Why Some Marketing Strategies Fail–Even When Everything Looks Right

Ouch—that was another marketing strategy collapsing into a pile of nothing with a bang, and that hurt! But why?! The brand seemed to do everything to make it a success. Day to day, marketing strategies fail like that (every fourth does!). During 2024, 87% of CMOs reported performance issues in their promotional campaigns with generative AI in marketing. So, despite all the hype around it, even AI isn’t the best protector against strategic marketing flops.

Top 5 Reasons Why Marketing Strategies Collapse

No Actionable Plan

It’s like driving without a navigator to a completely unfamiliar place; you get the following due to zero planning:

• Terrible timing (it kills even the greatest ideas)
• Inefficient spending
• Unsatisfactory return on investment (e.g., poor influencer marketing ROI)
• Weak customer engagement (as a result, low conversions and sales)
• Missed opportunities (e.g., a chance to capitalize on seasonal demand)
• Lost competitive edge

In fact, this may be the #1 reason marketing strategies fail in most SMBs: 67% don’t have any action plans when promoting their brands, products, or services.

Poor Resource Management

A successful marketing strategy hangs on three fundamental resources: people, money, and tech stack.

If any of these goes off the rails, the whole plan will suffer a breakdown:

• Human resources → Unskilled marketers, team miscommunication, problematic or underperforming influencers (for influencer marketing) or brand ambassadors (for brand ambassadorship), etc.
• Financial resources → Working on a tight budget, misaligning it with business goals, allocating funds without prioritization, squandering everything on one idea, etc.
• Technological resources → Using out-of-date tools or ignoring automation altogether (automated solutions like AI-driven content marketing or programmatic advertising)

Unsegmented Audience

“He who chases two hares catches none.” That’s what happens when you try to make your marketing message resonate with everyone. It appeals to no one. That’s when you need customer segmentation. Strikingly, 42% of marketers don’t segment their audiences. At the same time, 80% noticed a sales boost after segmentation.

Low Flexibility and Adaptation Speed

The market (particularly the digital market) runs on rocket fuel and doesn’t wait for latecomers. It moves even faster regarding social media marketing (SMM). If you blink, you’ll definitely lose the next trend or virality wave to hop on.

Actually, keeping up with new trends is one of the biggest challenges for 19% of social media marketers. Your marketing strategy naturally fails if you aren’t flexible and quick to adapt.

PR Crisis (The Catastrophe You Neither Predicted nor Planned For)

Here’s probably the most damaging of all.

You didn’t see a PR scandal coming. Yet, it can transform your marketing dream into a nightmare faster than you can say, “Whoops!”

And again, it happens more often with social media campaigns and typically concerns sensitive issues linking to:

• Culture
• Gender
• Race or ethnicity
• Body image
• Historical tragedies
• Political events, etc.

How to Prevent Your Marketing Strategy from Failure

Now, learn how to steer away from disasters.

Create a Step-by-Step Marketing Plan (in Advance!)

It’s always better to outline your steps and prepare your content calendar beforehand so as not to let your marketing strategy take a nosedive.

For example:

Check out the following action plan template for SMM marketers.

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When getting ready for holidays or seasonal events in particular, the tried-and-true standard is to launch your marketing campaigns one (or even two) months in advance.

For example:

Suppose you’re planning a Christmas campaign. Release your promos as early as October or November, just in time for Black Friday. Here’s why. If you look at habitual Black Friday shopping behaviors, you’ll notice that consumers start buying Christmas gifts during that very period while hunting for lucrative deals and discounts.

Renew Your Toolset

If you’re still using outdated tools (if any at all), consider this selection to execute more effective marketing strategies across all digital channels:

• Web-scraping tools for lead generation: DataMiner, TexAu, Hunter.io

• • Customer segmentation tools: Google Analytics, Segment.io, Kissmetrics
  • Influencer marketing software: NeoReach, Heepsy, Aspire
  • Content creation tools: Writesonic (for texts), Canva (for images), Hailuo AI (for videos)
  • Social scheduling apps: Buffer, Pallyy, SocialBee

• Email automation solutions: MailerLite, Omnisend, Klaviyo

• All-in-one CRM systems: HubSpot, GreenRope, Zoho CRM

For example:

Ninja Transfers, a DTF-printing company, features blank T-shirt collections for different customer groups segmented by needs: Tank Tops, Pocket Shirts, Raglan T-shirts, etc.

The brand also automates emails with Klaviyo (+ Klaviyo’s Segments AI). Catch a glimpse of this “Trick-or-Transfer” email campaign for Halloween marketing.

By the way, it arrived in the customer’s mailbox one month before the actual holiday (strategic foresight, remember?).

Collaborate More Effectively with Others

Surely, everyone in your company wants your marketing strategy to succeed. For that, it’s also crucial to align your goals and coordinate your actions across departments:

• Product developers
• PR managers
• Salespeople
• Contact center agents
• Customer service representatives
• And others.

For example:

Amid the 2024 PR crisis with shopping carts, Walmart Help Center also stepped in to address customer concerns on social media.

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Track Your Numbers in Real Time and Adjust Your Strategy on the Fly

Do you launch a marketing campaign and leave it untracked?

If so, you’re groping around in darkness.

Set and monitor the following metrics to prevent your marketing strategies from failure and tweak them when the numbers hint it’s necessary:

• Website or landing page performance: time on page, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc.
• Influencer marketing KPIs: referral traffic, reach, engagement, etc.
• Email metrics: open rate, CTR (click-through rate), email marketing CPM (cost-per-mille), etc.
• Social media engagement: follower growth, post engagement (likes, comments, shares), CTR, etc.
• Paid ads performance for Google Discovery Ads, Gmail Ads, Facebook Ads, or others: cost per click (CPC), conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS), etc.

For example:

With Google Analytics for Gmail advertising campaigns, you may analyze and modify subject lines and preheaders on the go to boost your ad ROAS. Compare two email ads from GoDaddy with different preheader texts.

Versus

Try Proven Tricks Backed by Psychology (“Hypnotize” Your Audience!)

Have you ever wondered why you still remember those catchy brand slogans (like “The Snack That Smiles Back” by Goldfish) or years-old jingles from TV ads?

They all are rhythmic by nature.

Here, we’ll talk about the power of the so-called “hypnotic marketing” with puns (wordplay) and rhymes. It relies on deep-rooted psychological principles: emotional engagement (playfulness), catchiness (memorability), and persuasiveness (a smoother content flow feels more pleasant and convincing).

And if you need an example, big or small,

Just ask away—we’ve got them all!

Wordplay Marketing

For example:

Look at this “Panta Claus” pun from Bonobos for Christmas marketing on Threads.

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The brand wittily played with the words “pants” and “Santa.”

Rhyme Marketing

For example:

RushOrderTees experimented with a custom T-shirt design and wrote a poem about that:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

We loved our design

And are hoping our boss man does too.

Source

This poem landed on TikTok straight on Valentine’s Day.

Never Fail Your Influencer Marketing Strategy with NeoReach

When you partner with NeoReach, influencer campaigns are never shot in the dark. You won’t have any mismatches or fiascos—only the best strategic solutions with the properly chosen content creators.

Get started, and find your perfect brand-influencer pairing!