How many times have you seen someone post or heard someone say “Facebook ads don’t work for me” or “my marketing never works” and maybe even “I am giving up, I have done EVERYTHING possible and still no one is buying my goodies!”. You might have even thought this yourself. I know I certainly have.
Marketing works
It has existed for a very, very long time. I remember wandering around the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in my early 20’s listening to the sweaty college student/guide talk in broken English about the first evidence of branding and marketing existing on a fish sauce bottle that was so old my mind could not comprehend it. He then took us to the naughty area and pointed out the wall art in what was supposedly a brothel. It was a “menu” of services so to speak, all nudie rudies doing adult activities. That right there amongst the ancient ruins was marketing.
So why doesn’t your marketing work?
Most people give up when they don’t get results immediately. They’re giving up too fast! Instead of making small tweaks and focusing on the continuous improvement of their marketing strategy they try an approach for a short period of time, don’t track any of the numbers and then they declare it a massive failure and move on to the next marketing adventure. You can’t do that. That isn’t how marketing works.
3 STEPS MUST DO STEPS TO MAKE YOUR MARKETING 'WORK'
Decide on the objective before you start
Do you want to increase subscribers? Do you want to send traffic to your web store? Do you want to increase sales on a specific product or service? Do you want to generate inquiries? You have to know what the measurable outcome is and then you have to measure it. Be realistic with your numbers. If you think placing an ad in front of 100 people will generate 50 sales you’re probably in for disappointment.
Map out the potential customer journey
Each step of your customer journey is trackable so use it to your advantage. If you’re going to run paid ads then set yourself up a spreadsheet and assign goals to each step your potential customer will take. Even posting on Instagram or Facebook has a trackable element so free marketing counts too!
Improve one step at a time
You know that old saying “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”. If you haven’t heard that old chestnut it means don’t throw something good out when you toss the bad. Marketing 101 there people!
When you track the numbers (even I am getting sick of hearing me say that) you can see which bit or bits of your marketing aren’t working. Instead of chucking the entire thing you focus just on what isn’t working. This saves you so much time, frustration and money when you’re marketing.
What if your marketing works without tracking it?
Maybe you struck business gold! You chucked your net out into the world with no clue about objectives, numbers, conversions and all that junk and you don’t care because you’re banking coin. Awesome. Until it stops working. You can have the best marketing in the world but if you don’t know where to look when sales dip you’re in a precarious position.
When the marketing party stops…
I have seen this time and time again, first with Google changing its spirit animal (some weird algorithm called a Penguin or some such madness) that meant businesses who had enjoyed first page Google rankings no longer showed in search results. From ringing hot phones and constant email inquiry dings to silence overnight. With no clue where the leads were coming from, how much traffic was hitting their website, how many leads came in weekly or what percentage of leads converted there was no way to fix the problem.
In summary (or in case you couldn’t be bothered reading the whole blog)
- Marketing requires massaging, tweaking and fondling to be successful.
- Your chances of hitting success the first time around are small, that is why you need to create a marketing funnel and fix little bits at a time until you get it right.
- The numbers will tell you where to look to fix your marketing woes, with no number tracking you’re stabbing around in the dark like Jason (the creepy murdery guy in the hockey mask from the horror movie Friday the 13th).
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