Persistence is important in marketing. If you give up too soon, you could miss a huge opportunity. On the other side of the equation, if you are trying to fly a lead balloon, it is best to stop before wasting any more time and money.
I want to inspire you with some questions about your marketing, and your business challenges. You don’t have to answer, but I hope you will. So, let’s start thinking about some things that can ground your marketing.
Know When to Change Course
How do you define the point when it is no longer productive to keep doing what you are doing? If you don’t know when to implement changes, it can destroy your company. What is the right answer? Is it when the competition starts taking away market share? Is it when the budget runs out? Is it when the company goes completely broke? Is it before all of this begins to go wrong, and you can take a proactive approach? Let’s consider this quandary, because although it may not be comfortable, knowing when to make changes is imperative to the growth of a company.
Have you ever pulled the plug on a marketing campaign? I have, and sometimes it was too late, but other times it was too early. I lived, and I learned. It sometimes felt like I was one of The Wright Brothers, crashing airplane after airplane trying to get it right. If you have ever really tried to make a business fly, you have probably felt the same way. Sure, there is value in mistakes, but there is even more value in learning to avoid them!
Look at the efforts in this early flight video, and tell me if it feels a bit familiar to you.
Marketing really doesn’t need to be so painful. The information you need to know is right there at your fingertips. Yes, right there at the computer you are gazing into, but it will only help if you learn how to use it. Even then, it does no good if you don’t actually make the tough decision of putting it into action.
If Your Marketing Won’t Fly, You Need to Know Why
How do you avoid the failures and cut straight to the part when your marketing soars like an eagle? That is tricky, and it is as unique as the company itself. You cannot eliminate all mistakes, but you can come a lot closer, don’t you think? I think we all can.
Something that many companies hesitate to embrace is that a marketing campaign should be carefully researched, or it should not be launched at all. When companies neglect the value of market research and planning, it is usually because they have already reached a point of desperation. This is often geared to cut corners, but it is about the worst place to make cuts. Another reason I see companies skip market research and planning is because they simply fail to realize how much they don’t know about growing a business. They may know their business, but know little about how to make the business grow.
Shortsighted marketing is especially common as social media marketing has become a perceived savior of the business world. This can all be used to your advantage, but not if you are doing the same things, and making the same marketing mistakes the competitors are.
Social Media Made Marketing Easy … Mistakes and All!
During my 20 plus years in marketing, I have made a lot of observations. What I have seen in recent years is a far greater tendency for under-funded and poorly planned companies to try and emulate competitors, rather than stand on their own unique merits. I call it imitation marketing, and imitation marketing means imitating failures, too. It does not fly well.
Along with the social media marketing craze where everybody wants to become a marketing professional, a lot of talent has been discovered. Far more often, it has led to massive amounts of waste created by squillions of people trying to earn as they learn, instead of earning based on their experience, knowledge, and marketing talent. I’m not exaggerating when I say that social media has as many downsides as it does upsides, and this is a huge downside!
Projections became more like a drunken bar room shootout for a lot of companies, and based less on solid mathematics and science, and more on luck. This makes absolutely no sense to me, because there is no other form of marketing that is more measurable than that which is performed with a computer. Computers record data and organize it very nicely, but some people still question the measurement, or the ability to hit the target. That sounds completely absurd to me, but then again, I have worked with it every day, since the 1990’s.
A Crash at the Air Show
Firing into the crowd and hoping something hits the target is popular, but it yields a low return on investment (ROI). In military or police terms, it is a “spray and pray” effort. If you spray enough bullets, and pray to the warrior gods, you may get through the battle alive.
Failure to implement a proper marketing strategy is often why small businesses remain small. I don’t think it is because they don’t want to do more business, but rather because they are overwhelmed.
There is much more to running any business than just the marketing. A challenge exists in realizing that good marketing is what makes a company successful. Marketing is what makes the difference between Coca Cola and other drinks that didn’t make it. It is a pretty terrible area to make mistakes, or take shortcuts.
There are many potential points of failure in any organization, but making your company more marketable, and actually marketing it well, can make the difference between huge success and utter failure. It makes the difference in whether it will fly, or it will not.
What Challenges Your Marketing Flight?
I want to know what you think. What are your biggest challenges, or the challenges you see other companies facing? What do you think companies are missing in their marketing? Is it ineffective market research, lack of marketing creativity, failure to budget, fear of loss, or the monster of all monsters … complacence?
You name it … I want your opinions, and I hope your insight may help others.
Let’s do some learning together. I would not ask you these questions if I didn’t want to learn, too. If you struggle with an answer, here is another way to look at it: What obstacles do you think hold a company back from hiring an experienced flight engineer like myself? Please share your insight.
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