More Money? Different Creative? How to Regroup After a Digital Marketing Fail

It’s an all-too-common scenario: A digital marketing plan that seemed to have everything going for it simply flopped, and as you’re sifting through the wreckage, you’re racking your brain trying to figure out where things went sour. A digital marketing fail can definitely be disheartening, but the good news is that there are always lessons you can learn and there’s always another chance to try again. Below are some key questions to ask to help you identify any points of failure in your previous campaign, so that you can adequately regroup and be better equipped for the next time around.

1. Was your landing page relevant to the ad that users clicked on?

If your display ads feature a specific product that’s found on a particular subpage within your site, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you drive traffic to your home page. If a user lands on your home page, he/she will be left to figure out how to navigate to the page that contains the product they saw in your ad, and let’s be honest–most people are simply not going to follow through with this type of action. This means that your bounce rate will soar and conversions will plummet.

Make sure that if you’re advertising a product, your visitors will land on a page that specifically features that product when they click on your ad. This will ultimately lower your cost per acquisition, and enhance the user experience as well.

2. Have I performed adequate A/B (split) testing?

You’d be surprised at how something as simple as a button color change or an alternate ad image can make all the difference in your click-through and conversion rates. Many advertisers skim over the importance of split testing different ad copy, images, colors, font styles, buttons, etc., but the truth is that the battle for conversions is won or lost in the finer details of your ad creative. If you’re not investing the time and effort into adequately conducting detailed A/B tests–and closely monitoring the results–you’ll more than likely lose your potential prospects to a competitor who does.

3. Have I made my website mobile-friendly?

With roughly 30 percent of all Internet traffic now coming from mobile devices, there should be no doubt as to whether or not you should optimize your website for mobile viewing. This rapidly increasing move toward mobile Internet access has raised eyebrows among many heavy-hitters in the tech world including Google, who recently instituted a now-famous algorithm change (somberly termed “Mobilegeddon”) that gives greater weight to mobile-friendly sites in their search results.

Your landing pages need to load quickly and be optimized for viewing on mobile devices. In order to keep things simple, many web developers have opted to incorporate responsive site design, which automatically resizes your website to match the capabilities of the device that’s viewing the site.

4. Have I failed to thoroughly evaluate my analytics data?

Whether you use Google Analytics, Clicky, GoSquared, or any other number of web analytics platforms on the market today, it does no good to install the code and collect the data if you never take the time to analyze what your website traffic statistics are telling you. This can be a huge source of missed opportunities because your traffic data paints a picture of what content your audience is attracted to.

If you zero in on your best-performing content, you can then begin to optimize those pages to further increase conversions. You can also gain valuable insight into potential areas of improvement by examining your poorly performing pages and making adjustments. Doing your homework in the area of analytics helps you optimize your site for peak performance.

So your campaign flopped – don’t beat yourself up about it; the only thing you can do from here is learn from your mistakes and be better prepared for the next time around. With the benefit of hindsight and a commitment to learn from every experience (good or bad), you’ll find yourself moving forward and developing more proficiency with each new digital marketing campaign you undertake.