6 Clear Signs Your Marketing Strategy is Not Working

25% of small businesses don’t know how to market their business, many are trying things, but recognize their marketing strategy is not working, understand what the signs are.

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According to a study done by SearchEngineJournal, 50% of small businesses don’t even know how or where to begin marketing their businesses.

Unfortunately, this often leads to businesses going down a path where their marketing strategy is not working.

To set your business ahead of its competition, you need to tell a unique story. Successful marketing isn’t about throwing money at random ad methods — it’s about sharing the reason for your company. It has to be done in a way that helps to bring humanity to your brand and is a thing that will resonate with your potential prospects. This storytelling is essential, but sometimes your chosen strategy might not be working.

Fortunately, you can always pivot your campaign and reconnect with your clients. If you feel like your marketing strategy is not working or helping you achieve your business goals, then it’s a good time to invest in a completely new design. But how do you tell that your chosen strategy no longer works?

This article highlights the common traits that indicate when a marketing strategy is not working.

1. Low Engagements

Engagements like comments, shares, and other reactions on your social media platforms mean that your ad reaches the targeted prospects, and they see it. If the number of engagement is high on every post you share, it’s a clear indication that customers like your products and that your marketing strategy is interesting to them.

However, if the engagements you receive on the business posts you make on social media platforms are low, your chosen strategy is not just working. Taking social media courses to learn about the areas you should work on to boost your engagements can help you improve this. Once you notice low engagements after taking the lessons, you should act fast and change your strategy to other forms of marketing like word of mouth, partner marketing, and paid advertising, as social media marketing could simply not work for you.

2. Failure to Reach Targets

Every marketing campaign has a goal to achieve within a specified time. For example, your business might aim to receive a certain number of customers from your marketing strategy and conversions over six months. If the set goal is not met after the period, you can improve some strategy features. However, if this does not work even after extending the time frame and adding some features, that’s a clear warning sign. Therefore, you need to change your strategy and consider investing in a new one.

3. You are Losing Customers to Cheaper Alternatives

One of the best signs that your marketing strategy is not effective is the loss of customers. When your customers shift as soon as they realize cheaper products in the market, you are not doing a good job marketing the value of products. You can sometimes attribute this to poor-quality brands, but if you are confident that you have superior products, which explains the higher costs, it’s a warning sign that your strategy is not working well.

4. You are Not Attracting Traffic

Your business may not be losing clients, but if it’s not driving more traffic, it shows you may have a bad marketing strategy. If your chosen strategy is not getting new traffic, then what’s the point? This could be because your strategy is not communicating the value of your brand in a manner that your potential prospects will understand, or your target customers don’t even know about you. Do more research to better interact with your customers to position your strategy better or invest in a different strategy.

5. You Have a High Bounce Rate

When people see your ads on your chosen marketing channel, they should be tempted to click on them. It could be a video, a poster, an image, or a link to your website. If the clients exit your site without further interacting with it, that’s considered a bounce. A high bounce rate shows a problem with your marketing strategy. 

Chances are the site took too long to load or what they found isn’t what they expected. You should address this issue by changing the display message to match the target website but if people keep bouncing off, consider using a new strategy to market your brand.

6. Low ROI (Return on Investments)

Marketing is about driving sales and having a marketing strategy means that you have invested in it to get high returns in terms of conversions. If the return on investment from your marketing campaign keeps falling short of the set target, that’s a warning sign. It shows that you have been investing in the wrong strategy and should completely change to a strategy with a higher return on investments.

Conclusion

If your marketing strategy is not working to help you achieve the set goals, then you have the power to act fast and change it. Take the above symptoms, flip them around to make them positive, and you will have your first set of marketing goals to help you achieve.