In today’s hyper-competitive online arena, having a solid marketing strategy is critical for businesses to succeed. Marketing is complex, and with what seems like endless strategies to reach out to your target market, it can be difficult to know how to truly resonate with your target audience.
Here are some tell-tale signs to look out for to avoid outdated marketing strategies.
1) You Focus on Clicks Instead of Conversion Rates
It’s no secret that lead generation is vital to the success of any business. Clicks are easy to measure, but if you’re not looking at conversion rates, you can't tell if your strategy is actually working or not.
Often, it’s a struggle to know whether your website is sending the right message to your target audience. You might have a good conversion rate, but you might find that your message isn’t reaching your target audience as often as it could. You can have the best message in the world, but if it’s not reaching your target, then it’s not doing you any good.
Focus on those that actually convert and learn from them to make adjustments to website messaging. You’ll be able to distill if the messaging is what’s missing the mark or if you’re just not reaching enough people. Keeping an eye on clicks is fine, but they don’t tell you as much about what’s working or not working on your website.
2) Your Email Campaigns Are Templated
If you’re struggling to find time to create marketing materials to reach your target market, then you might be tempted to use templates for channels such as email.
While templates can be a good place to start, if you’re not adding in your own unique content, you’re not going to connect with your audience. Templates can come across as unauthentic and can cause you to actually lose your audience’s attention.
It might sound counterintuitive but when you’re behind on marketing AND need to see improved results, you have to invest more energy into your content. Use templates or pre-built workflows to scale but don’t lose sight of branding and your brand’s authentic voice.
3) Your Graphics and Photos Are Outdated/Inauthentic
Images, graphics, and videos are content too, and making sure they are relevant to your audience and authentic is just as important as the previous two points. It might not seem like a big deal but using the stock photo you found on the first page of iStock can actually lead to poor results. Seeing a lack of thoughtful or totally relevant content will turn visitors off and while this doesn’t mean you have to spend thousands of dollars on a professional photo shoot, it at least means you need to audit your visual content.
We often see that imagery chosen for the first iteration of a website that never got replaced falls into the category or we see imagery used that’s too representative of the product when in fact we can now show the product being used. It’s very easy for this content to get overlooked and forgotten so have a quick look at your website to see what you find.
4) You Don't Update Your Events Listings
In today’s connected world, people have an abundance of social media platforms at their fingertips. More business owners than ever before are choosing to use social media to promote their businesses.
That’s great, but don’t forget to update your event listings to make sure that you’re still reaching out to your target market. Events like trade shows and conferences are still a great way to impact your target market.
This is an example of having no content might be better than having old content. When your audience sees a wasteland of old events that occurred years ago, they’re likely to start to develop negative thoughts about the company or brand. Declutter old events, update links and do general housekeeping when it comes to your online presence on other platforms to maintain a sense of cohesion and thoughtfulness around your brand.
5) You Aren't Utilizing Your Website Traffic Data
This is one of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy. The data that you collect from the traffic on your website is an indicator of what is working and what isn’t.
If you take the time to examine your website analytics, you can start to track trends and find opportunities but without it, you’re flying blind. Don’t worry about industry standards when you start tracking, just focus on setting your own benchmarks based on the data you have and improving on them going forward.
Can’t easily access or don’t collect this traffic data? Then it’s time to prioritize pulling reports on a regular basis or installing software that can easily display this information. At Torch, we use Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity to monitor our website and landing page performance. We review the data on a monthly basis and when we make decisions about updates to the website, we always consult this data to see what kind of an impact we’re actually making.
Conclusion
For a modern-day marketing strategy to be effective, it needs to communicate to the target market that your brand is relevant and current.
If you are stuck, consider getting a professional opinion. Torch Digital Labs aims to help you develop effective digital strategies to improve your marketing. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
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