If you’ve found your way to this article, I’m guessing you’re a little frustrated. You have a great product, service, or marketing angle. You think you know your audience well enough to deliver effective messaging. You’re keeping up the momentum and delivering new content all the time.
Still, no one is clicking on ads, no one is clicking through to your blog or landing pages. Things have been falling flat for a while. What’s wrong? I hate to say it, but the key problem here is likely that your way of doing things has become stagnate or ineffective over time.
When was the last time you switched anything up in terms of how you manage your marketing? Are you taking note of all your analytics? I’m talking about email, site statistics, social media metrics, ad clicks, responses to calls to action, and more. Most responsible marketers monitor all of these things, but many put off making changes based on what they learn from their numbers. Well, if that’s you, it’s time to change that.
Today, I would like to share with you five common reasons why online marketing efforts fail, and since I run a successful copywriting company, I’m going to steer this ship in the direction of fixing those problems. See, I’m a marketer, too, and I stick to what I know well. One thing I know in particular is that clients often think more about the marketing than they do the market. Want to break out of that cycle? Keep reading. Here come five of the biggest threats to your bottom line.
1. You Keep Writing to You, Not Your Audience
This is such an easy trap in which marketers fall. You get really excited about your niche. You unleash all that enthusiasm into your copy and yet no one seems to share your excitement. Have you ever thought that you write too much about the things that motivate you and too little about what motivates your target market?
Go back to your buyer persona and get to know that person well. If you’ve never developed one, you really need to. It’ll make a huge difference in how relatable your marketing copy is to the right readers. When you’ve at least got a rough idea of who that ideal buyer/reader/client actually is, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to come up with content ideas that actually work. These buyer persona templates should help.
2. Your Copy Isn’t Changing with the Market
Market trends shift quickly and often without warning. You need to know what kinds of things related to your content your readers are searching today before you sit down to write. The easiest way to do this is to research keywords and then have a look at the content that is employing them right now.
Don’t take your cues from content that is several years old now. Always be sure of not only how good your sources are, but also how old the content is. More than six months old is useless. More than 90 days old is at least on the verge of obsolete. If you want to reach your current audience, your content needs to address current market needs, period.
3. You Aren’t Visible Enough
This is where things like social media and email come largely into play. You never want someone seeing you in your inbox and thinking things like, “Oh, it’s that guy again.” What that means is that your copy isn’t relevant enough or interesting enough to keep them opening your messages.
You can be in someone’s inbox every day and still be largely invisible. It has to do with more than consistency. That alone won’t hold anyone’s attention. What you have to say will. It goes right back to my previous point: keep your email subjects interesting and compelling enough to motivate people to open and read your messages.
On the social media side, please don’t rely on scheduling software to make it look like you’re engaging on your pages or channels. Your audience knows better and so do you. Fresh content that is just for social media and promotes other content that leads to conversions is essential.
Here’s what you need to do: stop phoning it all in and start promoting your content directly to your audience. You would be amazed by how much things improve when your audience starts hearing from you once in a while and not just your scheduling bots.
4. Your Copy Is Too Average (Messaging and Delivery)
I am not a fan of the content rewrite method of copy creation. When clients ask for rewrites, I emphasize with my writers the need for a unique voice. I still think starting from scratch is better, and I wish fewer marketers would cling to this method of content creation.
When investigating source material, it isn’t enough to pick the best five or six points and simply reiterate them. Your messaging should be just that: It should be yours, not an amalgam of every other voice out there. What you have to say matters. It can either set you apart from your competition or communicate a lack of uniqueness. Which do you think would be more profitable long term?
5. You Flat Out Don’t Have the Time to Do This Right
It’s one of the top objections in the world of copywriting, and it’s probably been running through your mind the entire time you’ve been reading this post. Here’s the thing: It’s almost never a good idea to write your own copy. That’s why custom writing services like Beez exist. Time is never on your side, and the pressure to keep ahead of your competitors with good content is intense.
Regardless of your area of marketing, we work directly with a core team of staff writers as well as a network of talented freelancers with diverse writing backgrounds. That means we have access to writers who understand your industry and your business and can give you the unique voice you need to succeed. I encourage you to contact us today to learn how working with Beez can eliminate all of the above roadblocks and stay well-connected to your best prospects.
