Signs You Need To Change Your Marketing Strategy

Do you have a ‘set it and forget it’ attitude to marketing? It’s better than no marketing, and what’s not to love about automation and ‘set and forget’ campaigns? Unfortunately, your audience may not agree with you. Marketing is fast-paced and constantly evolving. If you haven’t changed your marketing strategy for a while, it’s time you did.

Once you have developed a great product or service, the next thing that will make or break your business is your marketing strategy. People can’t purchase a product they’ve never heard of and won’t buy from you if the marketing messages you send out turn them off.

If you’ve taken to recurring campaigns and your business has been doing the same thing for a long time, then you could undoubtedly benefit from assessing your strategy and making some tweaks. If you’re not sure whether it’s essential, in this article, we have a few clear-cut signs that your marketing strategy needs a shake-up, including:

• Repetition – using the same approach for years
• Not meeting your KPIs
• Your offerings have changed
• You no longer know your audience
• You don’t have a story

Let’s work through our 13 signs. You need to change your marketing strategy to avoid your business failing!

1. Using The Same Marketing Strategy

Many companies adopt an attitude of if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, and if sales are steady, it can be very tempting to just do more of the same. However, regular sales after years of using the same marketing strategy may be a sign of some seriously unfulfilled potential.

Your customers obviously still like your product. Maybe you get some new business from word-of-mouth or your existing marketing channels. However, a shake-up in how you implement your marketing could attract a whole new section of potential customers to the business.

New audiences

Depending on your product or service and how long it has been on the market, new customers may have come of age since you last switched up your marketing strategy. Gen Z now has over $140bn in spending power, but your current marketing strategies may not be reaching them. If it has been a while since you adjusted your plan, there are certainly some potential customers you’re not going to.

2. What KPIs?

You’re not meeting your KPIs, or you’re not even sure what they are.

Whatever your key performance indicators (KPIs) are, are you meeting them? Are you bringing in the number of sales, leads, or subscriptions you need? If not, tweaking your marketing can help. Maybe you’re not even sure of the answer to this one. Perhaps you’re not even sure what your KPIs are. In that case, you need to get some clarity.

Digital marketing needs goals and measurement.

Part of modern-day digital marketing strategies generally involves setting clear objectives and specific metrics to measure. In a world where software can easily track clicks, engagement, conversions, sales, and the exact number of seconds potential customers spend on each page of your website, there’s no excuse to not set clear objectives that can be easily measured. Those measurements inform plans for future marketing activities.

3. Your Offerings Have Changed

If you’ve launched new products and services, they may not be suited to your old marketing channels. The more visual your offerings, the more you want to explore channels that are a mainly visual experience.

Go for the visual experience.

Products that need a demonstration clearly lend themselves to video-sharing platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Even if you know that Facebook, for example, is the best channel to reach your particular audience, new products may mean it’s time to employ more Facebook Lives, reels, and video ads.

New product launches offer an excellent opportunity to step up your marketing, but don’t assume that more of what has worked in the past is suitable for a brand-new line or product. Before starting a new marketing campaign, you must determine which channels and strategies will allow you to show off your unique offerings to the best effect.

4. Your Audience Has Changed

Suppose the target market for your new offering is different, or there are potential buyers of your old products out there that you’re not reaching. In that case, you need to consider how to successfully get all your target demographic groups.

Who is your audience?

Those valuable Gen Z buyers we’ve mentioned are nothing like their parents or grandparents. They spend a lot more time on TikTok and don’t check their email too often, and many prefer automation and self-service rather than dealing with a real human being.

What’s more, Gen Z doesn’t trust larger institutions but does trust their favourite influencers. They deliberately tweak their own algorithms by engaging with the content they want to see more of, and they like brands to take a stance on important social and environmental issues. Who your target market is impacting your marketing success much more than the platforms you use to reach them. Knowing your audience will determine everything that follows, including:

• Which customer service technology to use
• The content of your marketing messages
• Who your business supports, i.e. charities
• Marketing collaborations

5. You’re Attracting The Wrong Audience

Sometimes, the people who engage with your marketing content aren’t your potential customers. You must consider why if you have engagement but no real return on investment (ROI). Maybe the content you share appeals to a group without genuine interest in the product. Or perhaps something is off with how you’re targeting your paid promotions.

Better alignment of incentives

Suppose you are getting lots of leads but few conversions. In that case, it could be that the free incentive you offer to get people onto your list simply isn’t well aligned with your paid offerings, or the sequence of emails you’re sending out isn’t leading people towards your paid offerings or selling the benefits of them well enough.

There are a few different areas to look out for if engagement is high but sales are low, and all of them can indicate that a change is needed in your overall strategy.

6. You Don’t Have A Story

Modern-day consumers love a story. Sure, they care about the features and benefits of your products. However, in a competitive world, with so many brands competing for attention, the story can be what sets you apart. What is your brand’s story? How did it come to be? How did the founders meet? What was their light-bulb moment? What sets you apart? And why does what you do matter in the grand scheme of things?

What’s your brand’s story?

The story of a brand or company doesn’t have to be long or complicated, but it does have to be compelling. And it has to be consistent. Wherever a member of your audience comes across you online or in the real world, they expect you to behave in a way that aligns with what they expect of you based on what they know about your story.

St. Bonaventure University demonstrates this in its piece, looking at what makes a successful marketing campaign. Examining 10 of the best campaigns of all time, it concludes that at the heart of each successful marketing campaign is the concept of the story – sometimes a straightforward one, but always one that the brand’s audience understands and can relate to.

7. Your Website Isn’t Working For You

We’re not talking about slow loading speeds, broken links, or outdated information, though this should be corrected. If you haven’t revamped your website for a while, with your marketing objectives in mind, you may find that your customer journey is not happening the way you want it to when potential customers land on your website.

Customer journey

Your analytics should give you a good idea of what people are or aren’t doing when they visit your website. Are they browsing? Buying? Signing up for your email list? Consuming your content? Or simply clicking away?

Your website should take your customers and potential customers on a journey that introduces them to your brand, showcases your products, engages them with what youo offer, and ultimately results in sales. If it’s not doing any of that, it’s time for an overhaul.

Look at the content pulling people to your website and how it’s getting them there. Are they landing there due to search queries, paid ads, or social shares? Are they coming to read the content on your blog or take advantage of a special offer or promotion? The key to more and happier customers is in your website’s analytics reports. You just have to look for it.

The site is not optimized for mobile.

Even within older and more traditional demographic groups, mobile phone usage and internet browsing are high. Many of those in younger groups access the internet almost exclusively via mobile. A poorly optimized site for mobile is a potential hindrance to attracting new interest, leads, and sales.

It’s vital to ensure that the customer journey is as easy on a phone as on a computer and that your overall marketing strategy and website (including sales pages) are fully compatible with mobile devices. Visitors with problems accessing what they need on their mobile won’t necessarily switch to another device. Switching to a different website or company that sells something similar is generally much more accessible.

8. Your Marketing Budget Has Changed

The amount of money you have to spend on marketing activities can dictate what your strategy will be. More money in the budget means opportunities to try new and innovative techniques to attract new customers and maybe take a few more risks. If, on the other hand, your budget is now tighter than it has been in the past, that’s not a disaster. It is, however, a sign that you need to change your strategy to fit your budget.

Test unusual marketing initiatives.

Cheaper tactics will need to be employed, which is not always bad. Different approaches work for other products, so more affordable doesn’t always mean less effective. You may find that your ROI improves when you try more unusual marketing techniques that cost less. A budget reduction can be an opportunity to rethink things and adopt more efficient tactics rather than the other obvious solution, which is to do less of what you already do.

9. Your Social Pages Are Dead

Your social media pages may not be actually dead, just inactive. Purchase decisions are often made on or influenced by social media. Social media is also where many potential customers will be exposed to your brand for the first time and where some customers develop an affinity with the brand that will later influence purchasing decisions. That first contact doesn’t have to be direct exposure to your product. It could just as quickly be a meme or quote shared by your page or a link to an article that potential customers will find interesting.

More social, less promotion

While social media marketing is an essential part of overall marketing strategy, it should still be more social than sales-speak for most companies. The more people engage with the content you share, whether directly related to your products or not, the more visible your social accounts become.

If your social media channels are dead, it’s time to switch up the kind of content you share to get them thriving again. This is best planned as part of your overall marketing strategy, as this will help keep those overriding messages and your brand personality consistent.

10. The Online Buzz Is About Your Competitors

The last thing you want to be doing is blindly copying competitors. Each marketing campaign should be unique, but if you see a lot of buzz online about your competitors and you’re getting lost in the crowd, it’s probably time to tweak your marketing strategy.

Copycat tactics

Take a look at what those competitors are doing. You don’t want to do the same, but you want to see what’s working for them and what’s not. Competitors’ campaigns can show you a lot about what people expect from this type of brand, what kind of content they engage with most, on which platforms, and what they care about when making a purchase decision.

11. Your Customers Are Not Happy

Listening to what your customers say is one of the most underrated ways to improve your strategy and increase sales. If customers are confused, sending you questions, and looking for clarity, that’s an excellent opportunity to look closely at your messaging and make it more transparent.

Use customer feedback

Customer complaints are a good source of ideas for improvements, especially regarding specific things, such as how customers prefer to communicate with you. Again, this might have changed since you last assessed your marketing activities. People used to like to pick up the phone and talk to a human being. Now, many prefer to resolve things online. Many customers used to hate dealing with chatbots and other automated systems. Now, many expect them and see them as efficient.

12. Your ROI On Paid Promotions Is Low

PPC ads can be a great way to reach new people, generate new leads, and see sales quickly. However, PPC is easy to get wrong and can be costly. Whether you run ads on social sites or elsewhere, PPC marketing can fail to produce a good ROI because your targeting is off.

Are your Ads relevant?

Whether you are running Google ads or social ads, you need to target the right people and display content that’s genuinely relevant to them, especially, for example, if you are going for paid search results.

Retargeting ads effectively is another excellent way to put your offers in front of the people who have already expressed interest in them – but again, this needs to be done carefully and strategically. Suppose you are not seeing a significant ROI from paid promotion. In that case, it’s probably time to reassess that whole area of your strategy and look at ways to reduce expenditure and target more effectively.

13. Your Organic Traffic Is Low

Organic traffic from search results is always valuable if your content is relevant and linked to your paid offerings. You can expect organic traffic to drop off if you haven’t changed your strategy in a while.

To attract organic traffic, you need SEO, and what constitutes ‘good SEO’ changes over time. Changes in search algorithms can easily cause your website or individual pages to drop rankings. Even small changes and updates to how Google and other search engines classify and rank content can significantly impact.

SEO

If you rely on organic traffic, then changes in SEO need to be constantly monitored to ensure that your most important pages are still ranking and delivering relevant content strongly linked to user intent. A lot of high-quality content that perfectly markets what you have to offer is only good if your target market is actually getting to see it.

Final Words

Ultimately, developing a solid marketing strategy should be ongoing and responsive. The best strategies evolve when a firm monitors its marketing activities and stays agile, responding quickly to issues and changes that impact the company and its brands. If you’ve decided it’s time to switch up your marketing strategy, that’s great. Remember to put systems in place to monitor, analyze, and develop that strategy over time.