Why your campaigns aren’t working (and how to fix them).

Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of clients and when a new one joins us, we often hear: “We ran a new campaign last month but it just didn’t work, can you help us with the next one?”. 

It can be confusing, especially when you think you did everything right. You ran the ads, posted on socials, and sent out your email campaigns, but somehow the campaign didn’t seem to move the dial, whether the goal was to create more bookings or grow your brand awareness. 

We know this can be frustrating, especially if you feel like you’ve wasted money on paid ads, so we’ve broken down the biggest reasons why your campaigns aren’t hitting the mark, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Reason one: you started your campaign too late 

If you only started sharing your campaign a week before the event, then chances are you’ve left it far too late. 

This is especially important for events like Mother’s Day as if you wait until the week before, you’ll be launching your campaign in the middle of the busiest time online. By a week before, for commonly celebrated days and holidays, you’ll also probably have missed a large percentage of potential customers to your competitors who were ahead of the game. 

The best time to start a campaign is often six weeks before the offer or event starts, with the exception of large events and conferences which ideally would have months of advertising to generate bookings or sales. 

Reason two: you didn’t actually build a campaign, you just posted about it. 

We see this a lot. Brands often say they’ve run a campaign for an offer, but in reality the ‘campaign’ was only a social media post. 

For a comprehensive campaign, you should be reaching your customers through multiple touchpoints and strategically planning to share content over a set period of time to introduce the campaign, share reminders, give a ‘last chance’ push and then if appropriate, retarget people who have engaged. 

To create a campaign that really feels cohesive, it’s also important to have consistency in look and wording across your channels, from email marketing to paid ads and organic socials. 

Reason three: the offer isn’t clear  

Having too many offers, or not clearly advertising the offer you really want to promote, could also be holding your campaign back.  To make your campaign easy to understand for your customers, make sure your campaign only has one or two clear offers. 

You should also make your offer as easy to access for your customers as possible. Whether you are an e-commerce brand offering discounts on specific products, or a hospitality business looking for bookings, you should be trying to make access to the offer as simple as you can. Often, one way to do this is by setting up a dedicated landing page on your website specifically for the offer you are running, so your customers can easily find the details of your offer and where to book / checkout. 

Reason four: the ad graphics look like everyone else’s 

For popular times of year, you’ll find lots of businesses celebrating by posting themed graphics with their offers. However, if you haven’t done it well, you could end up abandoning the branding that makes your business stand out, and instead blend into the crowd. 

Make sure when you set up your graphics for your campaign that you are creating something which aligns with your brand and that your customers will quickly recognise. 

Read all of the steps, but could still use more guidance for your upcoming campaigns? Get in touch with our team today to find out how we can help you.