Many professionals and individual marketers have become extremely proficient at identifying what marketing isn’t working. We are all pretty adept at seeing which digital marketing tactics, methods and channels are not getting traction or producing results. Maybe this is because it isn’t rocket science to identify when your marketing efforts aren’t working. Why you’re not getting marketing results is likely a much bigger challenge for most brands and marketers to determine, but that’s not all…
Most brands and marketers also struggle when their marketing IS working, but this may not be for the reasons you are thinking. It may be a bigger issue that is staring you right in the face!
I have written quite a bit about the challenges facing digital marketers in specific areas of an integrated multi-channel marketing requirement that we have today. I have provided many tips and fact based statistics focused on what the why’s and how’s that address the constant digital marketing changes and requirements for marketers to pivot through, however I have not directly discussed what to do when your digital marketing is working. And that is a very different animal.
What To Do When Your Marketing Is Working
So your social media marketing is driving traffic to your blog or landing pages really well. Maybe your search marketing strategy is coming together well and is driving big increases in traffic through both organic and paid channels. -OR- your email marketing changes have begun to reap new levels of conversions for repeat customer sales, ask questions.
What do you do when your marketing is working?
Know Exactly WHAT It Is That’s Working –
Digital marketing can be extremely challenging at times, so when you have something that is working well, you need to ask questions and understand what it is that is actually working. Just because you are starting to get marketing results, does not mean you are doing everything right. Take the time to investigate exactly what it is that is working.
Knowing the details of what is working in your digital marketing can provide additional insights into your marketing tactics. Get really specific and dive deep into the numbers to uncover the WHAT within your marketing successes is driving the results. This requires going beyond the high-level data and digging into the deeper metrics.
Ask questions such as:
Is your messaging, what is resonating?
Is your targeting, what is causing your marketing to work?
Are there multi-channel efforts that are working together to drive improved results?
Understand The Why Of Your Digital Marketing Success –
Beyond understand what is working, you want to dig into the why. If you only understand what is working, you will not be able to leverage your effective digital marketing results to their fullest potential. The why of digital marketing success gives you the information you need to make improvements over the successes you are currently experiencing.
Make the connections between the what and why to uncover the important elements of your marketing that is working so you can include them in other areas of your digital marketing.
When Your Digital Marketing Is Working, Scale It –
When you have done the exhaustive work to make your digital marketing effective and you are realizing the results from that effort, don’t miss the opportunity to scale it. I see many B2B, saas, startup and Enterprise brands that hit a home run with their digital marketing, but fail to fully take advantage of it. Think of it as getting a knock down in a UFC fight, but never taking advantage of it by knocking the guy out and getting the win. This is very common, but it doesn’t have to be.
Scaling Part 1:
When you are getting digital marketing results and have asked the right questions and investigated data from the results to understand the what and why of your success, make tweaks to your program that will validate your marketing findings. I highly suggest that you do this using A/B testing that enables you to keep the current marketing tactic in place, while testing the changes you are proposing within a vacuum. You’ll be able to continue to drive the results you are getting, while testing the new tweaks without affecting the overall marketing results dramatically. If the minor adjustments you make to your marketing efforts appear to move the needle further in your favor, you are onto something.
Scaling Part 2:
Finally, when your marketing is working, for the love of Pete, don’t sit back and enjoy the moment. Hammer it home, by scaling your marketing resources, budget and activity. By scaling your successful marketing at the time it is working will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Be mindful as you scale marketing volumes to ensure that the success of your marketing grows right along with the budget. For example: if your paid media marketing is getting great results and you have done the what/why research and made your tweaks and tested to prove your theories, then increase your spend by 20%, you should expect your net marketing results increase by at least that much. If it doesn’t, something in your strategy, messaging or targeting is still off. If you have it right, it will be scalable.
If you do not have everything right, it may be a fluke. If it is a fluke, you’re better off going to Vegas over scaling your marketing budget on the effort. However, if the changes to your marketing campaign also increases by 20% you are building a scalable marketing funnel and should increase resources by another 20%. Then review, measure and scale it further.
Use marketing successes to go from good to great marketing results. Expand the return on your investment, resources and efforts by digging into the data to understand your success at a deep level and use that information to improve your other marketing channel results. Finally, scale marketing that works as rapidly as your budget, resources and systems will allow.
“When your digital marketing is working, hammer it home!!!”
