According to the good people at Merriam-Webster, a strategy is “a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time; the skill of making or carrying out plans to achieve a goal”.
And according to the good people (if we do say so ourselves) here at Leap Clixx, the operative word in the above definition is not “plan” “method” or even “goal”. It’s ACHIEVE.
That is, a strategy - in this case, a marketing strategy - is only as good as what it achieves. Or to put it another way: a comprehensive, impressive, robust and multi-faceted marketing strategy is only as good as the results it creates.
Why are we even bringing this up? Because many businesses have invested money and time putting together a solid marketing strategy, but it’s simply not getting the job done. That's why we're highlighting 3 ways that your marketing strategy may just be spinning its wheels rather than driving you forward:
3 Things That Could Be Holding Back Your Marketing Strategy
1. You don’t know who you’re speaking to.
Marketing is a dialogue not a sermon, which means that knowing what you want to say and why you want to say it aren’t enough. You also need to know who you’re saying it to – and why they should care in the first place.
In other words, you need well-developed buyer personas that help you clarify and calibrate your messages. Otherwise, you’re essentially rolling up your window and hoping that what you say will be overheard and of interest to someone passing by. That’s not strategic - it’s accidental.
2. Your leads aren’t qualified.
Not every lead that your sales team hears from will be ready to buy – in fact, most of them won’t, since there are almost always a few touchpoints along the way in the buyer's journey (in the B2C space, there can be several).
However, if the majority of leads are unqualified – which means that they aren’t even in the sales funnel or haven’t even started the customer journey – then, that’s a clear sign that your marketing strategy isn’t working. On the contrary, it’s damaging your businesses because it’s wasting resources and time, not to mention driving your sales team crazy.
3. You’re getting lost in the crowd.
At its core, marketing is business storytelling. Naturally, this story is told in different ways, and through different channels. For example, the story told on a website will differ from the story told in an eBook, or through social media content, and so on.
If your marketing strategy isn’t telling a compelling story, then your business invariably gets lost in the crowd. Customers don’t know where you have an advantage, and what makes you unique.
And when this happens, your business and everything it offers is perceived as a commodity – and then you befall the worst of all business fates (unless you happen to be Walmart): all that customers focus on is price. And they’ll keep driving yours lower and lower and lower…until you go out of business. It’s a race to the bottom, and a dysfunctional marketing strategy has its fingerprints all over that grizzly crime scene.
The Bottom Line
If your marketing strategy is spinning its wheels instead of driving you forward, then contact the experts at Leap Clixx today. We’ll review your current strategy and work with you to refine, re-target and re-invent it.
In many cases, you’ll actually spend LESS than you are right now, and you’ll get BETTER results. That’s the power of winning marketing strategies, and those are the only kind we build here at Leap Clixx.
Download our free eBook to learn more about inbound marketing strategies.
Topics: Inbound Marketing
