You tapped into all the available tools you could find to help you learn digital marketing. Financial resources were allotted to place ads in all the right online platforms. It seemed that you finally had a good grasp of what it took to get a great digital marketing campaign going. So why aren’t things turning around? What is it you’re still missing? How can you make your digital marketing efforts pay off for your business?
MicroD has years of experiences helping guide businesses out of this rut. Our company always stands ready to assist in getting your company’s marketing priorities back on track. Look at some of the advice we’ve handed out over the years in response to questions brought to us by clients. It may help clarify where you’re going wrong and give you some insight into finding a way out of your current predicament.
I Bought Tons of Google Ads! Why Isn’t PPC Enough?
Google Ads and other PPC campaigns can be a great addition to your digital marketing efforts. There are many digital marketing learning resources available for teaching you the most effective ways of using them. Many businesses make the mistake of making PPC campaigns the entire basis of their marketing efforts. It should only be one piece of the puzzle that is an effective digital marketing campaign.
Other Digital Marketing Approaches
- Email marketing
- Social media outreach
- Optimized website content
- Effective analytics
A balanced digital marketing campaign employs each of these tactics at some point. It may be that one type works better for you than another. The key is recognizing what those strengths are and using them to your advantage. If you have an employee who keeps coming up with great video ideas, make sure you’re getting them up on your website and social media spaces for visitors to see and share.
Review Your PPC Ads Carefully
You also need to make sure you’re designing effective PPC ads. How well do your ads do in making it clear what products your business is offering? Can they quickly recognize the type of discount they’d receive on a new set of lamps for their living room? Do your keywords match up accurately to the search terms entered by users?
You should carefully evaluate each of these different points before spending one dollar on any PPC ad. Take the time to test out how well they perform for your intended audience before committing money to their rollout.
I’m Getting Visitors, But They Leave Pretty Quickly. What Am I Doing Wrong?
The answer to this goes back to the previous discussion centered around creating effective PPC ads. When visitors see and click on an ad saying you have a red velvet chaise on sale for a specific price, that’s what they’re expecting to see. They’re going to quickly depart if they end up on a page centered around kitchen furniture or something else not meeting their needs.
The temptation is strong to create numerous PPC ads trying to match everything related to furniture shopping. Don’t build ads making promises your store can’t deliver. Google severely penalizes websites engaging in these types of deceptive practices, and it can take a long time to recover your standing.
Review Your Website Design
You may also be losing visitors because they find it difficult to get around your site. Let’s say they land on a page about armchairs after clicking on your PPC ad. Does the page adapt to mobile if they’re browsing it from their phone? How easy is it for them to navigate to other sections of your site looking for items that complement it?
Other Website Improvements
- Updating to a cleaner, fresher design
- Room planning tools allowing visitors to create floorplans
- Making it responsive and mobile-friendly
- Distinctive from other competitors in the area
All these things encourage visitors to stay on your site longer. Making website upgrades can lead to more conversions and help you achieve your target KPIs.
Why Do People Keep Unsubscribing From My Email Lists?
Why did people sign up for your email list in the first place? Did they do it because they wanted more information about the new line of living room furniture you planned on introducing this winter?
If that’s what they signed up for, that’s what they’re expecting to see. No one’s happy to get emails they didn’t request. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is taking a sign up for one type of email list as carte blanche to send them emails on any and everything about your store. If visitors didn’t ask for it, don’t send it to them!
Add a Personal Touch
Effective email marketing campaigns target the specific needs of customers. They should consist of tailored communications recognizing the recipient as an individual. Don’t create generic headers that seem cold and sales-hungry. Use the name of your customer and make it clear you’re providing them with information matching their stated interests.
What you can do is add a call to action in your communications giving customers a choice to follow links to learn about different products. That leaves them in control and not feeling bombarded by emails they don’t want.
Test Your Output
Another mistake often made by business is not testing out the effect of their email text. You should be putting just as much effort into evaluating how your emails may be received as you would a new PPC ad. The right emails can be significant drivers in turning a one-time visitor into a regular customer. Take advantage of free digital marketing learning resources to learn more about constructing successful email communications.
I Did My Keyword Research! Why Isn’t My Content Ranking Well?
