10 Ways Your Paid Marketing Campaign Can Go Wrong

Paid media campaigns are effective ways to stand out among thousands of other businesses on the Internet. A number of careful considerations should be taken into account in order for the campaign to go smoothly because there are lots of ways it can go horribly wrong and the money will be spent without the possibility of return. For example, the strategy may be flawed or marketing agencies oversell their talents to get clients but cannot deliver. In most cases, however, paid marketing campaigns fail because the business and the agency do not collaborate effectively.

In this article, we’ll bring you top ten ways a paid media campaign can go wrong, so you could prevent them from happening in your business.

1. Directing Visitors to Home Page Instead of Landing Page

Most paid marketing campaigns are concerned with sending the visitors to the landing page, which is a specific page on the website built solely for conversion purpose. Surely, the business needs the people to “land” there because that’s where they can start to generate leads and make a profit. However, some marketing campaigns send people to the home page, which is the starting page of the website that shows what the business is about. It is apparent that landing page is the right option to go, so make sure you direct the visitors to the right place.

2. Insufficient Investment

Marketing agencies sometimes propose to conduct a trial campaign to assess the effectiveness of the strategy and use a small budget. While this is completely okay, do not commit to a small budget for the main campaign, even though the trial was successful. An insufficient initial investment that transforms into the budget can really hold the campaign back and prevent it from getting more attention from the potential customers. According to a marketing analyst from an Australian writing service Aussiessay, marketing should always be viewed as an investment rather than as an expense because it is the business area that stimulates growth, which is to be achieved at all cost.

3. Starting Campaign without Clear Goal

Does “get more visitors” sound like a good goal for an online marketing campaign? Well, it does not, because it is murky, which means that the results will be murky as well. This means that neither agency nor the business will be able to measure the real effectiveness of the marketing campaign because even if the strategy brings just one new visitor to the website, it can be considered as successful. On the other hand, if you set the goal to bring 1000 new visitors within a month before starting the marketing campaign, it will be much easier to analyze the progress and adjust the actions. Here are some great goal-setting tipsfrom Buffer.

4. Misunderstood Messaging

In some cases, the paid marketing campaign can go horribly wrong if the marketers do not understand the essence of the client’s message. As the result, the message could use inappropriate phrases or sayings that may offend certain populations, which can be very bad for the company’s image. One of the most prominent misunderstood marketing messages was in the campaign of the Singapore e-commerce site SuperGurl. Instead of “Shop now” button, they decided to use “Rape Us Now” on the page showing the advert for the Black Friday sale. This fail has led to an avalanche of negative comments and the company had to issue an apology.

5. Failure to engage Multiple Channels

No agency can know for sure what niche will generate the best results for the business, so it is strongly recommended to try different channels and platforms before focusing on the best one. For example, if the agency focuses only on Facebook to bring more people to the landing page but the results are not satisfying, changing the platform or engaging a couple of new ones is the best idea. On the other hand, if only one channel is used all the time, the campaign is limited in the abilities to get new visitors.

6. Poor Quality of Images

If the marketing campaign uses images that look like they were designed and created in Photoshop by a student from a junior high, they will not contribute to the success. The high quality of imagery is an essential condition required for online marketing because they give the customer the first impression about the brand, which is very important. It is a good idea to hire a professional designer that can deliver good-looking and appealing imagery. The international freelance hiring platforms, such as Upwork, are a good place to find one.

7. Failing to test the imagery

Before using the images in the campaign, many advertising agencies recommend showing them to potential customers to see their reaction and define the best ones to use. Given that images are the first things that people see when they visit the website, it is very important to ensure that it contains the ones that the audience is gravitating toward. As the result, it would be possible to reveal what image style appeals the best to your target audience. Failing to do that in a paid marketing campaign will result in a poor conversion.

8. Failing to track Return on Investment

As strange as it sounds, thousands of professional marketers do not measure a lot of important factors that show the performance of the campaign, including Return on Investment (ROI). It can be very surprising since this task can be carried out by using simple tools like Google Analyticsand dedicating a couple of hours of time.

9. Confusing Tactics with Strategy

The strategy is defined as the plan for achieving the objective determined by the business. The tactics, on the other hand, comprises a number of specific methods for achieving the objective, such as Twitter Advertising, SEO, and PPC. Failing to define these two concepts appropriately is a very bad thing because it influences the results in a negative way.

10. Poor Optimization of Ads

The ads on the website should target a specific group of customers, so they should contain a particular content that is appealing to them. Also, the budget for such advertising should be appropriate because agencies may request a lot of money for them. Creating too generalized ads or expensive ads will ensure poor results and more spending.

Conclusion

Paid advertising campaign is a great way to differentiate your business from others, stand out, and get more customers but there are a lot of ways they could go wrong. Use this article to keep the mistakes away and learn from the experiences of others.