Every small business can benefit from periodically updating their current marketing strategy. Some strategies may need a tweak, and some may need to start over from scratch. Refining your strategy helps you get better results and reduces the chance you will waste your time, dollars and efforts.
Here are eight red flags that indicate it’s time to revisit your current marketing strategies and invest in a new approach.
1. The Majority of Your Advertising is Paper Based
If you’re still investing in flyers, yellow pages and newspaper ads, it’s time to evaluate their effectiveness. While these mediums are still valuable, they may not be as effective as on-line channels for reaching your audience.
Inbound and online marketing can help your business connect with your ideal customer. Developing a marketing strategy that focuses on your ideal customers and focuses on their buying and value achievement helps you connect.
Once you find the interest of your ideal customer, you can begin to use online strategies to capture their attention the same way you would with paper-based methods.
2. Your Customer Experience is Unfocused
Customer satisfaction should be the cornerstone of your business. A happy customer is the proof and the result of a well-defined marketing strategy.
The journey of your customer, from learning about your business, making contacts, investigating your business, purchasing a product or services, to achieving value from the purchase, should be thought through and managed properly.
It is no longer acceptable to meet your customers’ expectations. To be a market leader you have to exceed your customer’s expectations at every point of the journey. By focusing on the customer experience, your marketing plan will be more effective, and your brand will develop a better reputation.
3. Sales and Marketing Strategies Aren’t Consistent
When a customer communicates with a sales person, they need to receive information that is consistent with your marketing strategy.
Signs that your sales and marketing strategies are inconsistent include customer dissatisfaction, disorientation and general confusion with expectations. Along with the obvious result of fewer sales.
4. You’re Selling to Everyone
If your target audience is everyone, it is too broad. To generate real results from your marketing strategy, you need to clearly define your ideal customer and make that person the object of your marketing efforts.
Demographic information can be useful;
- What is the age group your product/services appeal to?
- Are your customers more often male or female?
- What is the median income of your target audience?
- What solutions do your products/services offer?
- Where is your target audience located? Urban? Rural? Local? International?
- What are the hobbies/interests of your target market?
- Why do people use your products/services?
But psychographic information;
- Where do they look for guidance?
- What are their biggest fears and challenges?
- What defines success or value?
- What are their aspirations?
Are far more important.
Understanding all you can about your ideal customer and building detailed persona descriptions will help you clearly speak to a “person” and unify your marketing efforts.
5. You Have Little or No Engagement on Social Media
If your ideal customers utilize social media, you should think about if and how they would like to engage with your business.
If you have a social media presence, it needs to be maintained with constant interaction and engagement. If your presence has little commenting, sharing, or other engagement activity, you may need to rethink how your brand is being represented online.
Authentic and timely interaction with your audience is always the best. If you are sharing interesting, educational, and relevant information with your audience on social media your engagement will be successful.
One way to manage your social media posting is by using a calendar management system specifically designed to keep track of social media posts. Using this method, you can keep track of successful social media posts and try experimenting with stronger messaging. When you find something that “sticks,” you repeat the formula.
A word of caution: do not rely solely on automation. Your audience will appreciate authentic, real-person interaction.
6. No One Knows How to Describe Your Brand
Effective marketing tells the consumer exactly what a brand is and does. If employees and customers struggle to explain what you do, there is a serious problem with your marketing strategy.
You can determine if your brand is in trouble by trying the following exercise: Ask employees and management to sum up what your company does in three words. If the answers are consistent, you can safely assume that employees are communicating your brand effectively. If they are wildly different, you could be in trouble.
Your marketing strategy will operate as a platform your company to develop its brand. By building on the valuable elements of a business, those core assets are communicated clearly, and brand awareness is strengthened in a noticeable way.
7. Your Content is All “Salesy”
An effective online marketing strategy balances informational content with sales oriented content. Your content will need to be interesting, educational, and relevant to your audience.
Your website, blog, social media, hard copy content, and other content should support the customer in their buying and value achievement journey. If you focus too much on sales material, you’ll miss the opportunity to build a positive experience.
8. It’s Been Awhile Since Your Last Checkup
Even the best marketing companies in the world need to reevaluate their strategies from time to time. Marketing checkups were created to give businesses the opportunity to re-evaluate their marketing processes and performance.
A marketing checkup will examine the existing assets and processes in your marketing system, help identify what is working and what is not, and determine areas for future improvement.
Valens Point offers Certified and Master Designated Duct Tape Marketing consults who have mastered the art and science of small business marketing.
Our Marketing Checkup provides a thorough examination of your marketing efforts, supplies objective feedback, and provides three things you can do now to improve your marketing.
Discover what our Master Duct Tape Marketing System consultants can do for your small business today. Get started on your marketing checkup.