Unsuccessful digital marketing projects – What are the most common reasons for failure?
What is the similarity among the first online campaign setup experiments of a micro enterprise, a freshly starting e-commerce business or the digital transformation process of a large enterprise? They all have a shockingly great chance for failing with their endeavours.
Depending on the characteristics of the market and the type of the digital project, researches indicate that the proportion of unsuccessful attempts is 70% – 90% for solving the occurring problems of a digital marketing project. In a word, only 1-3 out of 10 companies succeed with their efforts.
“Several sources, including Forbes and HuffPost, claim that 90% of e-commerce startups fail within the first 120 days of operation. In addition to poor online marketing performance, lack of search engine visibility is another major reason for failure.”
https://www.icsid.org/business/what-percentage-of-ecommerce-businesses-fail/
Why do most digital marketing projects fail?
We have the classical answers for this question. For example the lack of a complex digital marketing strategy, the lack of online conversion goal tracking, digital incompetence, not knowing the target audience, not knowing the online market or being unaware of the tricks and tools of online marketing. In other words, the most common reason for failure is insufficient data that is not usable for the careful planning and evaluation of an online project.
When someone struggles with implementing successful online marketing projects, they don’t know
- What are the most important goals they want to achieve (in numbers)
- Where they are at, compared to where they want to be
- Which steps they have to take for reaching their goals and in what order
- How much time and effort reaching their goals requires
- What professional competence is needed for reaching their goals
- What online conversions should be measured and how
For the complex planning of online lead generating campaigns you will find useful information in our previous article.
All failures originate from one reason
We could go into further details but it is better to declare that all failures go back to a simple cause. The decision makers do not have the minimal knowledge to make a well-grounded decision while planning a complex digital project.
Of course we don’t talk about the necessity of sending all decision makers to online marketing training – this would not be the key for success. However, they should definitely be aware of the most common correlations and they should gather information that makes them able to succeed in any kind of online marketing activities.
In many cases, just a few hours of independent consultancy drastically decreases the business risk and it can save the decision makers from wasting a lot of time and money. And, the possibility is open to take it from even more than one advisor – more eyes the better.
Nevertheless, it is startling to see how low the proportion is of the companies that recognize the benefits of this possibility. Even less ask for help with planning their digital projects. Just think of it, is it not worth a little extra expense that your complex, thousand-dollar campaigns will be able to bring results instead of spending their budget without much practical effect?
We don’t recognize the irrationality of the situation
Nowadays it is an extremely rare case that we meet someone who does not recognize the importance of online marketing. (Earlier though, there were some company owners representing the ‘I don’t believe in online at all’ attitude, but this was only typical 10-15 years ago :-)).
In 2022 everyone knows that a company cannot survive without digital transformation, even if this means only the most basic steps towards the transformation process. As a result, everyone refers to digital transformation as a field with strategic importance, but only very few accept and handle it like a real strategy forming force.
Typically a quick impulse draws the attention of decision makers – let it be a professional conference, an online ad or an educational video – then they get enthusiastic and randomly begin to search for online marketing providers of the given area. This is the time when frequently heard questions arise: ‘Do you know a good copywriter / PPC agency / social media agency / all-in-one marketing professional that could help me?’
The only problem with this approach is that they do not have a reasonable strategy that could validate the business goals, resources and priorities – and they so begin to implement a project. Needless to say, carrying out an online marketing project without a grounded strategy will not bring any results – even if someone finds the right partner or agency, which is also a challange. Sadly, no digital marketing project plans can be carried through if cardinal elements are still missing for the implementation of a successful, synchronised digital activity.
In other words, they just get in the car and head towards the destination without navigation or looking at the current road information – hoping that this way they will arrive at the point of destination the fastest. If the travel time is much longer than expected or we did not even get closer to the destination while a lot of money has been spent on fuel, we still don’t understand what the problem is. We could go on with the story applying the above analogy – the traffic gets heavier, the road situation becomes more complicated and the price of the fuel goes up dramatically (just like the agency fee of the most recognised online marketing agencies). No need to find more comparisons, the point is that launching an online marketing project without any preliminary strategic planning is a completely irrational business move.
The more than 2500 years old message of Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War is still a much current statement:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Top 15 digital marketing advice for business owners who want to avoid failure
The good news is that most of the disappointments can be avoided, even with a minimal effort.
With 17+ years of experience behind us, we collected some useful hints that help to bring off online marketing projects.
- Do not mix up strategy with tactics (or especially with certain actions)
- Look at your situation, limitations and possibilities realistically.
- You can’t achieve everything quickly and cheaply. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
- Complete your homework, obtain information, and educate yourself. There are superb free online marketing articles and know-hows on the internet. As a decision maker, having a basic understanding of digital marketing is a must.
- Always look at the big picture, and try to understand it. Don’t be wrapped up in the details and don’t believe everything you hear.
- If you already have a concept about where you want to go and how long it should take, then ask for help. Reach out to multiple digital marketing experts or agencies, talk with them, ask for quotations.
- If the variation is too much among the quotations (different prices, different content), ask for a consultation and narrow the options. Which expert/agency seems to be trustworthy? Which one answers your questions logically and in a convincing way? Which one understands your problem and which is the one that only thinks about your money?
- Don’t try to shorten or avoid the information collecting phase. The more information you have, the less chance that you will fail.
- Don’t save money by skipping a few hours of creditable consultation. This is the worst idea and will boomerang on you a thousand times. It is even better if you consult with multiple advisors, because a bad decision might cost you millions.
- Listen to your common sense. If something is too good to be true, and someone only says what you want to hear, don’t believe it.
- Only the win-win situations work for a longer period of time. You should be working together with an honest and real partner.
- While having a consultation we don’t only pay for the advisor’s time. We pay for many years of experience, for their accumulated knowledge and also for their access to exclusive professional information (e.g. Google and Facebook educational materials and trainings). This way we don’t need to spend our money on obtaining best practices or testing new ways of doing things.
- When making a decision, listen to your heart. If anything about the expert or agency turns out to be suspicious or you just have a bad feeling, don’t force the cooperation.
- Never sign a contract with someone who is simply a likeable person. If they are not able to clearly explain the point, the actual steps and the extent of your cooperation, just keep searching for the right partner.
- Handle your digital strategy on the right priority level, otherwise you will not be able to stand your ground in the market. The online marketing agency cannot solve everything (for example the lack of the strategic directions), you need to provide some input to help them with their job.
Summary
We, as an accountable marketing agency that operates in the online market for more than 17 years, feel the professional responsibility of educating and helping companies and individual advertisers who want to achieve a better understanding of online marketing.
Year after year we have more customers who had to pay the price for their good faith with another marketing agency or somehow got the fuzzy end of the lollipop. The result is always a certain level of distrust towards all agencies. The best solution is always escaping forward – in this case, getting more education on the matter.
WebMa Hungary pays special attention to education from the beginning, not only by sharing a great amount of free know-hows, but also by taking part in conferences and trainings that support small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups.
The growing significance of digital marketing of course led to the fact that more fribblish market players entered the scene, and unfortunately there are many inexperienced, unskilled new providers who might take advantage of the uneducated customers. This approach inevitably risks not only the advertising budget, but also the trust of the customers, and that is something very hard to win back.
We consider it our responsibility to give a chance to more and more customers that they experience the advantages of well-planned digital marketing. Therefore, education will be our top priority in the future as well. We hope that our 15 hints will help all decision makers to avoid online marketing failures.