NOTE: This is written to the forward thinking marketer who has overcome the first hurdle of getting stuff done: the excuse.
“It didn’t work.”- “We tried that already.”
- “Our previous web guy / consultant / designer / gardener didn’t understand us.”
“It didn’t work.”Congratulations, you’ve made it through the hardest part. Kudos for accepting a level of responsibility for a previous marketing campaign failures and your genuine interest in seeing the fruits of your labor and improving.
Now, my people, let’s get to the nitty-gritty!
Here are 3 major reasons your marketing efforts are not successful:
1. Not Consistent
Consistency in marketing wins the race. Look at megabrands like Coca-Cola, Ford, Budweiser, and GIECO. They may be on top of their industry, but they remain consistent in their marketing efforts. For smaller brands, this is even more imperative and provides the best strategic advantage against to your competitor.
Consistency is hard work. You can almost bank on your competitor to stop investing the time and energy into blogging because she “Isn’t seeing results” after 4, 5, or 6 posts.
The cold hard truth, is it takes more than a week to see results from blogging. If you commit to 3 months, you’ll see a bump. If you commit to 6 months, you will never look back.
According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing (2012) survey, 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day acquired a customer through their blog. Blogging consistently and frequently (when you have something to say) impacts customer acquisition.
Seventy-nine percent of companies who have a blog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing this year, compared with just 20% of those companies that do not have a blog. In fact, 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basis acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who just blog monthly – still an impressive statistic!
2. Not targeted
Talking for the sake of talking is a surefire way to kill your marketing efforts. Speak when you have something to say or when answering a customer or prospective customer (I have already talked about social listening, this is a fantastic way to see an almost instant return on your social media marketing).
Take a few moments to define Personas – your targeted customer:
- What are they looking for (be specific)
- What are their painpoints?
- What words are they using to find an answer to their problems?
- What are they willing to spend?
- Where do they place and find value?
- Where do they spend their time online? Off-line?
- Who to they seek for advice?
- Who is already targeting them?
- What makes them happy? What makes them sad?
- What is the cost of them not finding an answer to their problem?
Once you answer most of these questions, you’ll find that finding topics to discuss is quite easy. You are focused on a highly-targeted group of people who are, likely, ready to buy your product, service, or interested in your brand.
Remember, 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy; further, 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Gleanster Research)
3. Not helpful
If you are diligently publishing content, working your social media channels, producing downloadable offers but not getting traction, you are not creating helpful content. Fortunately for you, this is the easiest point to fix and improve. Refocus your Personas (above) – perhaps your sales team can shed some light and help define what people are asking for on the phone.
MarketingSherpa reports that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales and that a lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. This means that you have the power to fix the problem and rock your marketing efforts.
It may be hard to admit that your work is for nothing, but regularly evaluating and tracking your return is critical to a high-performing sales machine.
Conclusion
If you would like help increasing website visitors, generating sales leads, or improving your conversation rate, I would love to help you. For 15 years, I have helped businesses grow using the power of the internet. Schedule a free marketing assessment and we can talk about making your marketing efforts successful.
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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash