Have you been putting a good amount of energy and resources into your marketing campaigns, only to see them fall flat or not give you the outcome you were hoping for? Well, I can assure you that you're not alone. Marketing campaigns can be complex, and one wrong misstep can cause you to waste time and money.

Let's review eight common mistakes you may be making when creating a marketing campaign:

1. Your campaign goals are too vague

Goals like these below give you nothing to measure against or strive for.

• “We want to grow our organization.”
• “We want more volunteers.”

Better goals would be:     

• “We want 20% growth in sales of this specific product.”
• “We want 50 more leads a month”
• “We want a 10% increase in donations.”

Be specific with exactly what types of metrics you want to achieve, along with a time-bound goal.

2. You aren't measuring your campaign
You can’t win what you can’t measure. You must assess each benchmark and adjust as needed. In order to know what needs to change, you must measure.

3. You are trying to accomplish too many goals with one campaign

Goals like, "We want to introduce our new branding, grow our list by 15%, and add 100 new donors." may seem worthwhile, but each of those goals needs to be tackled separately. Tactics will likely be different for each, so you don't wan to waste resource with a campaign that's too generic in nature just for the sake of trying to encompass too much at once.

4. Your message doesn’t target the right audience.

Maybe your offer is not what your audience wants. It might be what they ultimately need, but unless they see the value right away, it’s the wrong fit. 

5. The messaging is wrong for the audience.

Slightly different issue, but very important. You must tailor the message (even if for the same product) to each unique audience. If you are trying to engage parents of teenagers as well as their children with the same message, you will not succeed. You might be selling the same product to both, i.e. a college experience, but the message to each audience needs to be completely different.

6. The customer journey is not fully thought-out 

What happens once someone clicks on an ad or once they download the e-book, etc.? What’s the call to action on each of these steps and where is the end?  You need to plan that from the very beginning so each step in the campaign is strategic and moving people from point A to point B.

7. Your strategies and tactics are not integrated

Your strategies and tactics should support and built on each other; otherwise you’ll spend a lot of money on random tactics and not see much result. There is no follow up

8. You are trying to move the audience through the engagement cycle too quickly.

People need to discover and engage before they participate or buy. Trying to move a cold audience from discovery to participation with one click to a landing page is almost impossible, unless you are selling a commodity at a discounted price. Your target audience needs time to be cultivated before they say “yes” to your offer or ask.

If you are making any of these mistakes when creating or maintaining your marketing campaigns, now is the time to make a change. If you ever need help, we're here to walk alongside you. Contact us to get started.