Total Marketing Solutions

When your best marketing efforts remain unsuccessful, you’re understandably left wondering why, why why? So you send out some more direct mail, refresh your website with a tweak here and a bit of SEO there. You might even attend a trade show or buy some advertising, but still you’re left with poor sales.Why is this? The simple answer is that your marketing efforts need to be more than just a random series of tasks. Truly effective marketing is not just a single activity - it’s a well-planned  strategic approach. Here are the top five biggest marketing mistakes we often see companies make along the way:1: MARKETING WITHOUT A STRATEGY Some companies believe their product does everything, that their target market is anyone who has money to spend and that they don’t have competition. But for your marketing to really succeed, you need to define a target market segment where your product/service has the most relevance and the best competitive advantage. Research your competition and their strengths and weaknesses to compare with your own competitive advantage. Once you identify your key advantage over the competition, build this into every marketing activity, choosing marketing vehicles that only cater to a clearly defined group of potential buyers. Now you have a marketing strategy, so now you can develop a calendar of events and associated budget to help you maximise every penny of your marketing budget.2: MARKETING AND SALES GAPEver developed sales materials that never get used by the sales team? Often marketing teams spend time, effort and money creating sales collateral, only for the sales team to reject it because it doesn’t do the job. Not having a clear integration between sales and marketing can result in failed marketing programs, costing you lost revenue opportunities and wasted expenditure.Instead, ask your sales team to participate in marketing planning. Set up a sales advisory committee for both sales management and representatives to provide feedback on proposed marketing programs. Without uniting sales and marketing departments, marketing strategies are only achieving one-half of the equation.3:  INCONSISTENT BRANDINGIn other words, changing your company’s positioning depending on the audience, marketing vehicle used or even person delivering it. This results in a confused audience—unsure of who you are and what your company does. Brand awareness is only built by consistently communicating your company’s position and identity, so that your audience will repeat your positioning exactly as you intend it.To achieve this, it’s important to clearly define who you are and what you offer. Put together a statement that everyone agrees upon, understands and - crucially - supports. This positioning statement must include who you are, what you offer, for whom, for what result and why someone should choose you over anyone else. Then carry out a full audit of all your marketing materials to eliminate any inconsistencies.4: NOT USING THE MARKETING MIX EFFECTIVELY.Using only one marketing vehicle to promote a company and/or its products is a common mistake, especially in this digital age. Many existing marketing plans we see only focus on one activity - direct mail, advertising, public relations - and do not integrate these activities for maximum effect.It’s key to choose a marketing mix that caters specifically to your target market, before creating a schedule to ensure the required coverage across multiple channels. This takes time, but a variety of vehicles, working in concert, will build awareness and generate leads at a far higher rate than any one vehicle alone.5. MARKETING SOMETHING YOU CAN’T DELIVER.Your marketing team has created eye-catching materials and an aggressive campaign for the launch of a new company product or service. The campaign is very successful, but operations cannot handle the demands. They do not have the ability to deliver. Or maybe, the product itself is not available in time, or has production problems. This upsets your customers and demoralizes your sales and marketing team. They stop selling and the pipeline dries up.It’s important to realign the efforts of marketing and operations by assessing what needs to happen to meet any new business demands. If you then create a plan to detail the specific steps required for each team to support existing sales, as well as successfully rolling out the offering to new customers, this will only build confidence within each team and avoid any potential hiccups.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS