After spending a large sum of money on internet advertising, do you believe you aren’t getting sales result you hoped for? Or is your company just about to hire an internet advertising agency to help drive sales? Read on to know the reasons generating sales through internet advertising fail and solutions.

With over ten years of experience in the internet digital marketing industry, while generating huge sales by internet advertising agencies through internet advertising are achieved every day for companies; the process and solution of making it happen aren’t squarely laid on the lap of an internet advertising agency.

An agency can help you plan, study competitors, map out strategies, design creative works, write headlines, select platforms, create massive awareness, and reach your subscribers, customers, millions of potential buyers, audience; monitor and manage your online campaigns around the web, etc. There’re things outside internet advertising agency control, which only you can help in order to achieve your sales objectives.

Listed below are 10 reasons generating sales through internet advertising fail and solutions

Failure 1: Website functionalities and errors

Your website is the first destination target customers and potential buyers go, most visitors to your site don’t know you, they will start forming an impression of your brand good or bad base on your website. If your company’s website is bad, it will affect the advert performance. Here, Internet advertising has succeeded in bringing them to your website, but your site’s poor user experience and website technical errors can turn them off. Not only code errors will be distracting, it will be killing the trust, stopping them from carrying out transactions; when they eventually leave, they might never come back.

-Solution

First impression matters, hire a professional web designer and programmer to create a 100% functional and responsive website that is viewable on all internet-enabled gadgets such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, features phones, desktops, etc. Use a reputable website hosting provider to host your website to ensure your website is 100% up and running. Monitor your website regularly for any error and fix it, especially when online advertising is on.

Failure 2:  People unaware of the product or service

Unless your product or service is one that can be purchased on impulse such as soft drinks, candy, newspaper, water, etc, you won’t make sales by people mere seeing the advert for the first time. For example, if you see an advert for a laptop manufactured by OKOYE BUCHI, would you just bring out money on the spot and buy? The answer is NO, because, you don’t know the brand, secondly, you didn’t budget for it, thirdly you might need to study it later before buying, etc.

Target buyers and potential customers need to know what the product/service is all about and how it will benefit them.  This is applicable to unpopular company name too; expecting to make sales on the first contact of your advert often leads to disappointment, people would unlikely subscribe, sign up or buy if they don’t know your company yet, at least not the first time they sight your advert.

-Solution

Your company needs to have patience and lets the agency educates potential customers about the company (if the company’s name is already known), the campaigns focus will be on the products and services by informing the target audiences; i.e., creating awareness, educating the market and establishing the brand; and then running persuasive advertising to stimulate sales. Also, there should be around-the-clock reminder internet advertising to encourage repeat purchases.

Failure 3: Wrong platforms selection

Every platform or channel on the internet has advantages and disadvantages to different companies, industries, and product or service life cycles (changes in the marketing situation) thus affecting advertising strategy and the marketing mix. This means when the wrong channel is chosen, it will lead to internet advertising failure. Right platforms are needed at different stages of the product life cycle. This means because a platform is popular doesn’t mean is good for achieving your sales objectives, also because your competitor is using a particular platform doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing.

-Solution

In the product life cycle, there is an introduction, growth, maturity, and decline stage.

Each of these stages requires a unique strategic approach in selecting an internet advertising platform for the product advertisement. For example, a product can be in the decline stage in the USA, the Introduction stage in Nigeria, the Growth stage in South Africa, and the Maturity state in the UK.

The implication of this is that if you use platform “A” to get sales result from USA buyers (where the product life cycle is in decline stage), the same platform “A” won’t stimulate sales from buyers from Nigeria (where the product life cycle is introduction stage).
Is not uncommon for clients to tell AdHang (our agency) they want their advert to appear in social media. Let me tell you, people visit social media to have fun, meet people, share with friends, make friends, and be entertained.  They’re not actively searching for products to buy, neither are they in buying mood; you can use social media for awareness creation, increase brand recognition, and reminder advertising, etc (although there are exceptions where social media is used to generate sales, this is reserved for advanced marketers).

Social media marketing is a course on its own, our focus here is why generating sales through internet advertising fails and solutions.

Failure 4: Low budget

A low budget means many things will be left out, which will, in turn, reduce your chances of generating sales. Internet advertising is beyond text adverts and banners you see out there.  In running effective internet advertising for stimulating sales, there’re so many things that must be in place and gotten right: from SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, threat) analysis, planning, designing creative materials, mapping out strategies, running to managing the internet advertisement.

Also, internet digital marketing in general, there’re 6 components of digital marketing to be factored in, such as online display advertising, mobile marketing, social media marketing, influencers marketing, and search engine marketing. In addition, all internet platforms will be paid and there will be internet advertising professionals to work around the clock managing the internet advertisement, etc.

-Solution

If you’re not getting the result you desired, consider increasing your budget, this will raise your game, especially if you have competitors.

Failure 5:  No repetition and consistency

If not an established name or brand, a short period of advertising such as one or two days advertising will fail to generate sales. Because all potential buyers won’t be able to see your advert, they won’t respond by mere sighting it once or twice, those who see it will likely forget, some won’t get the message as they aren’t actively searching for your product or service advert, etc.

-Solution

You need to carry out your internet advertising consistently, creating awareness, educating your target market, running persuasive and reminder advertising; letting the potential buyers know you’re in the market, a much active brand, and also to encourage repeat purchase by the current customers.

Failure 6: Bad Experience with the brand

If users, buyers, consumers, or subscribers are disappointed by your products/services or your brand doesn’t meet their expectations, these will hamper generating sales through internet advertising (at least temporally, until the issues are addressed).

-Solution

Fix dissatisfaction about your product quality, poor customer care, or service delivery. If it’s a misconception about your service/product, run educative advertising to enlighten your customers and potential buyers about the product usage or service process. You can use demos, forums, blogs, videos, frequently asked questions, etc.

Failure 7: Presence of strong competitors

Many industries are saturated, manned by strong and established brands who have been directly and indirectly dominating the marketplace and industry for decades. When you run internet advertising for one or two days, your advert will simply remind buyers about the established brand and they will go there to do business. Instead of customers buying from you, they buy from competitors, who are established names.

-Solution

Tell the agency through your advertising brief those things that make your product or service unique. What are those things that stand you out in the industry? It could be price, quality, place, people, process, availability, sizes, location, customer care, features, membership of any association/body, expertise, culture, etc. Next is creating brand awareness, fostering knowledge of the product/service and features. Then, there will be persuasive advertising focusing on your brand’s uniqueness with aims to create likings, preferences, convictions, and purchases of the product or service.

Failure 8: Lack of trust

When target customers or users don’t believe your organization, brand, product or service they won’t buy. Potential buyers or subscribers need to be convinced about your offer before they can subscribe to your offer, until they are convinced, trying to generate sales through internet advertising will fail.

-Solution

Get testimonials from your happy customers; write case studies, showcase customers that are happily using your product or service, tell success stories, list other companies, brands or customers that are using your product/service, employ influencers, etc.  If it’s an industry that is regulated e.g. health, show your regulatory authority approval, etc.

Failure 9: Non web marketer interference on the marketing plan

You can’t go to a seminar and become an attorney to represent a client in a court or read an article and head to perform eyes surgery on a patient. In the same way, marketing is a discipline thought in the university and has been in existent before the internet. You can’t just read one or more e-books, go to seminars or read articles here and there and become a marketing guru to represent a brand. In marketing, there’re so many things that go into marketing before adverts; many things you read online about digital marketing or internet advertising tell half-truths and are written for divergent reasons and interests of the writers.

Using knowledge from those write-ups out there to interfere in marketing plans prepared by real experts or internet advertising agencies like AdHang, will lead to internet advertising sales-generating failure. Many articles out there are written by influencers (opinion leaders who are paid to convince you, such as industry’s analysts, journalists, bloggers, academics, middlemen, brand evangelists, etc); some are writing by CEOs promoting their niche categories; some are propaganda (articles meant to distract public, end-users or rivals from the truth of what company is doing), etc.

Following those internet marketing articles out there without experts or trained web marketers guide, means you can be spending money running internet advertising while sales and businesses will be going somewhere else.

-Solution

Hire experts and leave them to do what they know best.

Failure 10: Unrealistic goals

Being ambitious is fine; however, your internet advertising goals can fail because is unrealistic. What you put in is one of the determinants of what you can get. Let’s assume that your organization is equal with competitors in terms of quality, process, consumers’ positive perception, price and service delivery, etc.

But, your competitors are spending billions of naira for years on internet advertising, using different strategic fronts, and employing holistic online advertising, and you spend thousands and expect to out-sell them, such is an unrealistic goal. In this case, internet advertising will achieve what your budget is capable of achieving, not your unrealistic goals, and you can’t equal rivals’ marketing activities; as a result, you can’t match their market demand.

-Solution

Consider factors such as years in the industry, knowledge of your product/service in the marketplace, buyers’ confidence, expertise, duration of the advertisement, customers’ perceived values, general market demand, and potential, competitors’ activities, etc.  Then be realistic in goal setting, increase your budget, and work with the internet advertising agency to employ holistic internet advertising.

These are some of the major reasons generating sales through internet advertising fail and solutions.