There was a time when all it took to rank well in search engines was peppering your content with the right keywords. Google algorithms have shifted over the past decade to look beyond keyword density. It’s looking at the quality of the content you’re offering when evaluating whether it’s going to satisfy a user’s intent.
Search engine and social media algorithms will lower your ranking if your ads fail to lead to a site full of well-designed content. It takes more than pictures and a few captions to accomplish this. More and more businesses take the time to maintain blogs offering visitors more in-depth knowledge of different products for sale.
Focus On Quality and Relevance
You may try putting up how-to guides online when it comes to style furniture with certain accessories. Remember, content isn’t just a blog. We earlier discussed adding videos to your sight. Tie these into different products or sections of your site.
Don’t take this advice to mean you should throw out your keyword research efforts. They will always be a significant factor in attracting visitors looking for specific products or services you’re offering. Keywords need to be backed up with solid, informative content when visitors hit your landing page. You’ll receive a bigger payoff in the end by providing answers to your visitors. Give them content that goes beyond catchphrases and well-designed nonsense.
How Can Google Analytics Tools Help Me?
Google analytics tools allow you to judge the effectiveness of the keywords you’ve chosen to use in your digital marketing campaign. You can see which ones work best to drive more traffic to your sight, and where you can improve on or remove a keyword that seems to be underperforming.
They also allow you to find out how visitors end up finding your website. It could be through your PPC ads, social media postings, or other digital outreach efforts. They also give your business insight into the type of visitors you’re drawing from each channel. Analytics tools let you know how well you’re doing attracting your target audience.
Wondering if the new blog you put up is having its intended effect? Google analytics tools evaluate your copywriting efforts and let you know what’s causing visitors to hang around or if they quickly lose interests. That helps you find ways to improve the quality of content on your website and lower your bounce rate.
Use A Variety of Tools
Don’t limit yourself to one set of tools when it comes to judging the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaign. Many other analysis tools on the market provide you with additional insights to complement the information provided by Google analytics tools.
Other Analytical Insights To Look For
- The way users move through your sight
- How they respond to visual content
- Results of A/B testing on email and PPC campaigns
- Rankings over time of your SEO-optimized content
Should I Expand to More Social Media Platforms?
People consume more online content now than they ever have. That’s thanks to the increasing number of ways they can access it. Most people use their phone or any other mobile device when doing their online research or shopping. A lot of them take their cues from what they see on social media when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
It pays to make your brand reachable across as many platforms as possible. Branching out allows you to move beyond PPC ads and interact more personally with your customer base. But those platforms need to be compatible with what your business represents. The content you create needs to fit the social media outlet you’re planning on utilizing.
For example, your Facebook posts should contain written detail with corresponding images informing visitors of what they’ll find when they click over to your website. Instagram posts will be almost entirely visual, which means putting up well-constructed visuals with short, catchy captions. There’s plenty of digital marketing learning resources available to guide you on how to create content suitable for different social media platforms.
How Much Time Should I Be Spending On Digital Marketing?
You should be putting as much effort into promoting your digital marketing as you did in creating it. If you spent 3 hours creating great posts for your blog, you should have invested just as much time finding ways to push that content out to potential customers. Why spend money building something no one’s ever going to see?
Don’t confuse frequency with quality. Many businesses think flooding the internet with content every day will do more to improve their search engine rankings and attract new visitors. It’s true that Google tends to favor sites with frequent updates. Their algorithms temper any gains by their quality evaluation of the content you’re putting out.
Take Some Risks
Try out different things to come up with the right balance for your business. You may find it benefits you more to focus on Facebook posts than your website blog. Or the reverse may end up being right. Visitors could end up responding more to the information they find when visiting your site versus what you put out on social media.
There’s no perfect formula we can give you to guarantee results. You can improve the chances of success by being willing to experiment and not just sitting back and being complacent.
Get Help with Your Digital Marketing Efforts
Getting the marketing mix right can be challenging for even the most experienced business people. MicroD knows what it takes to help drive the results businesses hope to achieve through their digital marketing efforts. We offer fresh ideas to improve your website and clear strategies when it comes to finding the right online outlets for your marketing efforts. Sign up for our newsletter to get more digital marketing insights or set up a consultation today.