Marketing is a never ending game of trial and error. Even the best companies and agencies develop strategies that fall flat. That is simply the nature of marketing as it is a constantly shifting landscape with an always moving target.
That being said, there are some common reasons that marketing efforts fail and being aware of these can increase our chances of success.
- Not speaking to your core audience
The first and arguably most important is not speaking to the challenges, needs or concerns of your core audience. To often, companies will focus on their own offering (We have amazing “insert amazing thing”) or (our product can do xyz). Instead your messaging should be focused on your audience (Here are your challenges, this is how xyz can help. Ultimately, you should always be asking “how are we providing value to our audience/customer?” and then create messaging to convey this.
- Content strategies that are not agile
Too often, companies will develop a content strategy and that is what they will adhere to for months on end. Yes, there is typically some A/B testing but the overarching theme is generally a singular focus that is in place for 3 months to a year. In the current landscape, a single month can be an eternity. Public perception and trends are shifting constantly and a content strategy that is effective today might completely miss the mark in a month. Content development should be a constantly evolving process with room to test, learn and revise frequently.
- To narrowly focused
Audiences are everywhere and your content needs to be as well. A common mistake is narrowing your market to a few, or even a single channel because “that’s where are customer base is”. The fact of the matter is, CEO’s are on TikTok and teenagers still end up on Facebook. The point it, your audience can be anywhere and your brand should be taking advantage of as many channels as possible. In a perfect world, you would create individual content per channel but in a world of resource constraints you can still easily re-purpose content across multiple channels for minimal effort.
- Lack of Internal Alignment
Ensuring your marketing goals are aligned with your internal goals and sales goals is imperative. This guarantees your marketing efforts are bringing in the “right” customer who is more likely to convert. Marketing and sales teams are separate but also closely tied together across many organizations and a disconnect between the two can severely hamper growth. If marketing does not target correctly the sales team cannot effectively convert customers, alternatively sales is on the front lines with the consumer and needs to provide critical feedback to marketing based on the trends they see.
- Using their data correctly
No-one can tell you more about your audience than your audience and too many companies do not properly leverage their 1st party data from conversions and engagement. This is the best way to determine what is actually working. Once you find something that is working, the approach should be to double down and do more of it for as long as it continues to be effective. This can be weeks, months or even years. The important thing is to constantly be monitoring and adjusting based on what your actual customer trends tell you. While you are doubling down on what worked, you can test new things on a smaller scale so there is a constant flow of content and exposure.
Marketing is a constantly shifting target
The answer for how to properly market will always be changing but avoiding these mistakes can help keep you on the right track regardless of current trends.