5 Ways to Waste Money on Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing can be like a five-headed monster. You’ve got 5 or so major channels that drive traffic and in which you can spend money. For example, there is PPC (Paid Search), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Email Marketing, Retargeting, Social Media and others. Each of these areas are highly specialized and must be managed appropriately to grow any online business. They are closely tied to each other and can overlap at times. When this happens, they can hurt or help each other if not handled correctly. When traffic is down from a couple of your major sales drivers (like SEO and PPC) for example, you can really feel it. Below are 5 ways to tame the beast and make sure that you are not wasting money on your digital marketing efforts: 

1. Not having a Digital Marketing Game Plan – It is much easier to just shoot from the hip and never know what is truly working. I’ve seen this time and time again. Companies just spend money and don’t have a good understanding of the return on those investments. (More about this under #2.) This applies to not only ad spend dollars, but internal resources as well. If your staff doesn’t have clearly defined goals and a way to measure their success, then again you are wasting money. They can be spending all their time in the wrong areas. At TALL MIND, we use a strategic framework to build out your game plan with you. This includes specific goals and strategies to reach each objective. We also want to have specific measures that tell us if we have achieved decided upon goals. 

2. Not Understanding your Digital Analytics – If you don’t understand how to read your marketing data (or even worse you don’t have any or you never look at it) then how do you know if you are winning or losing? I’m surprised how often I see companies spend very little time looking at their website traffic, conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS) or simple metrics like average time on page. Understanding what these numbers mean can be the difference between burning through cash aimlessly vs redirecting that money at winning strategies. 

3. Spending on the “Flavor of the Month” – Ice Cream YUM!!! Now it is perfectly okay to try new things. However, if you don’t watch them closely and understand what they are doing for the business, then this is where you get into trouble. You should always have a clear picture of how the strategy works first. Don’t just throw money out there until you understand how it will work and what to expect. This is where a seasoned CMO can help guide you and keep an eye on your investments. 

4. Not Keeping your Marketing Partners Accountable – You need to be in touch regularly, like weekly or bi-weekly depending on spend and needs. You have to be the squeaky wheel. Otherwise, they will put oil on the other squeaky wheels and at a large agency, there are hundreds of clients. Now this applies to your internal staff as well. Are you able to manage them? Do you know where they should be focused? This goes back to having a digital marketing game plan. Do you have the experience to lead them down the correct path? If you are having a hard time answering these questions or are unsure, then you are lacking the internal expertise to steer the ship in this area. This is perfectly normal as there are many moving parts to a business and you can’t possibly juggle them all.

5. Not Understanding your Digital Marketing Funnel – How you attribute sales is critical to success. There is a buying journey and ecosystem to digital marketing. It takes multiple touch points to get a sale and some of these can be offline in some businesses. A seasoned CMO will learn your business and get to know the top, middle and bottom of your funnel. Often times businesses don’t trust the process and top of funnel activities. Think about how you shop and what directs you to make a purchase. When a person decides to buy, there are several touch points that can assist them in choosing to buy from you. If you don’t have the major touch points covered, then you can lose them to a competitor. Often times companies don’t protect their turf well enough. Unfortunately, this can lead to lost sales.

I hope this article has helped you understand a few aspects of the struggle and where there may be holes in your process. I see gaps in many organizations from their lack of expertise in one or several of the 5 major areas. Digital marketing encompasses many specific very specialized skillsets and you can’t possibly master all of them. However, getting a better handle on the 5 areas listed above can get you headed in the right direction.