How to Get Your Business Back
to the Basics
The following is adapted from Building Your Digital Utopia by Frank Cowell.
These days, people have more options than ever for promoting their brands and businesses. The landscape has become quite cluttered as countless point-and-click tools, service providers, and “gurus” have come on the scene claiming to make growing a company easy.
Paradoxically, all of these options are making things harder because of increased fragmentation. People are confronted with an endless array of channels and outreach methods that change almost every day.
Unlike other skills, it’s more difficult than ever to learn the crafts of marketing and sales, get good at them, and refine them over time, because tactics keep changing and there’s a barrage of information that is impossible to keep up with. It was my realization of this paradox that inspired me to find a better way.
How can you attract customers when there’s so much noise?
How do you differentiate yourself when so many competitors are vying for attention both on- and offline?
Since it’s easier than ever to get started, it’s also easier for new entrants to come on the scene and blindside established competitors.
Nobody is safe.
At the same time, customers have less loyalty to brands than they once did. The physical and mental cost of switching brands has never been smaller, so people are quick to make the jump, which has left companies scrambling to keep customers in an endless game of cat and mouse.
According to an article in Forbes, “The erosion of consumer loyalty among the most esteemed brands represents a changed philosophy of buying. The standard for brand switching is no longer the failure of a brand to perform, but rather its inability to seem like an entirely new and interesting option at every single purchase cycle.”
Seeing and experiencing this situation, I set out to create a framework that would help companies get back to basics, shifting away from the countless tactics and shiny objects that are so confusing. My goal was to find an effective way to raise awareness and engage potential customers amidst the noise.
Above and beyond our product, how can we make people fall in love with our brand and create loyal, raving fans despite the increasing number of competitors?
A HOLISTIC GROWTH STRATEGY
In this book, I will present a holistic growth strategy aligns your marketing, sales, and customer service teams into a single powerhouse growth team, systematically transforming strangers into raving fans in the digital age.
The core focus is the belief that businesses must have a paradigm shift in how they think about sales, marketing, and service. Today, it’s no longer about closing deals — it’s about creating and elevating relationships with your
target audience.
Not long ago, I met with the leaders of a company that has a whopping $2.5 million media budget, and in talking to them, I realized they had no idea what results they were getting for their money. In terms of real leads and opportunity, they had only acquired a handful of new prospects, but they kept spending the money with a “check the box” mentality.
“We’re not sure what sort of return we’re getting for our money,” they said, “but we know we have to get our brand out there. It’s part of the game we have to play to keep up with our competitors.”
They’re not alone. Many business leaders and marketers are doing things simply because they feel like they are supposed to. It is this mindset that I’m trying to change. The approach of many companies today is so wide and
scattered that the effectiveness of their marketing activities is very low.
Talk to anyone doing digital marketing today, and they’ll tell you that cost per click, cost per lead, and cost per acquisition are all going up, with no end in sight.
Despite this, companies continue to go wide. Every time a new platform appears, they feel an obligation to embrace it. “Oh, Snapchat is a thing now? I guess we’d better start using that platform, as well.” That’s the attitude.
The business community is so tactically obsessed that they’ve forgotten about the basics. They fail to put together a strategy centered on specific buyer personas that they have a real chance of making an impact on.
The problem has less to do with their content than with their approach. I find this is true in many areas of life, both personally and professionally.
For example, I’ve met people who are miserable at work.
They think their job — the content — is the problem when in reality it’s their
approach to the current job that needs to change. There are people struggling in unhappy personal relationships who think the solution is to end the relationship and find another one, but all they really need to change is
their approach.
The same holds true when it comes to creating and growing an audience. So many people bounce from one platform to the next: “Blogging didn’t work, let’s try Instagram. Instagram didn’t work, let’s engage on LinkedIn.”
They go from tactic to tactic, activity to activity, constantly changing the content, but failing to change their overall approach.
This is a struggle at the executive level, with CEOs, COOs, and entrepreneurs constantly shifting tactics without seeing much return. It’s a struggle among marketers as well: VPs, CMOs, and others who are tasked with growing brand awareness.
It’s also a source of tremendous stress and frustration on the sales side. At all levels, growing an audience has become harder, more confusing, and more
expensive than ever.
My message for all of them is simple: If you will get clear on your approach to growth and relentlessly execute, you will begin to outpace your competitors. It won’t matter if your approach is less than perfect — those who relentlessly execute a halfway decent plan will always outperform those who only execute when things are perfect.
Relentless execution creates the most important factor for growth: momentum.
For more advice on getting your business back to the basics, you can find Building Your Digital Utopia on Amazon.
FRANK COWELL is CEO at Digitopia, a digital strategy agency that works with CEOs, CMOs, and VPs of Marketing who want to create amazing brand experiences while accelerating growth. A self-taught programmer with a deep understanding of technology and twenty years of digital marketing experience, Frank enjoys a unique blend of brand development and marketing savvy that enables him to offer fresh perspectives on often-complex marketing concepts. An energetic and entertaining speaker, Frank regularly presents to national and regional organizations on topics related to strategy, sales, and marketing. He lives in San Diego with his wife and four children.
