There has never been a better time for marketing. We have a variety of effective tools and methods available that help to know better the needs of the audience and the ways to reach it, a multitude of channels, free access to education materials – everything that makes delivering satisfying results much easier than for example a decade ago. In this situation, there is nothing worse than ignoring the achievements of modern marketing and persistently sticking to bad practices and obsolete strategies. If your marketing activities don’t bring desirable results, we have bad news: there is a possibility that you belong to this group of people whose marketing strategy is totally ineffective and all the efforts are rather useless.
If one of those 5 points describes you, it’s a signal that your marketing is so lousy that it will be better if you will give it up completely. Ready for the moment of truth?
1. Your marketing budget is tight
Maybe you have believed some “marketing gurus” that insist that it’s possible to get impressive results investing a small amount of money or completely for free. Well, maybe you’ll generate some leads or get some likes on Facebook this way, but in the long run, you won’t get results that will have even a minimal impact on your business. Marketing is an investment. Of course, it’s possible to optimize the costs, but if you’ll keep spending little on those activities, the aftermath will be proportionate – so not very notable. If you want to see real results, you need to put more money on the table but don’t worry, the ROI will make it worthwhile.
2. You are present on Facebook only
You post something on your company’s Facebook page every so often and you’re proud that you are “building your brand”, “interacting with followers” and “creating a community”. Maybe you are, but do you really benefit from it? It’s rather improbable that it will reflect on the financial results of your company. Moreover, if you limit yourself to only one social media platform, you’ll reach just a fraction of your clients and prospects. What about those that don’t have a Facebook account? As statistics show it’s more and more common nowadays. There is nothing wrong with concentrating your efforts on a single channel, but only if you’re sure that you’ll find most of your target audience there, and this assumption should be backed by an actual analysis and not just your personal opinion.
3. You create one email and click “Send to all”
There is no “segmentation” and “personalization” in your dictionary. You think that it’s enough to send one email about your offer to all the recipients to win their hearts. Well, unfortunately, we have to reveal the harsh truth: mass mailings don’t really work and are perceived as spam and even as a lack of respect for the recipients. In the era of advanced tools that allow high content adaptation to the preferences of the customer, it is hard to find any other cause of the mass communication than pure recklessness. Nowadays the customers are growing more aware and they have become more exigent, so using this kind of methods your company will only get a bad reputation.
4. You think it’s not necessary to plan a strategy
Freestyle and improvisation surely don’t work in marketing. It’s really better to don’t take any action instead of making random, one-off and separated marketing campaigns, and, what is even worse, without establishing short and long-term targets. It’s worthless and won’t bring any real outcome. There is no way to get results without a well-planned strategy with such factors as market and competition analysis, target audience and its needs, budget, KPIs, channels, and tactics taken into account. Only comprehensive efforts can be fruitful.
5. You don’t analyze and don’t learn your lessons
“It’s not about me” – you think – “I do use Analytics!”. OK, even if you do use analytic tools and have a look at the data sometimes, do you really make use of it? Do you analyze, compare, test, then analyze again and test once more? Maybe it doesn’t sound exciting, but marketing is mostly a constant analysis of your efforts and a neverending optimization. Without it, you’ll keep sending ineffective emails without even being aware that you are wasting your time and money. It’s true that many people don’t like analyzing data, but for example, A/B tests aren’t really complicated and this method can be used to optimize the results of almost everything: emails, banners, contact forms, landing pages.
You already know what your problem is and agree that your marketing sucks? There is still hope for you if you give up your marketing sins and bad habits and want to improve. Get rid of all the ineffective activities and start a new era of marketing. Seize the modern methods and technologies: Marketing Automation, content personalization, dynamic emails, artificial intelligence and Machine Learning and finally start thriving!
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