And what to do to make it work. Long read. Sometimes it's necessary.
From the very beginning of my career in digital marketing, and this is the early 2000s, I have heard this statement: “Internet advertising does not work!” Since then, the owner of Amazon has become the richest person, Google has earned incredible money from AdWords, and for some it still doesn’t work. Yeah.
And who is to blame for everything? In most cases, it is the customer of such promotion himself. Well, not an Internet marketer, honestly.
Don't rush to protest. I'll try to explain. The problems, in fact, are primarily in psychology. Here they are:
Happy mood.
“It's easy!” - The customer thinks. He has a success story before his eyes. A friend just opened the website, and orders immediately began to flow like a river. Stormy. Mountain. At the same time, the friend says that he did nothing. No PPC, no SEO at all. Just some kind of mewling noise!
In addition, here he, the client, condescends to you to make a promotion. Although everything could (and should) work like that. This is the Internet! The very presence of a website is already the key to success.
Unfortunately, the customer often does not think twice and takes everything at his word. What if his friend... lied? I didn’t want to reveal business secrets. Moreover, who knows how many projects he failed before he came up with a successful strategy?
Impatience.
Many people perceive advertising as a magic wand that will instantly solve their problems. Calls will begin immediately, even in the absence of a clear marketing (but more on that later) strategy. Well, now let’s turn on advertising, and it will immediately begin to fight back. However, they forget that this is a very unpredictable thing and that it usually takes time to find the key.
Then something doesn't work. And after the first failure, the entrepreneur announces that advertising does not work. Maybe it just didn't work out for you? For different reasons.
Lack of marketing.
I can just see your sarcastic face - they're scamming you again. What do you! We marketers never lie. Joke.
But seriously, you need to know the target audience, research your competitors, create and define a unique selling proposition - why the client should buy/order from you. It just seems obvious. Many entrepreneurs cannot clearly answer this question.
Only one advertising channel.
Using only one advertising channel at a time, such as SEO or any other, is like working only one muscle. Believe me, even she will not grow up. Believe me, you need to use at least two at the same time. Better - more.
Budget.
Don't skimp on advertising. Vice versa! She is your everything. Do you honestly think that promotion should be cheaper than your phone? Whatever area of services/products this concerns.
What am I talking about? A successful advertising campaign costs money.
Threshold of success.
I came up with this name myself. I don’t know, maybe smart books give a different definition. What is this threshold of success? This is the amount of money below which it is simply pointless to spend on advertising. This will be wasted money. What I mean?
Let's say you spent 1000 galaxy credits and got 10 clients. This does not mean at all that if you spend 100 you will get one. There is no direct relationship here. It may very well be that after spending 900 you will not get even one.
Teaching a chicken to lay eggs.
The fact is that everyone understands history, football, design and advertising. Moreover, all the doctors. There are no fools - everyone is smart. Everyone can tell a designer how to draw, and an advertiser how to advertise. “Let's save money here. This is not necessary.” Nevertheless, he is still responsible for the result.
Bad design.
By the way, about him, about design. Since we mentioned it. In vain. For some reason, clients think that their design, created back in the dot-com era, and which their mother-in-law likes, should sell no worse than a modern, individually ordered UX/UI design. Well, as a last resort, you took a standard template. Why spend money? It's long and nerve-wracking. Expensive, again.
As for websites, there are much more prosaic reasons. Not updated information on the site - texts and even prices. It probably seems to business owners that the text on the website is something like hieroglyphs carved on stone in the pyramids. Changing them is blasphemy.
Customer apathy.
Yes, yes, this happens often. It happens that at the very beginning of cooperation, the advertising customer demands reports almost every minute. Actively takes part in everything. Even where it is, participation only gets in the way. I would even like it to be smaller. Then - bam! How they changed it. Cooled off.
He doesn't need anything anymore. It doesn’t even provide what is needed most: feedback, statistics. Doesn't work to change the product/service. What for? I paid the advertiser money - let him come up with something himself. He gets around, as he wants.
Here. Depressing, right? Horror, horror. However, there is good news - there is a way out, I know what to do. In fact, don't do all this.
So what to do?
- be patient, reserve time and allow the specialist to experiment: select the key to an advertising campaign.
- concentrate on the unique selling proposition (USP), this offer should be one that cannot be refused.
- use several promotion tools at once.
