Internet Marketing Digital_marketing_for_dummies | Page 261

Does a specific need exist for what you’re offering?
Are you offering your market value?
If your answer is “No” to any of these questions, you’ve already found your problem.
No matter how compelling your landing page copy is or how attention grabbing your
image may be, the best marketing campaign in the world can’t solve an offer issue. This is
why your offer is so crucial and is the key to the success or failure of any marketing
campaign. A poorly executed marketing campaign with a great offer usually outperforms a
great marketing campaign with a poor offer. If a poor offer is your problem, you need to
come up with a new and better offer before you run traffic to it. See Chapter 3 for more on
crafting winning offers.
Tweaking your targeting
Another big culprit of a struggling ad campaign is your targeting. If you’ve concluded that
your offer isn’t the problem and have proof to back that up, examine whether you’re
targeting the right people. Regardless of whether you have the best offer and marketing
message, putting your offer in front of the wrong audience means that your campaign will
fail. Are you targeting people who will actually buy?
The biggest targeting mistake you can make is to go too broad in fear of missing out on
potential prospects. When starting your campaign, you want your market to be as specific
as possible. If you’re in doubt about the size of the audience you’re targeting, go a bit
smaller. Then, if the campaign meets or exceeds expectations for this smaller audience,
you can scale it and make your audience a little broader.
If you believe that your targeting is off, reassess your customer avatar. You might have a
misconception of your audience. Go back and make sure that you’re being specific enough
and that your information on your audience is correct.
Another big issue that can impede your targeting is to advertise on the wrong traffic
platform. You might be placing ads on a platform where your market doesn’t hang out
online. Return to the “Choosing the Right Traffic Platform” section, earlier in this chapter,
to help make sure that you’re putting your ad on a platform where your market is active.
Scrutinizing your ad copy and creative
After confirming that your offer is enticing and you’re putting your offer in front of the
right people, examine your marketing message. The ad copy and the creative (the image)
are the segue between your offer and your target market. The copy and creative ensures
that people can see the end benefit of your offer. If your marketing message doesn’t catch
your target audience’s attention and give people a reason to click, your campaign will fail
because you aren’t generating traffic.
Inspect your ad copy to make sure that it does the following: