How poor attention and engagement can lead a marketing campaign to failure

Summary

Companies use marketing campaigns to get the word about one’s product or service. To work, companies need to base their decisions on more accurate data, particularly on two critical metrics: attention and emotion. Most current marketing campaigns fail precisely because they still do not adequately consider these metrics. Brands that have begun to base their decisions on attention and emotion are getting better results.

Key Points

• 23% of companies do not benefit from the data they have.
• 76% of people said they tend to skip ads out of habit.
• 2 in 3 consumers (64%) feel that companies have lost touch with the human element.

A marketing campaign can fail because of multiple factors. But often, the most common failure is caused by decisions made on the wrong metrics or because you do not know your target audience or the marketing campaign’s goal well.

Below, we will look at some of the most common problems with marketing campaigns:

• Wrong metrics: The most common mistake is basing your decisions on data–such as clicks received–from a previous marketing campaign.
• Lack of attention: Companies do not spend enough time developing content that generates engagement. It may seem obvious, but if the user is not paying attention to the content, it will not work.
• Lack of empathy: Engagement is essential for any content. People who do not feel emotion when attracted to the marketing campaign will not buy.

You can measure many things when it comes to analyzing a communications campaign, but not all of them are equally important.

When setting goals for your campaign, it is essential to focus on the right metrics. These will give insight into whether or not the campaign will be successful.

In fact, according to a survey by PWC and Iron Mountain, only 4 percent of companies succeed in extracting maximum value from the information they have. While 43% get little benefit from their data, 23% derive no help. Finally, 22% do not apply any data analysis to the information they hold.

That causes a significant loss of traffic and possible conversions. That is precisely why, according to McKinsey, companies that base their decisions on accurate data can increase their ROI by 15% to 20%.

Another mistake companies make is underestimating consumer attention’s power, even though it is more critical today than ever.

Capturing attention has become difficult because of the millions of pieces of content shared daily by companies and users. According to IPG, 65% of people skip video ads as soon as they recognize them. Moreover, 76% said they tend to ignore ads. That makes every piece of content not so important anymore.

It is possible to avoid this behavior by understanding what the audience wants and what generates their attention. This way, marketers can optimize business marketing campaigns by making accurate choices using complex data.

Moreover, if your chosen audience does not pay attention to the content you share, your results will suffer in several ways. For example, conversion rates will be meager, if not disastrous.

Of course, this leads to low sales and low ROI, mainly if users are not engaged emotionally.

Research has found that in the United States, nearly 2 in 3 consumers (64 percent) believe that companies have lost touch with the human element of the customer experience.

A lack of empathy in one’s content will lead the user to continue browsing without dwelling more on the marketing campaign.

What happens when the person immediately loses interest, even if the company has managed to capture their attention for the first few seconds. Therefore, empathizing with one’s target audience is of paramount importance.

Generating emotions from the audience will not only keep the interest level high but will also benefit the brand relationship, which will be able to stay in the user’s mind for a more extended period!

Understanding the kind of emotions that one’s audience feels and being able to emphasize them will lead the company to be more successful in terms of sales, thus also achieving a better ROI on the marketing campaign.

Attention and emotions are essential aspects of any marketing campaign. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how to improve these factors that influence user behavior. And most importantly, how to succeed in obtaining accurate data on which to base your decisions.

To do so, we have produced this paper that details how attention, emotions, and other factors such as predictive analytics can improve one’s marketing campaign while avoiding failure.