Four Common Failures That Strategic Marketing Helps You Avoid – Part One

If I had a choice between $10 for every time I was told a particular marketing tactic didn’t work or $100,000 for every time I heard an admission that marketing wasn’t executed properly;  I’d take the former because it’s easier to declare that something doesn’t work than to face the possibility of practitioner error.

(I know this because I have the same responses to trying to use additional, new technologies and platforms.)

My mantra is that GOOD marketing is strategic, frequent, valuable and memorable.  So in almost every case where marketing has failed it’s because there is no strategy behind the campaigns, they are launched in a silo (or what I call the “one and done”) with a single outreach, or they are done on the cheap in a flurry of trying out different marketing vehicles to see if anything sticks, and perhaps most damning, what is communicated is painfully boring and indistinguishable from the rest of the awful marketing that is assaulting your target market.

1. Lack of strategy

Very simply marketing strategy is the answer to the questions who, what, where, when, how and why.  Who is your ideal customer?  What are they like? Where do they go to get their information?  How do you best approach them?  Why would they respond to your marketing?

Futile marketing is inevitable when there are no clear set goals, definitions, and identification of who you truly want to market to (to the exclusion of all other contacts).

Rather what typically happens is a large prospect list is purchased (under the mistaken belief  that there is safety in numbers), the marketing net is cast wide, due to the large number of contacts, and the marketing message is directed at the lowest common denominator and is diluted as a result of attempting to appeal to such a wide audience.

Before you spend a dime on marketing, you need to begin by defining realistic goals and determining the amount of revenue you wish to generate.  Ask yourself the following questions:  What needs to happen for your marketing to be successful?  When you get a qualified opportunity, what is your close rate – 20 percent, 50 percent?  What is the average sales price on the transactions you close?  By knowing these two metrics and what your revenue goals are for the year, you can calculate the number of leads you must generate in order to get the needed opportunities and conversions.  No one has an unlimited budget and your marketing dollars go further the more you can segment and target your list.

Once you have a clearer vision of what your marketing needs to accomplish, you can focus on creating a profile your ideal prospect and limiting your outreach to those who fit that profile – those that truly need and value your products and services and are willing and able to pay for them.  It is far more productive to market to 100 contacts 10 times than 1,000 contacts once.  Also, the more narrow the profile of your list, the more compelling your message will be – you will be able to speak in the specific language of the prospect’s industry, position within the business and critical business challenges.

After refining your focus, the selection of which marketing tactics to use should be based on your audience (list) and the way in which they prefer to receive and consume information.  Your mix may include developing white papers for your blog, social media, and Facebook ads.  Or, if your audience is not a group that spends a lot of time online, your mix might include direct mail, speaking at local events, and webinars.  The mix of tactics requires that you understand your audience and know where they go to collect information.

2. The one-off

The one-off marketing efforts and the subsequent cynicism is something I hear about all the time.  The one-off attempt at marketing is the equivalent of putting money through a shredder.  If you think about it rationally, how many times have you been motivated to buy based on a one-time receipt of a message from an organization you’ve never heard of before?  Why would you believe that your prospects would behave any differently?

Often times the one-off begins with all good intentions – you don’t mean for it to be a one-and-done but other responsibilities of the business get in the way and months go by without follow-up campaigns to the list.  Other times, because the one-off didn’t generate any leads, a business owner will come to the conclusion that the tactic didn’t work.  But the truth is, all of us need to hear a message several times before it registers any mindshare – and we need to hear it, read it, see it, in regular intervals.

To combat falling victim to the one-off, develop the entire plan, including the content, in one sitting and put it on the calendar.  When the time comes to launch the next step, review the messaging and refine as needed.  You will find that it is much easier to touch up the message than to start again from scratch and face a blank screen.

Continued in Part Two