Have you analyzed your marketing this quarter? Here are some insights to consider for the New Year.
1. You Don’t Have A Strategy
A marketing strategy is the business’s overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services. Most business owners that seek my coaching services come because they don’t have an effective strategy. They have never spent time working on their businesses and don’t have clear marketing goals. A marketing strategy is only part of the marketing plan. Here are some examples of marketing strategies – content marketing, email marketing, email marketing, referral marketing, promotions, influencer marketing just to mention a few. Start today to have a strategy in place. It’s not too late. Just start.
2. You Don’t Understand Your Customers
When I was a student at Uni, I worked part-time for a company called BMRB as a telephone researcher calling up customers who had purchased bathroom equipment. It seemed really tedious at the time but later I realized how much this market research was so important to my clients. Improvements were made to the product because of the research.
So today I ask, ”What you are doing to understand your customers better and therefore serve them better?”
3. You Don’t Provide A Call To Action
If you don’t tell your customer what to do they won’t do it. Have you always noticed how influencers on Youtube despite having thousands of followers always tell their audience to subscribe to their channel and turn on the notification bell? That’s how they grow their followers. What do you tell your customers do to after offering them value? Here are some examples:
• Learn More
• Sign Up
• Download
• Contact Us
• Shop Now
• Book Now
• Watch More
• Apply Now
• Subscribe now
4. You Have Poor Targeting
I say this time and time again. You can’t serve everyone. You have to niche down to target the right audience. Your target audience is no longer just about your target demographics i.e. age, location, hobbies of your ideal client. You’ve got to dig deeper and understand their deepest fears and pain, their buying motives, possible objections and then communicate how you can solve it.
5. You Are Not Patient
Marketing success takes time. It takes time for your target audience to know you, like you, and trust you. If you have been marketing for a month that is not enough time to determine if it’s working. It takes a least 6 months to know if your marketing campaign is working for you. Consistency is key because you might be tempted to give up while your strategy is still developing.
6. Your Product Or Service Isn’t Great
If you are not getting a flood of testimonials from your customers or referrals then your product or service isn’t great but that doesn’t mean you can’t improve it. Remember to do research and ask customers how you can serve them better.
7. You Make It Difficult For Customers To Buy
Have you ever been on a website and been interested in the product but it’s difficult to buy because the instructions are not clear or there are not enough payment options. You have to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy.
8. You Didn’t Analyze Your Marketing Campaigns
A campaign is a specific strategic effort at promoting something. For example, right now, I have been assisting one of my clients with marketing campaigns. As it’s doing well, the campaign will keep running but if it wasn’t doing well, we would keep the goal but change the tactic.
9. You Didn’t Test Or Adjust
It’s rare to find a business owner who starts in business and gets their marketing right straight away unless of course, they hire an expert. You will test a lot of strategies to find the best ones that work for your business and make adjustments where necessary. One of the principles of good marketing is to test and test and keep testing.
10. You haven’t invested in a marketing coach
With their experience in marketing, a marketing coach can come up with an effective marketing strategy for your business and push you to achieve your goals. They can help you analyze your marketing and help you identify the gaps. They can also help you to activate new strategies which will ensure your performance advances to the next level.
I hope you find the above insights useful and start today to improve your marketing.
