It’s easy to feel like your marketing is working because you’re posting a lot on social media, you’ve invested money into ads and email campaigns, and you’ve had a professional website developed. You’re putting the time in, so it must be working, right? But, that’s not to say that your marketing is delivering the ROI you need. Marketing efforts must be measurable, aligned with a specific business goal – for example, bringing in more leads or targeting a new audience – and strategic. They need to pay off. When they don’t, you run the risk of wasting money and missing opportunities, leading to poor marketing ROI.
The Common Causes of Poor Marketing ROI
There’s a lot of reasons you might be dealing with poor marketing ROI, and it might be a combination of a few things. To improve your marketing ROI, you need to know what’s holding you back.
- You’re Targeting the Wrong People – One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with marketing is misidentifying your audience and targeting the wrong people. Without precise targeting, your message could be reaching people who have no interest, no need and no intent to buy. There’s no point in marketing to everyone, as not everyone will be interested in what you have to offer. This is why audience research is non-negotiable, regardless of industry, product or service.
- Your Message Isn’t Clear or Compelling – If you’re not clearly telling people why they should care about who you are and what you have to offer, you’re going to struggle to achieve a good marketing ROI. Too many businesses talk about themselves instead of speaking to customer pain points. Your messaging needs to be clear, consistent, focused on the customer and aimed at solving a real problem.
- Your Marketing is Inconsistent – You can’t post once a month on social media and hope for the best. You can’t have a playful and fun tone on one platform, and a formal, corporate tone on another. You can’t send emails sporadically. You can’t add a few blogs at once, and then none for weeks. This inconsistency sends a signal that you’re not reliable, and it can destroy brand trust. Consistency builds recognition and recognition builds trust, which encourages conversions.
- You’re on the Wrong Channels – There’s no point marketing if it’s not reaching the right people. Your audience might be executives who live on LinkedIn, or they could be younger consumers on TikTok. If you’re investing heavily in a marketing channel just because it’s trendy – or because it’s what your competitor is doing – without data to support it, you’re likely wasting money. You need to make sure you’re using the right channels for the specific people you’re trying to target.
- You’re Using a One-Dimensional Approach – Many businesses lean heavily on a single marketing channel, such as email or social media, but effective marketing works across an integrated system. Your audience rarely converts after one touchpoint, you need to connect with them in multiple places. If you’re not using a combination of content, paid media, SEO, social proof, email and remarketing, you’re probably missing out on conversions.
- You Haven’t Defined Clear Goals – What’s the goal of your marketing campaign? Do you want to secure more leads or conversions? Do you want to boost brand awareness? If you can’t measure the success of your marketing efforts, you can’t optimise it for improved performance. You need clear KPIs and reporting, otherwise it’s a lot of guesswork and hoping for the best.
- You Don’t Have a Strategy – Without a strategy, you’re unlikely to get anywhere with your marketing. This doesn’t mean having a rough plan to post regularly on social media or to create an email campaign about an upcoming product launch. It means having something that connects your goals, audience, messaging and channels into a clear, scalable system. Without a strategic blueprint, your marketing is fragmented and harder to scale.
How to Take a Strategic Approach to Marketing ROI
To get the most out of your marketing campaign, and to turn your poor marketing ROI around you need to focus more on strategic, intentional efforts.
- Audit Your Current Marketing Efforts – Start by assessing what’s actually happening with your current marketing efforts. Determine tactics that are delivering and which aren’t. Decide if you’re targeting the right audience. Are you getting leads from your campaigns, or are they bringing in nothing more than clicks and likes? Don’t make assumptions. It’s important to know exactly how your current marketing strategy is working.
- Know Your Customer Inside and Out – Effective marketing starts with clarity around who you’re speaking to. Build detailed personas based on your target customers, understand their pain points and decision-making process, and work out what their goals are. Find out where they spend their time online. Once you know who they are and what they care about, you can start focusing on what really matters.
- Build a Multi-Touch Marketing Strategy – The modern buyer doesn’t convert after a single advertisement or post; they need to be marketed to in multiple different ways. You need a cohesive journey – from awareness, to engagement, to conversion – across multiple online touchpoints.
- Craft a Clear, Customer-Focused Message – Your message needs to be clear and concise. It needs to tell customers what problem you solve, why you offer the best solution and why they need to commit to a sale. Avoid jargon and overly complicated messaging. Simple, direct language that highlights outcomes and benefits is more effective.
- Choose the Right Channels – Let data, not trends, guide where you invest your time. Focus on the channels your audience actively uses and where your message can break through. There’s no point spending time, money and resources on TikTok marketing if your audience rarely uses the platform.
- Measure Everything – You might be spending a lot of time and money on marketing, but are you sure it’s paying off? Use analytics to understand what’s working and what isn’t, and where improvements could be made. Don’t just measure likes and traffic, look at qualified leads, conversion rates, sales and customer lifetime value.
- Align with a Strategic Partner – Most businesses don’t have the internal bandwidth or expertise to manage all of this effectively, and that’s okay. That’s where Profici comes in. You don’t need to handle everything on your own, not when digital marketing experts and growth partners are on hand to help.
Turn Your Marketing Investment Into Measurable Growth
At Profici, we build strategic marketing systems that drive growth. Our approach goes beyond tactics and surface-level efforts. We work with businesses to understand their goals, challenges and customers, then build a custom marketing blueprint that aligns activity with ROI.
- We identify your ideal customers, uncover insights and pinpoint where they are online. We make sure that your marketing is reaching the right people, otherwise, you’re at risk of poor marketing ROI.
- We help you to clarify your value proposition and ensure consistent, compelling messaging across all touchpoints. We make sure that your marketing strategy is set up for success, from start to finish.
- You don’t want to waste time on the wrong channels, which is why we dedicate time to channel planning and execution. We build and execute a marketing mix tailored to your business and audience, from SEO and paid ads to content and email, making everything as bespoke as possible.
- We don’t rely on guesswork or a generic one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. We track what matters, analyse performance and adjust our approach continuously for better results.
Everything we do is tied to results and improving ROI. That means more leads, more conversions and more revenue. You don’t need more random posts on Instagram or a subpar email marketing campaign. You need a repeatable, measurable and profitable strategy that actually grows your business.
There’s no need to tackle marketing alone. With Profici, you’ll have a marketing strategy that’s set up for success. If you’re tired of pouring money into marketing and getting little in return, now’s the time to make a change. Get in touch to find out more.
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