Throw out your marketing strategies — 3 Reasons they aren’t working.

Photo by Hidde van Esch on Unsplash

You can throw away all your marketing techniques —

1. SEO/Keyword Strategy
2. Social media marketing strategy
3. Email marketing strategy
4. Text message marketing strategy

All that strategy isn’t much of a plan. If you don’t have a product or service that people want. You haven’t reached product-market fit to use the jargon of the VC crowd.

So, why aren’t your marketing strategies working?

Before we get to the reasons, I think it is beneficial to understand the broader context. We are living in a heavily saturated advertising culture. In short, it’s really freakin’ noisy out there. Your companies product is just a drop in the entire advertising landscape.

Our brains can only handle a few things at a time. It’s critical to get things right. So with that context out of the way, let’s dive it.

Here are three main reasons why marketing strategies have failed across a variety of different clients and industries.

1. Lack of Research (Pray and Spray Method)

Failing to understand your audience accurately is an enormous mistake. It’s the first item on the list because clients, leadership, and executives can get in the way. When people piecemeal a commercial, it becomes bland and mediocre at best. At worst, it wastes significant capital. Lack of research can also be caused by pride. They are then surprised when the campaign doesn’t get the results they were hoping, planning on.

If you don’t care to understand what your customer is wanting, desiring, or needing. You will fail to sell anything well. It takes time to understand their perspectives and needs.

You sought impressions over quality. The trouble is, it’s so easy to do, and it is easy to get tricked by ad platforms. You got suckered into contributing to building Facebook and Google.

Congrats.

You’re not alone, a lot of businesses have done it too. In 2018, Facebook’s ad revenue accounted for $54.4B, and Google raked in $116B. That’s a lot of money spent on advertising platforms.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

That’s a lot of potential waste if companies aren’t performing ample research.

In the past year, I’ve blocked 359k ads as of this writing.

A single year, that’s nearly a thousand ads a day. That breaks down to 41.6 ads per hour.

So to say that we’re overwhelmed with direct advertising is an understatement. Your organization must learn to cease moments to garner press.

I wonder, what would happen to sales do if you stopped all your campaigns? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Before you rush off and spend all your money on ads, like everyone else.

Think about the context of where these ads are appearing. Google Search. Google Banner Ads. Google Ad Network. Facebook Ads. Instagram Ads.

• Do you click on ads?
• Do you have an ad-blocker?
• How many ads actually work?
• Did you go from browsing to customer in a few clicks?

It’s more likely that your customers are purchasing products on the previously mentioned platforms. platforms you know, Google, Amazon, Instagram Products or Facebook Marketplace. This makes it incredibly difficult for startups who’s potential clients know nothing about their company. It’s a long shot. For startups, you’ve got to connect personally.

If you did more research, you’d realize who is buying your product and why they are buying it. Then you’d be able to sell to more people who have the same why.

If you did more research, you’d realize potential customers are buying similar products. If you could understand why they are buying one product over the other, then you’d get more sales. That will make your marketing more effective.

What is more likely is that you were probably already thinking about purchasing a similar product. You wanted to know the price point and compared the two products. People you know, knew the brand or you knew about the company and they re-targeted you with their ads cause you sought them out.

Avoid this pitfall by taking time to do the following:

1. Perform more market research.
2. Run low-cost experiments to gauge results.
3. Listen to what people are saying, and doing.
4. Also pay attention to what they aren’t saying, and doing.
5. Continue to do it over 6 months.
6. Measure results.
7. Reinvest your spend.

2. Overreacting to Criticism (Changing too much too Soon)

Here’s the truth. People will judge your work, your product, and your service based on their experience with it.

Once you launch a product, service, or campaign. You’re going to get criticism. That’s okay.

People are great at giving their opinions and you have got to learn how to deal with them.

The number of times that I’ve had clients get feedback from people prior to launch, and let that opinion impact their confidence on a decision they made. They want to change things. They want to tweak everything.

Instead. Launch it!

Then be patient and let it sit.

If you are constantly tweaking launched creative, you aren’t focused on new creative. You are looking in the rearview.

In our noisy environment, you’ve got 0.25 seconds to say something above the fold. People will bounce, that’s cool, we all do it. After that, you’ve got a minute, then they decide if they like you. Win or lose. It’s the name of the game. The person giving feedback is probably personally too close.

Unless, they are campaign creators, run thousands of ads, or running your campaign. Maybe you shouldn’t take a friends feedback, so critically.

It is your job to sell. That’s the challenge of marketing on the web. You have to get attention, keep it all the while creating desire for your product.

This is why email marketing and drip campaigns are so effective, because you are sending them constant reminders.

Hey, we are here for you.
We got your back.
If you ever need us.
Then, they have a need.
Neurons start firing.
They click the CTA.

As a leader, the truth is, you feel uneasy. You have a hunch and are somewhat confident, but there’s always an element of speculation to campaigns. You want clear feedback.

So you ask your friends for feedback on this piece of creative or campaign.

They tell you one of two things, what you want to hear or what they think.

Neither of which is really that helpful.

This causes you to overthink it. You go back to the drawing board, edit, refine, and iterate.

But that’s when the error occurs.

You never slowed down to consider the person who gave you the feedback.

1. Do they understand your target market?
2. What are they really saying?
3. Are they your ideal client?

If you change too much too soon. You won’t have the opportunity to learn. You won’t be able to measure it. If you are always reacting to opinion, you’ll be caught in this never-ending loop of uncertainty.

So my advice to people in charge of running campaigns, stop overreacting to criticism. Opinions are going to vary, that’s okay. We can all calm down and stop letting the executives, friends, or co-workers hinder productivity.

You’re trying to create awareness, and doing your job. Don’t overthink it.

Now, go do it.

3. Vague and Bland (Not Invoking Desire)

If your product or service is excellent, then people will come back. Don’t believe me, what’s your favorite restaurant?

What’s your favorite dish?
Who were you with last time you had it?

Man, I love that place, it’s so good!

Let’s go together.

Boom.

I just invoked desire.

What about your favorite pair of shoes, shirt, or pants? All of these things, you know very well and you want to keep buying them as long as they keep getting made.

All great experiences are memorable. You’ve likely told other people about these items or the brand. A great campaign is about just needing to remind others why it’s so good, or useful.

People don’t want mediocre crap. So focus on improving your product and service. Connect with customers in real ways, have a conversation and let that become the advertisement.

Learn to step aside and let other people tell you why it means a lot to them. That will connect and engage people.

People connect best with people.

Why has Popeye’s garnered so much media coverage about their chicken sandwich over the past couple of months?

They invoked desire.

We humans aren’t that complex for all our complexity. You either want it or don’t.

Let’s step back and think more broadly. What do you do every day? How do you spend your time? Look into performing a time audit.

What is your routine?

What do you actually need? You need food, water, shelter.

But what do you want? What do your customers want? You want to be loved and liked. You desire many things, and most likely, you aspire to be seen as successful. You want the campaign to perform well to keep your job, win over the boss, make money, etc.

So the next time you are in a group strategizing about a campaign. You should focus on eliciting desire from your customers. Sell the group of people on invoking desire.

Focus on people why your goods are superior.

Quick Recap:

1. Always spend time doing research about your target market. Stop the pray and spray method.
2. Learn to let go of overreacting to criticism and then making changes without seeing results.
3. Take the time to invoke desire, sell the story, and let people decide to purchase your product. Don’t be vague and bland.

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