Do you remember the process it took to develop your current digital marketing strategy? In its early stages, a lot of extensive research, data collection, trials and errors, and A/B testing must have been invested.
Finally, you created a result-oriented digital marketing blueprint to grow your company.
And it worked!
The event I’m describing may have happened a quarter, half-year, or year ago. Right now, things might not be as great as they were in the beginning, but you’re still seeing results from your efforts.
Thanks to the consistent drip of engagement and sales, you might be thinking, “Why to fix something that isn’t broken?”
Well, it could be broken. Your company could be enjoying better visibility, sales, and other ROI expected from your marketing.
In simple words, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table.
By observing for these 5 signs, here’s how you can determine if your digital marketing strategy is due for a review.
5 Signs your Digital Marketing Strategy Needs a Review
1. You’ve reached a lead plateau
With a lead plateau, there’s no inbound marketing growth. Engagement levels aren’t plummeting, but they’re not going up either, regardless of how much resources are being invested.
Marketers might not notice when they reach a lead plateau because there’s still some amount of business coming in. To determine if your marketing has reached a lead plateau, compare your engagement from the last measurable period with earlier results. You could be enjoying high engagement levels, but if the mark hasn’t moved over a long period of time, this might mean that you’ve hit a plateau.
Simply put, you’re not attracting new potential customers, and a business cannot grow if it’s not steadily attracting sales.
It is of course, unrealistic to expect your engagement to continuously go up with no lags. 65% of businesses admit that generating traffic and leads is their biggest marketing challenges. However, if you don’t see any changes even with additional (deliberate) effort, it means your current strategy needs to be reviewed.
2. Your Google rankings are dropping
Are your website pages losing their spot on the top SERPs? Google is one of the last places where you can succeed with a set-and-leave-it strategy. This is because algorithms are always changing, and your competition is always working. In this in-depth study by Search Engine Watch, we can see how top ranking websites lost their spot on Google’s SERPs with its latest update. Over time, strategies that used to boost your website may start to lose their effectiveness. You may not even be aware of the bad SEO habits for which Google can penalize your website.
Google is constantly evaluating websites using hundreds of factors such as speed, security, user experience, backlinks and many more. Most times, when a business notices a decline in web traffic, it becomes difficult to identify the cause, because they stopped paying attention a long time ago.
3. Fewer conversions
If you’re getting a steady stream of traffic with little to no conversion, it could mean that you no longer understand your audience’s needs. By studying their on-site behavior, you can discover what they want from you. This should be applied to all online platforms. With websites, a heat tracking tool can be used to identify the most sought out page sections. On social media, analytics will show you what content your audience engages with the most, and what they pay little attention to.
A proper review will establish the point of disconnect in your conversion funnel.
4. Your tools and methods don’t seem so effective anymore
Every experienced business owner or marketer can tell when there’s a lag. Paul Farago, the founder of AceMarks was able to identify the flaw in his methods that caused his startup a decline in sales. By making a small change in how his company chose to market to its target consumers, he was able to turn AceMarks’ men’s fashion line into a success.
Sometimes, new marketing goals and old methods don’t mix. Your team might decide to stick with the methods that have shown positive results so far, but that does not guarantee success. Sadly, this is a mistake that too many experienced marketers often make. The market is dynamic, and rigid methods only hold water for so long.
Also, if you have introduced new marketing milestones that aren’t supported by your current tools, then you need a review. There are many daily tasks you don’t have to perform manually. A good indication is seeing your competition apply certain efforts daily, that usually take you a few days to complete.
And if your competition can deploy their strategies more effectively than you can, this cost could be counted in customers and sales.
5. You’ve achieved your initial marketing goal
If your digital marketing strategy was designed to achieve a goal, why are you still using that strategy after recording success? Your next step should be setting up the path for a new achievement using new or advanced tactics.
If you don’t have a clear goal with your marketing efforts, it will be quite difficult to determine what information is vital. How do you approach new leads? What are you telling them? Your results won’t mean much if there’s nothing to measure them against.
If you run your own business, then there’s no overhead power to convince on the need for a digital marketing strategy review. However, in a corporate structure, you will have to give good reasons to why:
- You want to change a strategy that seems to be working just fine
- You need funding and other resources for the research and activation needed.
Here are the steps you should take to convince your boss on the need for a digital marketing strategy review.
3 Steps to Prove that a Digital Marketing Strategy Review is Essential
1. Provide reports on current performance and ROI
Be prepared, your boss’ only concern is the bottom line. You will have to convince them of the need to allocate resources and manpower into reviewing a strategy that seems to work fine. This is where you should pull up stats showing a decline in your analytical data. Compare the ROI from the last marketing cycle to the current one. Are targets being met/goals being achieved just as heavily as they were in the beginning?
You need to do a good amount of research before going to your boss. If you don’t, then you won’t have the needed information to prove anything.
2. Outline current company goals
Have your company’s goals changed since the time you implemented your marketing strategy? Are there new products or services being rolled out? You should be able to prove the need for a review to support your company’s changing goals. This report by CoSchedulen shows that marketers who set goals are 429% more likely to report success.
Another important angle is the growth of new and existing competition. This is important because you should never assume that you know what the customer wants. Proper research must be carried out to determine that. Even if your company is currently in a ‘safe zone’, your competition can change that using the right efforts.
3. Share new ideas
Create a full account of your SWOT analysis, customer base/personal information, and competitor audit. You have identified the ‘holes’ to call attention to, so you also need to generate ideas on how they can be fixed. Brainstorm with the major players in your team i.e. UX designers, SEO and SEM specialists, graphic designers, content writers, marketing campaign officers, and so on.
These brainstorming sessions should be aimed at innovation and providing practical solutions. You can also refer to customer feedback, and use a selection method of your choice to choose the issues to be addressed.
Remember to keep your idea generation within the borders of the company’s sales and marketing goals.
The one thing we can always count on in digital marketing… is that you can’t count on anything. Your market, communication channels, and competition are always changing. If you’re not re-evaluating and applying yourself at the same pace, it’s easy to get left behind.
Staying proactive (not reactive) will help your brand achieve success, instead of losing visibility and revenue with every new development.
Rait is a full-time online marketer, top-rated freelancer at UpWork, SEO enthusiast and CEO at RankBrain Media. Through his 10 years of SEO experience, he has helped hundreds of businesses to dominate the search engines and fight their way to the top. Besides SEO and marketing, he loves music, photography and plays guitar as a hobby.
