back to your marketing and advertising. What if this is happening to your targeting?
For digital marketing, we have a good idea of how many of a certain type of people are being targeted with our ads. But, what if your target customer is in higher numbers on a different platform, or there is a different way to reach them? Depending on what type of business you are, your budget, and what you are trying to market, it might be wise to try another platform or advertising type to see if your target customer is there and converts better. Even though Facebook ads are great and a lot of people are on Facebook, it doesn’t mean your target audience is wanting to see your ad on Facebook or wants to engage with it.
It’s good practiceto try new things and for some businesses, this approach might make more sense. The digital marketing agency or marketing agency you are working with should figure out what each social media platform’s main audience demographic is. Other traditional types of marketing like print, television, billboards and radio are a little bit harder for agencies to narrow down the audience of, because it’s a little harder to tell who’s viewing what, but your agency should recommend placements based on the product/service you have to deliver your ads to the right people.
The Ad Itself:
#1 Creative and copy is not engaging
The creative world is full of many unknowns and random reasons why people don’t like things. Your marketing could be failing because your messaging is off, the platform you are trying to market on is one people aren’t fond of, people are tired of being spoon-fed ads one after the other.
Since ad platforms are starting to get more cluttered with placements of advertisements, and because we always want our own ads to be seen, it is crucial to stand out from the rest of the crowd. It is also very important to make sure your creative is clear, exported in a high-quality file format, and de-cluttered. MOST platforms have carousels, don’t be afraid to use them. You don’t have to pack all of your information into one tiny ad, split it up and make each part of the carousel creative and engaging.
The good thing is, you can always change your creative, your copy, the audience you want to target, and the platform in which your marketing efforts will be showcased. The bad thing? It’ll always be somewhat unknown.
#2 Offer hasn’t been changed or tested with new audiences
Along with changing up the creative and the copy on a per ad basis, don’t be afraid to try new things on the one ad you have going currently. Trying slightly different copy, different imagery, or different illustrations on the same target audience might give you insight into what that audience wants to see from you in the future. A/B/C/D/E test it.
The same goes for the opposite of the above situation. Don’t be afraid to try the same creative and copy and split it onto a completely new target audience that you found when you created personas a while ago. I can’t guarantee it’ll help or change your current situation, but it might change the way you think about the process of creating ads and placing them in front of people that want to see them.
Done worrying about everything that can affect the way your marketing efforts convert and want someone to do it for you? Weirdly enough, I think I know the perfect marketing agency for you. Let’s make something great together.
