Why your Marketing Strategies need a Reboot
These days, traditional marketing channels such as email marketing, mass mailings, TV and radio ads, billboards, newspaper and magazine ads have a decreasing effectiveness as each year passes. Internet marketing not only reaches a larger audience, it’s can be monitored with accurate analytics, and it is much more affordable.
44% of Email Marketing is never opened.- 86% of TV commercials are skipped.
- 91% of Email users have unsubscribed from a brand’s email list that they had once opted into.
- For newspapers, 2015 might as well have been a recession year. Weekday circulation fell 7% and Sunday circulation fell 4%, both showing their greatest declines since 2010.
Personally I delete 20-40 marketing emails a day (of those that make it past my spam folder) without reading beyond the subject line. Unfortunately even a few legitimate emails can be caught in the firing line because so many are spam, junk and even malicious. As a rule, a company who is emailing without prior approval or using spamming and illegal techniques, is corrupting their brand before they’d even had a chance to present their sales pitch. And don’t get me started on cold calls. I hang up on 99% of them during the pause and click before they start speaking.
So how can you find creative ways to engage users?
Each brand, company and industry has a unique niche, skillset and knowledge base regarding their services, products and the demographics of their customers. Take off your hat as a business owner and marketing manager, and put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What questions do they ask you? What needs do they need filled? What do they enjoy about your specific product/service the most? What tweaks in your customer service or delivery would they appreciate? If you’ve had complaints, was there a common denominator to cause their dissatisfaction? How can you modify your services and products so you are ahead of the curve of your competitors?
Writing down thoughtful answers to these questions above will start to formulate honest answers on how you can improve what you’re already doing, stay current in industry trends, and find new ways to attract customers and retain loyalty of existing ones. If you discover glaring flaws and redundant issues in your business as you research these questions, you cannot yet start marketing.
Marketing an Impaired Brand or Flawed Product is like Swimming Upstream
Have you ever tried to swim against the current? It’s frustraing, tiring and usually results in failure. Marketing a flawed brand produces the same results. Marketing is not only about advertising what you do, because if what you do has inefficiencies, glaring issues, or poor delivery, all the best advertising in the world is only going to take you so far. Marketing is a lot easier if you are confident you’re providing the best quality, most cost-effective product with the most organized, easy-to-use and professional delivery. If you have a host of negative reviews and a bad reputation in your market, your brand is impaired. So your immediate marketing goal is fixing the issues at hand first.
I will have no issue telling a client that all the marketing efforts in the world will not work if they have a product or service that is not worthy of marketing. Once those issues are handled and improved, a rebranding is in order to publicize the newly improved product or service, the new location, the new staff, new management, or whatever was causing the brand blemishes.
And if your product is satisfactory but is stagnant, you may be profitable in the present but what does your future hold? As they say, if you’re not growing, your business is dying.
“In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying so get in motion and grow.” – Lou Holtz
So spend time with yourself and your staff to think of ways to tweak, grow, expand, improve and stay ahead of the trends. All of these improvements are inspiration for your content marketing among all your marketing channels. Showcase your continually striving efforts to provide the best product with the best customer service, and you’ll never lack quality, shareable content.
Planning and creating new marketing strategies.
Small business owners wear many hats, work longer hours and have an endless to-do list.
“Business owners work an estimated 60 hours a week, according to Inc. However, a UK study revealed that entrepreneurs worked about 52 hours a week on average, or 63 percent longer than other workers, Real Business reported.” – Inc.com
How do you find the time to plan out your marketing strategy for the coming months? Well, how do you find time to meet with clients, contractors and partners? You schedule it. Schedule time for yourself alone. Find a quiet space that you feel comfortable in, away from endless pings, alerts and rings of your phone, emails, texts and social media notifications. It’s time to go old-school … grab a latte, a notepad and pen, and begin plotting out ideas for expanding your marketing reach, improving your services, and excelling among your competitors.
Think about your customers individually and as a group, ponder over lost prospects, research what areas of marketing have worked thus far, what you haven’t yet tried and which ones no longer produce the ROI they once did. The way we receive information is changing and evolving rapidly, and the type of content people are choosing to read has also evolved. And more importantly, the factors that instill trust and credibility have changed.
Content marketing is about answering questions, connecting with your audience, encouraging and motivating them without the sales pitch. Content marketing comes in many shapes and sizes: blogs, social media, website content, infographics, podcasts, videos, photos, newsfeeds, workshops, special events, and the list goes on and on. That’s where you need to put on your creative hats on and think outside the box.
How can you reach your audience in a new, exciting and engaging format that draws them in, entertains or teaches them and converts them to customers over time? Over the next year, we’ll be talking about creative marketing strategies you can implement easily and effectively. So follow this blog or don’t hesitate to contact my company for creative marketing strategies.
