Online marketing may be new territory for you and your small business, but don’t be too quick to pass judgment on what it can do for you and how effective it can be in connecting with your ideal clients as well as driving sales. If you’ve jumped in and added a couple online marketing tactics to your overall marketing strategy, but are ready to throw in the towel, keep on reading to see if one or more of these reasons is why your online marketing isn’t working.

7 Reasons Why your Online Marketing Isn’t Working

• You aren’t actively participating in your marketing Turning over your online marketing tasks to someone else to manage for you can and will be very successful…as long as you still contribute to that marketing strategy and content. But if you hand over the reigns and treat your online marketing as a task that you no longer have to think about, your online marketing will lack originality, personalization, your voice, client successes, and the ability to connect with your customers and potential customers. To make your marketing stand out from the crowd, the “you” of your business needs to shine through. 
• You are inconsistent Has it been 6 months since you published a blog post? When is the last time you sent an email to your subscribers? Do you find yourself checking your social media profiles less and less, and can’t remember the last time you posted to Facebook, tweeted or pinned? If your customers and potential customers don’t see or hear from you for long periods of time, they will – and do – forget you. Even worse, you are opening the door for competitors to move in and take your place.
• You aren’t utilizing your chosen marketing tactics correctly One major element of an effective online marketing strategy involves you having what it takes to make a social media platform or content marketing tactic, successful. Did you dive into Instagram…with no intention to regularly take or create images or videos? Are you hoping Pinterest will drive website traffic and sales, but you have a simple 5 page website but no blog or online store with products to pin? When you determine what online marketing tactics you are going to employ for your business, take an honest, realistic look at what you have to work with, what your skills are, and what you can commit to regularly produce.
• You haven’t given your marketing efforts enough time to work Social media moves fast, but the sales process of Know, Like and Trust is just as long as it is in the offline business world. When you are executing on your online marketing strategy, you need to make sure you give it time. Time where you are consistently working at your chosen online marketing methods. One or two months of social media activity isn’t going to do it. Four months of blogging isn’t going to do it. Sending 5 email newsletters isn’t going to do it. Watch your analytics and collect data, and wait for at least 6 months to evaluate what truly is working and what is not. And know that even then, you might just be getting started with the payoff to your hard work.
• Your messaging is confusing All of the content you create, curate and post to your social media profiles, write on your blog, and send in your email marketing needs to be relevant and complementary to your business and ideal clients. Since you shouldn’t be all promotional all of the time, you will need to be sharing content that still makes sense for your brand but isn’t talking all about you. However, if your messaging gets lost or confusing, your online marketing is going to be ineffective because your customers and potential customers won’t be sure what it is that you are all about.
• You aren’t targeting your target customer You could be missing your marketing target by posting content that doesn’t attract your ideal content, by following, using and interacting with the wrong hashtags, and by literally targeting the wrong types of people in your ads. Before you kick off your online marketing strategy, make sure you’ve spent time analyzing who your ideal client is, including both demographic and psychographic factors.
• Your chosen marketing methods don’t align with your ideal clientele Part of knowing how to target your customers is also understanding what methods are most effective at reaching them. And honestly, this very much includes your offline marketing or advertising, too. Even in today’s online world, if you sell to an older demographic, your marketing mix likely includes at least some offline tactics. It’s especially important to keep this in mind when you hear about the latest “must be on” social media platform. Just because something is talked about as the newest, most popular or “platform for the future” doesn’t mean it makes sense for your business. You need to be places and use marketing tools that line up with the habits and practices of your ideal clients.

Before you change or cease any type of marketing or advertising activity, make sure you honestly assess if you’ve been optimally utilizing that tactic. Chances are that some tweaks in your approach will make a drastic difference in the outcome.