SEO and digital marketing can drive a consistent flow of good quality traffic to your website and eventually generate sales and leads from them. If done correctly, digital marketing truly works. If you’re wondering why your digital marketing strategies aren’t working well and your sales aren’t soaring, then you’re most likely doing something wrong. It is also probably true that many have made the same mistakes as you. Here are five reasons why your digital marketing may be failing. You’re Gaining Traffic but Not ConversionsA common problem that businesses have is not converting the leads they gain from the traffic on their website. If the traffic on your website is growing but conversions are not, there are a few things you should take a look at. Solutions:Understand your market – Knowing and understanding your buyer persona is the key to every marketing campaign. If you have no clue who your customers are, what they want, and what problems they need help fixing, then you probably aren’t even attracting the kind of audience you need. Create better content – Standing out among your competitors by creating the best possible content. Higher copywriters if you need to. The expense will pay for itself in the long run. Your copy includes the articles on your blog, all of your digital marketing, landing pages and emails. If your content’s tone is inconsistent, written poorly and aren’t focusing on your buyer persona’s needs, then you won’t get those conversions. Produce Consistent Messaging – Don’t confuse your leads with unclear messaging. Your message should stay consistent across all marketing platforms and campaigns to appear organized and attract your leads. Tracking the wrong MetricsIf you are tracking the wrong metrics, you will keep wasting money on areas of your marketing that aren’t helping to improve your conversion rate. As an example, some people wish to gain more buyers from their email campaigns. Tracking the clickthrough rate (CTRs) and emerging sales rate are a simple tracking method. When you focus on just one metric, other valuable metrics can be overlooked such as the trend of open rates over time, landing page CTRS and opt-in pages. Solutions: Change your focus from rankings to conversions and goals – Metrics like keyword rankings can be useful but you shouldn’t interpret conversions based on this data alone. Track more helpful conversions such as telephone calls, email link clicks, form completions, and downloads. Measuring these metrics will illuminate the top-performing channels and where you should focus your time and money. Pay attention to qualitative data – Numbers are very telling, but it’s also important to look at qualitative data. Take time to interview your customers or organize a survey so you can take a look at customer satisfaction. It could give you a simple overview but that overview could show you exactly where you’re messing up, whereas numbers can’t. Implementing Campaigns on the Wrong Channel Back to your buyer persona. If you don’t take the time to do your research on who your customer is, it won’t matter what marketing strategies you implement if they aren’t focused on your ideal customer. Solution: Know and understand your audience – Again, you must do your research on your buyer persona. Ask questions about who they are, where they spend their time on the internet, do they click on ads? As soon as you know who each one of your customer personas is, you will know what platforms you should market on. Unrealistic Expectations At the start of each marketing campaign, you must set realistic expectations for yourself. Many business owners start with limited resources but then set goals that are too high to obtain. This will only lead to disappointment, ending campaigns too early, or spending money on the wrong campaigns. Solutions: Set SMART goals – Remember a SMART goal and you will be better off, always. SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. These five goals can be accomplished in a budget-friendly way. Stay Patient – Some digital marketing campaigns can take time to see results. SEO and content marketing are two strategies that can often take many months before you see a change. Social media marketing can take even longer. It is a long-term game and patience will play a huge role in your success. Strong SEO Competition If your business is in a highly competitive industry, you are likely finding it harder and harder to rank in SEO but there are a few things that could help. Solutions: Stand out from the crowd – Look at your competitors and see what strategies they are doing. Take that information and try a completely different strategy or fill in a missing piece1. For example, add a video at the top of your blogs to also rank on YouTube or create content that your competitors haven’t written about yet. Stay up to date – Algorithms change regularly on all the platforms. Routinely check on new updates and what the SEO industry is talking about so you can adjust your strategy appropriately. Enhance your website – Are you confident with your on-page SEO and off-page SEO? You could be ranking lower than your competition if your website isn’t optimized. You could administer an SEO audit to see where you could improve.