This is Why You’re Not Achieving Marketing Return on Investment

You’re spending what feels like a fortune on your marketing. You’re busting a gut coming up with new ideas to engage your target customer. You’re regularly putting out content on all your socials. Your emails are fun/bold/passionate/informative/insert the appropriate value. Your content is on-brand, looks magnificent and it’s something the team is super proud of.

And yet, somehow, you’re not seeing the return for it. 

Maybe the people who are ‘liking’ your socials aren’t the ones who buy (I’ve worked for a BIG beer brand for whom this was a problem.)

Maybe you’re getting all the likes and the online chatter but you’re not seeing any change in sales (more than one blue chip company has come to me with this problem.)

Maybe you got really positive test scores when you put your new product idea through concept testing, but when you launched, the marketing seemed to fall on deaf ears (you’ll be surprised… also common!)

So, now you’re in a bit of a situation, because you’ve got senior management asking for accountability for your marketing spend, quite often when you’re also asking to increase your budget, and you’ve got no answers. 

You look at tracking data and consumer sentiment hasn’t changed – you’re still loved. 

You quickly conduct some advertising effectiveness research post-campaign to see if you can shed some light on why communications didn’t do as well as they could have. You get some solid feedback on that, things like it wasn’t that appealing or relevant (but WHYYYYY?) or it wasn’t seen by as many people as you’d thought/hoped. 

You turn to data analytics, maybe there’s something lurking there that you hadn’t seen before. 

And all the while you’re looking for something wrong with your marketing to fix. You’re looking at the message, you’re looking at the imagery, you’re looking at the creative execution, the branding, the channels you used, the frequency it was shown, the tone of voice… did it promote enough? Was the call to action clear or strong?

There are many avenues to pursue to find ‘what went wrong.’

But perhaps you’re looking in the wrong place altogether.

Perhaps the answer lies hidden behind all the work you’ve already done. 

And this is why it’s hard to solve the problem. 

Perhaps the reason you’re not seeing the results you want to see is that your ideal customer and who you’re trying to target doesn’t align with your real customers, the ones who are actually buying your product. 

Which mean the real customers might not be seeing the marketing you’re putting out there. 

For example, let’s say your ideal customer is aged 21-34, exercises at least 3 times a week, watches what they eat, likes to discover new health and wellness products that will make their bodies healthier and make them perform better and meditate daily. So, you target these health bunnies by partnering with local yoga studios, getting stocked in Holland & Barrett and Whole Foods, using influencers on Instagram who match the profile, etc. This is an extremely small group of people and your marketing strategy is reflecting that, meaning your reach remains small. 

But the bulk of the people who buy you, discovered you in Tesco on a meal deal (stocked there because the sales guys got in and their commission was waaaaaay bigger when they had a big sale like that), only consume your product once a week and maybe less, have it midweek to make them feel healthier and make up for ‘poor’ eating habits the rest of the week and like to think they exercise more than they actually do (you know the type, they have a gym membership but never actually go except for the first week of the new year). 

You can see how the targets differ and that there might be some discrepancies between who’s ‘seeing’ you and who’s buying you. Which in due course is going to make it extremely difficult for you to prove return on investment. Of course, you might pick up some purchasers from your efforts but you’ve got volume in your existing customer base and that volume hides any successes you may have with your actual ideal target. 

The problem isn’t that you’re producing weak creative, the problem is that your target and your customer base differ. 

This, by the way, is not abnormal. It’s because there are quite simply not enough people in the world who would meet your ideal customer definition that would keep you growing and in profitable business. It’s because there will always be people who aspire to the image you promote, even if it’s not an exact replica of them every single day. 

So how do you get around this?

1. Think bigger and always look at how you’re performing among three core definitions of your customer base: your ideal customer, a wider definition of your Purchase Target and an even wider definition of that, the Business Target. This post explores these in more detail.

2. Build your marketing strategy around these three customer definitions, for example building your messaging strategy to reach your ideal customer (get them talking!), your media strategy to reach your Purchase Target and your distribution strategy to reach your Business Target

3. Be extremely clear on and remain true to your values, building your messaging around that as this will attract your ideal customers, but also influence the ones who aspire to that (the Business Target)

4. Validate your ideal customer from time to time to see how their behaviours and attitudes are shifting and whether these still align with your company values because if they no longer value what you value, then the entire strategy is going to fall apart and you’ll have even less idea of who your efforts are resonating with, further undermining the marketing ROI

5. Finally check in on their customer journey to see what their needs are, what’s triggering their purchase and how they’re discovering you. It might shed some light on new opportunities to reach your core audiences and may make you rethink how you’re doing other activities and where your marketing spend is going.