Does Your Marketing Suck?
Does your marketing suck? It probably does since you found your way here. Or maybe, you’re just curious how the other half promotes their products and services. Either way, we’re glad you’re way here to learn why your marketing strategy doesn’t produce results or drive sales – or at least not as much as you like.
Whether you’re an aspiring marketer or an experienced manager leading an organization’s marketing department, you know that customers are at the center of any business. They’re the ones who ultimately decide on success or failure. Therefore, adopting customer-centricity has become the go-to model for most business leaders.
The key to doing that falls on your marketing strategy. If you don’t have a powerful one in place, you’re not going to acquire or retain customers as you like. Therefore, in this post, we’ll share three reasons your marketing strategy probably sucks so you can make necessary adjustments and get back on track to improve ROI and brand/product awareness.
3 Reasons Your Marketing Strategy Probably Sucks
If you consider marketing to be somewhat elusive, you’re not alone. You’re in good company, so you shouldn’t feel bad because sometimes, constructive criticism is the key to unlocking improvements and solutions. Therefore, here are three reasons your marketing strategy probably sucks:
1. No Differentiation or Unique Selling Proposition
One of the first things you should ask yourself as a marketer is, “Why should a customer pick me over my competitors?” If you don’t differentiate your products, services, and brand, you will quickly become a commodity in your industry and market space. In other words, you need to determine what makes you different or stand out from your competitors and focus all of your marketing and branding around this differentiation.
By doing this, you will no longer be just an option for customers but the go-to place to get a particular product or service. You could foster a similar consumer thought process established by giants in respective industries, such as Apple, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Nike, etc.
For example, when consumers think of coffee, they think of Starbucks. Similarly, if consumers want a new smartphone, they instantly imagine owning a new iPhone. These brands have taken some steps to be different. They have combined the physical characteristics of their business, products, and services to elicit an emotional response that is triggered by their brand, customer experience, visual presentation, and even price.
2. Chasing Customers Instead of Drawing them Toward Your Business
This is something most marketers struggle with, especially when starting. “Chasing” has been the go-to or default customer acquisition method for a long time. However, this strategy has become obsolete due to its ineffectiveness and time consumption.
Instead, companies should look to position their businesses rather than prospecting so that potential customers chase them. The world is full of people that may not be interested in your products or services. Instead of focusing your efforts on them, you should target those looking for your value offerings by meeting their demands or solving their problems.
The following are some highly-effective positioning strategies you can adopt in your marketing strategy:
▪ Public relations
▪ Direct mail
▪ Writing (blog posts, articles in print publications, such as magazines, brochures, etc.)
▪ Webinars
▪ SEO and PPC
▪ Lead magnets (subscriptions, free consultations, samples, surveys, etc.)
Prospecting strategies have undoubtedly worked well in the past. However, in the digital age, where millions of consumers are easily vexed by unwanted products, services, and ads, they’re not nearly as effective as they used to be. Positioning strategies bring customers to your doorstep, so they already know what to expect from your business, at least in terms of core value offerings.
You can also take advantage of growth hacking, which is not too different from traditional marketing. Simply put, if you’re going to chase anything, chase a lot of small growth opportunities according to your vision, positioning strategy, and value proposition. Once you have a dedicated audience, you can pursue new acquisition and retention tactics based on segmentation.
3. Not Prioritizing Marketing
There’s no point in spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on acquiring resources and tools to develop a marketing strategy if you don’t implement it properly. The problem here is that many business owners fail to act like business owners. They only focus on their core competencies and activities, which typically don’t include marketing or advertising.
By not making marketing a priority early on, they end up suffering huge losses in the long run in terms of sales and bottom line. So, whether you’re a start-up or a growing business, you should make time for marketing every day. You don’t have to spend your whole day on it. A couple of hours should suffice, granted you know what you’re doing.
You could update your blog section with a new post, engage with your followers on social media, create a PPC ad, or even make a video or podcast. However, whatever you do, make sure you do your homework to determine the best mix of channels and practices to get the best results. Moreover, make sure you track all your activities not just for accountability but also for learning.
A/B testing is an important aspect of marketing in the digital age. Over time, you’ll discover some strategies to be more effective than others. However, to get there, you’ll have to experiment a bit (or a lot).
Conclusion
Marketing is regarded as the most important aspect of building and running a business as it will lead prospects to your digital or physical door front. Therefore, you need to ensure you give it time and energy and keep pace with the latest technologies and practices in your industry and the overall market.
Hopefully, by the end of this post, you should be able to answer the question, “Does your marketing suck?”. More importantly, you can use our tips above to fix or revamp your marketing strategy to improve sales, ROI, and bottom line.
