The digital space is a hotbed of marketing potential if you know how to do it well. SEO and content marketing, for example, have become the buzzwords. Astute marketers will spend up to 40% of the marketing budget on content. Yet a staggering 70% do not have a strategy in place for content marketing.

You may have spent hours brainstorming with the teams around the best strategies to implement on digital marketing. You have spent a good chunk of your budget and according to you, you're doing everything right. Yet every time you measure the performance, the results are dismal. You do not seem to be gaining any traction with your activities.

What is interesting is that there are so many resources and information doing rounds on the digital space. You can find some right here, or read on for some amazing insights as to why your internet marketing is not bearing fruit.

Main Reasons Why Your Internet Marketing Is Performing Dismally

We will share with you some of the reasons why your internet marketing strategy is not working. We will tell you what you need to do to start getting some positive feedback from your efforts.

• You Do Not Know Your Audiences

You may hear some people say that there is such a broad audience base on the digital space. Many businesses get excited and churn out marketing material without really understanding who they are talking to. The thinking seems to be that one size fits all mentality amongst those who have not perfected the art of digital marketing. The truth is, you cannot launch any type of marketing strategy if you do not have an audience profile locked down tight. Ask yourself the following questions:-

• Who am I talking to?
• where do they live?
• where do they work?
• what are their education Levels?
• what is their gender?
• Are they married or single?
• do they have children?
• what kind of digital platforms do they consume?
• When are your target audiences most likely to be online?
• What needs or gaps do they have?
• how does my brand or product respond to their identified need, etc.?

Instead of building an audience profile, the marketing team spends time coming up with content. You then find the same information plastered across different platforms. But if you were to put the marketing team on the spot and ask them who they are talking to, they would have no idea.

• Your Audience's Do Not Know You

Have you as a brand or company taken the time to introduce yourself to your target audiences. Many people will buy products from companies they know and trust. The digital platform offers a lot of opportunities for a company to engage with audiences. You don't need to channel hundreds or thousands of dollars to street banners in every state or lengthy advertisements on television. Your platforms, whether your website or social media, is enough to start and encourage conversation about your company.

• You Follow Blindly

Your feelers are always out on the digital platforms, checking what your competitors are doing. Immediately one makes a move; you do the same. You have, however, not take time to know what your competitors are doing through market research. It could very well be a case of the blind leading the blind. Separate yourself from the pack and create a unique approach to your digital marketing.

• You Are Using the Wrong Channels

Fact - the digital platform has so many platforms you can use

Myth - you must be on all platforms if you hope to increase brand and product awareness

Truth - you can only be on so many platforms so that you maximize your marketing efforts.

While it is possible to have your brand on all platforms, you need to ask yourself whether it is serving you well. If, for example, your brand specifically targets youth and Gen Z, why would you invest a large percentage of your marketing budget on platforms like LinkedIn? If you are targeting professionals and the older generation, why do you need to Splash your advertising on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram?

Here is what you need to do

• take time to learn and understand the different platforms and their audiences
• come up with advertising collateral that speaks directly to them, depending on the platform. LinkedIn, for example, allows for a lot of copy, and you can get away with articles and more copy-heavy material. Instagram and Snapchat are visual, and you must invest in graphics-heavy advertising material. Information on Twitter is very timely and limited, so it works well for customer service and news. You also have limitations on word count and may need to come up with snappy, attention-grabbing copy.

• You Are Spreading Yourself Too Thin

Yes, you probably want to be on every platform. You are, however, struggling with generating relevant content and find that you are losing audiences and followers. Unless you dedicate an entire team to monitoring the platforms, you may also be losing out on valuable feedback. Customer engagement is critical; the more you ignore them due to too many platforms, the less effective your digital strategy will be.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:-

• Am I able to effectively handle the accounts I have right now?
• Am I building the right audiences on each platform?
• How much time can I allocate to audience engagement on the different platforms?
• How much value am I actually getting from each platform?

Now use the feedback you get from this little bit of introspection to determine whether you are on the right path or not. You are better off with two or three platforms that give you ROI than ten that, at best, only contribute to your workload.

• You Are Working Blind

Digital marketing requires that you have a strategy in place that will guide all your activities. Developing the right strategy is a delicate process that you must take seriously. Your marketing strategy should highlight:-

• Goals
• Market research and competitor analysis
• Timelines
• Audience profile
• Platforms
• Marketing strategies such as content marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, advertising and video marketing, among others
• Performance measuring

Digital marketing will not succeed if you just sit down, come up with content and plaster it all over the online space.

• You Have Not Improved Your Expertise on the Latest Techniques

The online space is continually evolving, and what may have worked yesterday may produce zero results today. You have to learn things like SEO, search engine marketing, local search marketing, content marketing and remarketing to name a few? Are you taking advantage of the marketing automation available to make it easier for you to operate? Have you partnered with influences who can push your brand to the next level?

Work at ensuring that you regularly update yourself on the latest techniques and see how best they can work for your business. As in the different platforms, only take what works for your business so that you do not stress yourself too thin.

• You Fail To Measure the Success of Your Activities

Think about it this way; you go to school and do final exams. The exams measure different things and are a good indicator of whether your years in school were a success or not. Now, why would you want to take on a marketing campaign of any kind and not have ways in place to measure the success of your activities?

How will you even determine what did not work so that you can make the relevant adjustments or improvements? The success of some efforts may clear to see, such as an increase in traffic or more queries. For other success metrics, you may need to dig a little bit deeper. So take note of the following metrics and incorporate them into your social media or digital marketing strategy:-

• Increase in web traffic from organic search, direct visitors, referrals, and social media
• New vs. old visitors
• How many times and how long visitors come and stay on your website
• The total number of page views
• The content they interact with the most
• The bounce rate looks at how quickly visitors to your website leave after only visiting one page
• Number of leads and whether you convert them or not which will determine ROI
• Impressions and reach
• Engagement in the form of shares, retweets, likes, and comments
• Other metrics include cost-per-click, email open-rates, cost per conversion, and cost per acquisition amongst others.

You must always have it in mind that the digital marketing strategy is a living document. That means you should be flexible and willing to make adjustments as necessary.

Final Thoughts

The online space has a lot of potentials and presents so many opportunities for the astute marketer. However, it is also very easy to spend hours and not see any ROI. We have looked at some of the factors we believe have a significant role to play in the dismal results you get from your campaigns.

It would be remiss of us to say the process is easy. However, with the right techniques, patience, realistic expectations and the right tools and techniques, you have no reason not to succeed in digital marketing.